The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Scheidel Walter

Author:Scheidel, Walter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

may have relied on stereotypes and hyperbole but nonetheless put the finger on a pressing problem—the ongoing concentration of landed wealth. The most extravagant disparities were created at the very top, by families that back in the sixth and seventh centuries had closely attached themselves to the imperial court by abandoning their local bases and relocating to the capital cities of Chang’an and Luoyang, where close proximity to the throne ensured the most immediate access to political power and attendant lucre. This spatial clustering helped them secure access to senior government positions and provincial offices. Distinct from a provincial upper class that rarely ascended to state offices, these families formed a closed central elite that was increasingly interconnected by marriage. The most detailed study of this group and the numerous tomb epitaphs it left behind finds that by the ninth century CE, at least three-fifths of all known members of the resident imperial elite of Chang’an were linked by ties of kinship and marriage, including the majority of senior officials such as ministers and most top-tier officials in charge of provincial administration. What has been called a “highly restricted marriage and kin network” had thus come to control the Tang state, in no small part for the personal benefit of its members.4

Yet metropolitan residence came with a price: extremely profitable in times of order and stability, it exposed the top tier of the Tang elite to violent action when the central authorities were no longer able to fend off challenges by usurpers. In 881 CE, Huang Chao, a rebel warlord, took the main capital city of Chang’an. Just a few days into the occupation, resistance by high officials triggered violent reprisals that resulted in the killing or suicide of four current or former chief ministers and claimed hundreds of other lives. Huang Chao soon lost control over his troops, who went on a looting rampage in a city filled with staggering elite wealth that been built up over centuries. The power elite became a favorite target: according to one source, the soldiers “especially detested bureaucrats, killing all those they got their hands on.” Three thousand literati were supposedly massacred in response to the publication of a mocking poem. And that was only the beginning: although Huang Chao’s rebellion failed, Chang’an was sacked several times by rival warlords in the years to come, events that devastated the city and impoverished its residents. In Zheng Gu’s words,

At sunset, foxes and hares cross

Where the grandees of state resided but recently.

How doleful to hear jade flutes,

But not see the fragrant carriages go by.

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