In Our Time - Sun Tzu and The Art of War

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas attributed to Sun Tzu (544-496BC, according to tradition), a legendary figure from the beginning of the Iron Age in China, around the time of Confucius. He may have been the historical figure Sun Wu, a military adviser at the court of King Helu of Wu (who reigned between about 514 and 496 BC), one of the kings in power in the Warring States period of Chinese history (6th - 5th century BC). Sun Tzu was credited as the author of The Art of War, a work on military strategy that soon became influential in China and then Japan both for its guidance on conducting and avoiding war and for its approach to strategy generally. After The Art of War was translated into European languages in C18th, its influence spread to military academies around the world.The image above is of a terracotta warrior from the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor, who unified China after the Warring States period.With Hilde De Weerdt Professor of Chinese History at Leiden UniversityTim Barrett Professor Emeritus of East Asian History at SOAS, University of LondonAndImre Galambos Reader in Chinese Studies at the University of CambridgeProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, quote, the art of war is vital to the state, a road either to safety or to ruin, end quote. So begins one of the great works of strategy,

in particular military strategy, written two and a half thousand years ago in China. According to legend, the author of the art of war was Sun Tzu, reputedly a general or advisor for the King of Wu in the 6th century BC near the start of 300 years of war that ended with the first emperor, he of the terracotta army fame. The work was embellished for another thousand years and studied not so much for the directions it gave,

but for the state of mind it encouraged, and its influence leaders from the American Civil War to Mao's Long March to the latest war in Iraq, especially the line, all warfare is. based on deception. With me to discuss Sonsu and the Art of War are Tim Barrett, Professor Emeritus of East Asian History

at Soas, University of London. Hilda de Viette, Professor of Chinese History at Leiden University, and Imra Gulambos, reader in Chinese Studies at the University of Cambridge. Hilda de Viette, whatever its origins,

we may get to the point that the art of war emerged when China was in upheaval, 5th century BC. Why was that unheaval, and what was it about? Well, the time period during which Swinnu, Suenze was active, it's called the period of the warring states, so the 6th and the 5th century BCE, and it was a time of tremendous changes, not only military changes, but also social, political and cultural changes that in part came as a result of very significant military changes. To understand, and perhaps we have to backtrack a little bit to the period before then the centuries immediately before Swinu was alive.

when the Zhou Dynasty, the dynasty that ruled most of the Chinese territories during Swenza's lifetime, set up their dynasty, they ruled it as a system that is equivalent to a feudal system, the way we know it from medieval European history. They parceled out the land, gave it to members of their own clan. There were disagreements from time to time, but those were usually settled through small-scale warfare that was. was done by the aristocrats themselves, by members of the imperial family, as well as their entourage. They did that on chariots, bronze, with bronze weapons. It was fairly a small-scale affair, and it was also done by means of an honor code. Warfare wasn't international. It wasn't killing everybody. But by the 6th and 5th century, the Zhou Dynasty had lost in their country. more or less. They had lost their capital. Some of the states had lost their connection with the

Roe-Rulling House. And it meant that a new leadership came to the fore. A leadership that wanted to strengthen their state through a variety of means. One of the means by which they did that was to develop large-scale infantry armies, armies of conscripts. And those armies fought with iron weapons, iron weapons that could be more easily manufactured, that were what were cheaper to manufacture. But that were also more deadly as a result of that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of soldiers came into the field. Just a second. You say 100,000, sorry to interrupt, you say hundreds of, you actually literally have evidence that there were hundreds of thousands. Yes, that's what the numbers give us. Some of these may be exaggerated, but it does look at that's the scale. And particularly,

these are numbers that are not mentioned for one or two of the states. There are several states that were able to field armies that large. The population was increasing as a result of economic changes. Taxation was heavy, which meant that the state could also afford to have these larger armies. So in a sense what you're saying, I think, you'll tell me if I'm wrong, that the change in the nature of warfare, not only influenced warfare, but influence the shaping of society. And now we have cavalry and infantrymen and not just the aristocrats in their bronze chariots. You have iron instead of bronze, as it were. Indeed. And it brought forward a new sort of person.

Listen, not the Irishocrats, but let's call them the experts. Indeed. So you have large-scale armies of conscripts that were led by new leaders, military experts that were recruited, not necessarily because they were members of the aristocracy, but because they had shown special expertise and effectiveness in waging battles and winning factories. How did he fit into this, Sonsu? Let's come to him right away. He is one of these persons, but I'm asking you first before I go right.

if you don't mind finishing this off. So he is one of these persons, presumed there are a lot of them. Where did he get his training to go south to this newer kingdom and get employed down there? It's very difficult to know exactly what his training was because we have very little biographical information about Swin Wu himself. But he was part of a larger group of military experts

who partially were in the field. He grew up in Wu, a state that had conflict, with Tru, another state, most likely he may have been involved in that kind of a conflict. But he was mainly known as someone who theorized about war, who fought about war, not necessarily as a general who was trained in the field, not somebody who has known for his military prowess or his martial qualities, but more as somebody who fought about strategy. You were talking about he who generally thought about as much.

We come to the real question, Tim Thinbury. What do we really know about him? Very little. There's a terrific story, but it may... We'll come to the story in a minute. It's the only one we've got. It's the only one we've got. So we'll take it. Okay, well, okay. I won't rush to the story. But I'll lead up to it by saying that he seems to have been a man from the heartland of China, but from the eastern side. It was one of the key areas in the Chinese world of the time, but that he made his representative. in the state of Wu.

Now, the state of Wu is sort of Shanghai area today. Now it's obviously part of the heartland of China, but in those days it was a long way from where the heartland had always been up to this point, which is on the North China Plain.

This is the Lower Yangtze Valley. This is not quite Chinese in some ways. There are probably a substantial population who don't speak Chinese at the this point, it's maybe somewhere more like Southeast Asia in terms of culture than what we

think of as China. But it's a place that was up and coming. The ruling elite was in contact with the Chinese world and they want to make their mark there. And the way to make their mark in this increasingly

violent age was through conquest. We're talking about the time, which grows to be the time of the warring states. Yes. It's It's moving towards the warring states. It becomes one of the warring states. So he's around, we don't know, but he's around, and he's hired by an emperor, and he's hired as a man to look after the military.

And this is the only certain thing we know about him, if it is true. If it is true. Let us tell us. Can you give the listeners some slender certainty which might be true? Slender certainty that might be true is that he shows up in the kingdom of Wu. and the king of Wu at that time, who is a historical character, for sure, says,

come you show me what you can do? And he says, I'm happy to help. And so the king says, well, right here in my palace, I've got a large number of concubines. Could you perhaps demonstrate your skills by putting my concubines through some manoeuvres?

and Sunza says, of course. But you have to understand that a general has to have absolute powers of command and that when I'm in charge, I'm in charge, as the king says, fine. So Sunza splits them into two squads of 79 concubines plus one concubine in charge. And of course he puts the king's favourites in charge. How could he not? And then he says to the concubines, or do you know how to face straight ahead,

to turn to the left, to turn to the right, to turn to the rear? And they say, yes, we do. All right, then he explains on what commands he wishes them to make the relevant moves. And apparently it's the signal from a drum or something like that. We know that drums were often used for this purpose. he has got the two concubines in charge of the two squads and he says, right, tell your troops, eyes right or whatever and the drum is sounded and the concubines fall about laughing.

So he says, hmm, well, if this sort of thing happens, maybe it's the general's fault. So he explains everything very carefully again, you know, right, left, straight ahead, etc. and they try it one more time and the concubines fall about laughing. He says, well, the general made things clear. It must be due to the officers. And he has stationed a couple of guys with axes just on the sidelines of the parade and he hands the two concubines over for execution.

The king is watching this from a reviewing platform. And he immediately sends a messenger down and says, without these ladies, I would have no fun in my life. Please stop. And Sunza sends the message back saying, I said, when the general is in charge, the general is in charge, more or less. And then he has the concubes. So we're now down to two squads of 78 concubines

and two deputy favourites in charge, and it all goes swimmingly. Now, briefly. Yes. No, seriously now, but... Yes. That persists, persist, persist. When do we learn from that?

That's interesting, because we certainly learn a thing or two about military discipline. Yeah, that's one thing. We learn the general is really in charge, the king has got to give it all up. That's the first thing. Secondly, what about... Is it the idea that anybody can be a soldier

if they're well-organized? That is perhaps implicit as well. because one theme that is absolutely consistent in Sunza's own writings, whoever invented this story, is the thought that, yes, we don't want heroes to be, as in an age of aristocracy, showing up in chariots and displaying their valor. What we want is for every soldier to be the highest level of heroism we can get them to and to be coordinated in that role. And thirdly, to follow a plan, my plan,

which then turns into this great book which is beginning over 2,500 years, and what are the origins of that book, Imriga Lamboz? Well, the book as we have it today, actually goes back to about probably the Song Dynasty, that form, which would be around the 11th century, probably. But the book obviously was written much earlier,

and according to the tradition, it was written by this person called Master Sun, or Sun Wu, around 500, probably, B.C. But it's very hard to know what the book looked like at that point or whether the book was actually in existence at that time.

So there are different scholarly opinions. It might have been orally transmitted. It could have been orally transmitted. It could have been put together not by Master Sun, but by his disciples or the disciples of the disciples, perhaps even there's a theory that it was put together by a descendant of him

about 200 years later. We do have some Han dynasty, so first century BC, second century BC manuscripts with the art of war. And these manuscripts contain about one third of the current text, and they show actually that these 13-chapter version that we have

today, the transmitted version, was probably already in existence back then in the second century BC. So by and large, it's not exaggerating for us to say, to continue to say, as we did at the start of the program, as you do in your, that it started in about the 5th century BC. It was all then in a second or third century, it was written down and transmitted and transmitted and transmitted after that. That's more or less right, is it? Well, it's possible that it's right.

We don't know for sure. Is it more possible than it's right than anything else is possible that it's right? No, what we know for sure is that around the second century BC, we already have the book. But the manuscript that we find actually has many other components that are not in the current book. So it's actually very hard to coordinate the two versions.

But before the second century BC, I mean, textually we don't have any evidence. We only have the tradition. And this tradition is, in many cases, was proven right by discoveries. There were many doubts about it over the centuries, not only about this book, but many other books. And sometimes these archaeological discoveries show that the tradition is actually right. And the doubters were wrong.

Can we stay with that? Yeah. Helps the program an awful lot. Just for the moment, if we can say that. Now, can you give us a broad precedent? this is the art of war it's not ten commandments it's about 110, 210

10 commandments just broadly say what he sets out to do very broadly and I'm afraid that's not briefly there you go well it's it consists basically of 13 chapters

this is the structure of the book but in terms of the chapters it seems that the the teachings or the commandments as you call them are actually not very well organized or not very strictly organized into chapters. So they seem to be, in some cases, quite unrelated to each other. So it's more like a collection of different commandments or different teachings.

What sort of commandments? What's the drive? Well, it's about how to wage warfare, how to behave, how to win. But these teachings are actually more about not very practical and not very hands-on teachings about what you do in concrete situations, but more about how to think about certain situations. So when you actually come to a new, a completely undocumented situation, you will know how to behave in that position.

It does bring in an awful lot, doesn't it? It brings in the idea that there are only five notes, he says, in music, and look at the number of melodies that can make, only five colors, look at the different combination we can make. We've only a limited number of things we can do in the battlefield, but look how many things we can do with it.

There's that, we want to call it a poetic element, a leap element. And he, it, whatever the collective is or him, covers a great deal there. How far did this, the art of war, fit in with the other great schools of thought going at the time, Confucianism, Taoism, Moism, and so on. There are all these schools going on. It's very exciting, isn't it? And it's exciting that it's about the same time as what's something reasonably similar, not something is going on in Greece, but let's forget about that for the moment.

How does it fit in with that? What's going on in China that makes them want to regulate and classify in this thorough way? So the warfare that is ongoing and that is quite visible across the Chinese territories also prompts responses to the question of how can we bring order, how can we restore peace and what are the best ways of bringing about order? And in some ways we could say that even though there are these different schools, they share that same agenda. But they have different answers to the question as to how order should be brought about. They also tend to agree that order is probably best brought about by having a monarchical kind of system,

by having one leader who then implements answers to the problems of the time. Now, the Swin Wu, if we go with him, there are many other military strategists at the time, but if we stay with him, 6th century, there are quite a few contemporaries around the Confucians, quite well-known, the Moist, slightly less well-known, I'll say something about them, and also Taoist thinking is around.

He tends to agree on certain aspects. He thinks moral virtues are important. He thinks warfare is a last resort, so he's not an advocate of warfare, is quite important. In a sense, he's saying the best thing to do is not have a war. Exactly.

And so Confucians would also agree with that. The Taoists would definitely agree with it because they think warfare is violence. It's artifice. It takes people away from their natural course. Confucians think that warfare should be unnecessary because if you're a moral leader, your own population will follow you. But external states will also bring a tribute to you. Mohists were willing to wage warfare, but they were also pacifists.

So they were only willing to help those who, were losing. Swin Wu was different from them in the sense that he fought the war had a role to play in bringing about order. He fought differently about the role but also the nature of war. Is there any one key? I mean obviously this is very much a second-rate question but still. Is there is a one key that unlocks this sudden surge of classification across various areas of life that came at that time in China? Is there an intellectual elite? there? What's going on? Well, they look at these experts.

We call them military experts. Actually, they wouldn't have called them necessarily military experts. They were advisors. And you have competing states, completing heads of state who are looking for people who can help them win against their enemies or at least survive. And for Swinwu, war is also a way to keep a state alive, not only defending yourself, but also aggressive warfare. Sometimes it's better to strike out, to be the first. first to make an aggressive move. And moreover, for Swinwood's also admissible to use any means possible. Once you decide to go to war, it's important to win a victory as fast as possible, by any means. And you'll have dead fields, will he? Go into this battle and you will all come out dead, and that's okay.

That's the way it goes. Yes. Morality is far less a concern for him than for any of the others we know of at the time. Tim Barrett, and we picked out deception warfare as an early a thing. Is this what you said at the beginning of it? The Arsocratic society is breaking up, it is very simplistic. You said it's got to be some truth in it. And they're trying to reform a society through intellect and merit, really.

Yes. Is something in that? Fair enough, yes. Well, I'm asking you to develop that, please. Yes. Well, that comes back to the whole rejection of the Arsocratic way of

conducting warfare which had a certain sense of fair play these are a sort of Iliad sort of thing where well the Iliad also has of course the Trojan horse so deception was not unknown in the West

but the hero likes to be seen to having a reasonably fair fight with the other hero and that's the way to emphasize his valor and so forth. Sun's is not interested in that at all. He's interested in winning. And he tells you that the way to win is by keeping your enemy disconcerted. Deception, of course, is important, but also wrong footing him in every way possible.

one of his key strategic concepts is the direct and the indirect that you head towards the enemy making him think that you're coming straight at him, then you hit him from another direction entirely with a surprise attack. And that, as it were, becomes one of his guiding principles. The his whole approach to warfare is keep the enemy guessing, outthink him, use whatever means of possible spies,

sowing dissension. Wonderful trickery, like pretending you had got 30,000 men when you got 100,000 men. Yes, in fact, or the other way around, but certainly not letting the enemy know how many men there are confronting him. One of the translators of the Sunza pointed out that the Chinese People's Liberation Army in the Korean War managed to get a quarter of a million men into Korea before the United Nations troops realized they were there. And that would be kind of... Have they been reading this book?

Well, certainly the United Nations commanders should have been reading. But on the other hand, MacArthur's attack on Inchon, for example, is a classic kind of Sunsum move where the United Nations troops have been bottled up in the south. And then MacArthur simply invaded the north, as it were, with an amphibious landing coming in from the side, and then catching the North Korean armies by surprise that way. It's the same kind of surprise. Can I just talk before that? Yes.

MacArthur, was he one of the American generals who did read the article? I'm not sure if he did. Because some of them did have it in their pocket, including for the Iraq War. Well, I'm not specifically sure if MacArthur had read it or not, but by the time of the Second World War, some Western military thinkers were certainly paying attention to Sunza. I mean, the translator I just mentioned as referring to the Korean War was an American general called Sam Griffiths,

and he has a preface to his work, Basil Little Hart, who was a fairly well-known strategist, British of the 1930s, for example. So we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but certainly you can't discount the influence of Sunza in Western tactical thinking by this point. Can we, Emery, can we talk about the relationship imagined between the general and others? We know from the concubines, the general wanted to have total authority, and that is consistent throughout the rules of war that he puts forward. And also, the second thing is that he keeps saying, if you do this, you will win, despite the fact that they are more numerous than you are,

you will win if you divide the army into seven, if you do this into five, if you take care of what's coming from the earth and so on. That's the idea that you're going. going to win if you do what he says. Yes. Well, the general, first, when you look at the relationship of the general with the ruler and with his subordinates, one of the things that strikes us immediately that when his relationship with the ruler is something that he can cut it, cut it off once he's in charge, he becomes in charge. But interestingly, in the concubine story as well, that in the first time,

the concubines giggled and did not follow his orders, he did not execute the general. It's only the second time when he executed the smaller commanders. So the general has some sort of inculpability in the Sun Tzu. He's not, it doesn't seem to be that he has a direct sort of subordinate relationship with the ruler. So once he's put in charge, he becomes sort of the top person. and even the ruler cannot touch him. When you look downwards, it seems that my impression is definitely that the people under him,

he does not look at them as people, it's their assets to him. The soldiers are assets and also the people of the country are assets. So he's concerned about when he talks about the economic background of warfare, he's concerned about the people, but he's not concerned about the people of the other state. So his concern for the people is only as assets, as somebody who's providing for the warfare. For the soldiers, it's the same way. He likes his soldiers, but he likes them as a tool, as something that he has and he can command with. But within that relationship, it's obvious that his position is extremely important

and he does not tolerate any insubordination. We have, I mentioned, or one of you mentioned, it doesn't really matter, that he was talking about a state of mind as much as a way of strategy, wasn't it? In any way you can summarize how he's getting that state of mind across, Hilda? Yes, I would actually follow up on something that I just said, and that he said that the general, general in some ways is actually a model for the ruler himself. And he's a model for the ruler

himself because of the way he thinks. He analyzes situations and he analyzes each situation individually in order to come up with the best response to whatever threat might present itself. And that's the important, I would say, probably the key feature of the general. That it's somebody who has an open mind, so that that mind cultivation is there, but it's somebody who's, attentive to all sorts of factors that could have an impact on whether or not he's going to be successful in the move that he wants to make. And being attentive to everything really means everything, not just the people, the soldiers I have, but the terrain, the climate, anything. And constantly, the situation is constantly changing. So it's situationalist thinking that takes

seriously the fact that you cannot take anything for granted at any point, because the situation is also constantly evolving yours as well as those of your potential enemies. Yes, when you say climate, he said if birds are clustering down there on the left, that means there's some soldiers hiding in the woods, and that's the least of it. But he goes in great detail in all those things. And there's an interesting story there as well. You were talking about Western strategist earlier. And there's been a longstanding debate about whether or not Napoleon had also seen this

text. And some say, yes, others say no. But one of the reasons that's often cited for why probably he didn't is that he didn't take into account the fact that it snows very often in Russia. It's very interesting to him where he seems to relish being in a position of weakness. And he attacks the idea of being weak. You can turn this round, he says, by following my rules. Yes, he is a good general for the underdog. And if it reflects his historical experience in the state of Wu,

that may be an echo of his actual situation because this is a sort of frontier state which is probably not as if it's probably not as heavily populated effectively as the northern states. So he has to be very careful in his use of manpower. And his emphasis on not throwing away your troops as an asset does actually work well with the side that has the least troops. And of course the elements of surprise and so forth. can make up for weakness in numbers.

So, yes, his whole strategic approach to me does seem to resonate a bit with that of a state that is not got that sort of overwhelming manpower that states in North China were able to feel during the warring states period. And his whole way of... doing battle. Certainly, again, to move forward, perhaps anticipate some later discussion, one can see there are elements in that way of thinking that would have appealed to Mao as a guerrilla commander. However,

Sunza's attitude is you've got to finish everything quickly. The whole idea of a protracted guerrilla war is totally alien to him. Imra, when did this text here is this become fixed. You've described very well the good old shrouded in mystery phrase that we often get when we go that far back. But when did it become fixed and say,

well, this is it, this is a book that matters, wherever it came from, and it is part of what we follow now, and it went through millennia after that. About what time and how? Well, I think, again, we're not exactly sure, but we have the first, one of the first commentators was Tzalzal from the third century, AD. And it's thought, or some, at least, there's a scholarly consensus that probably he edited to the text to some extent.

And then from there on it was much more similar than what we have today. So I would say we have evidence of the text in almost the same form as we have today, probably from the second century BC, but from the third century AD it was even closer to our current version. And so it becomes part of Chinese culture a bit. Absolutely. And an educated Chinese person, this would be one of the books he would read. I was about to say, oh, she, but there wouldn't be a she, would that really?

Well, it could possibly be a she, yes, yes. I mean, this text was not only read by people, by generals or people engaged in war, but it was a strategical text. It was about thinking in certain situations, so it could have been read by a woman as well. Two of the commentators were poets, I mean, best known for their poetry rather than their military thoughts. So this is something that spans all kinds of aspects of literate society. Because along the way, he had commentary's attitude all the time, to make it relevant to the time, and to clear it up because it's rather an ambivalent text at the beginning, as I understand.

I find it ambivalent, but... Well, if you find it ambivalent, the rest of us at most... No, Imre perhaps is... I think the appeal of the text today, in some ways, I think goes back to the strategic aspect, and I think that was recognized much earlier, if we look at sort of the earliest catalogues of people who have nothing to do with warfare, they have several versions of this text in their collections,

which suggests that they were also using it as sort of a self-help kind of manual, but what we still do nowadays. It could be anything from managing your family to managing your business, nowadays accounting. It could be how you read, how you do literature, how you engage in the arts.

Why did they get out of it in terms of how you read literature and how you... So they've got the island of war. We've been talking exclusively, deceptions. If you're organizing your household, what do you get out of this book? It helps you think about how, and we also suggested, about certain challenges, about situations that you need to analyze. You should not go for a universal answer as to how you manage your family.

There may be values within a family setting, but you have servants, you have all sorts of other members of the family, and deciding what the best answer might be could involve strategizing about the situation. And also we shouldn't forget that many of the literality were actually holding office. So they had a political career. And so if you had a political career,

obviously strategic thinking was important. How to move ahead. First of all, how to do your job, but also how to promote your own career. So that was important. How did the art of war start to travel outside China? Well, I think the earliest example of a translation of the art of war comes from the Tangut state, which was sort of from the 11th century until about 1227 when the Mongols crushed them.

So this was a state somewhere in northern China and in Mongolia, and they translated the Art of War. only the art of war, but also other military texts into their own language and wrote it down with their own script. Even before this, we have evidence of the art of war traveling to Japan, to Korea, to the Kingdom of Pekche, and also to Japan. So this would have been from even the 7th, 8th century. Let's just stay with Japan because people know quite a lot about Japan, or a lot about Japan. So what did you do in Japan? It would seem to be a rather different society, a society of Samurai, individual heroes and so on. You're aching to get it.

I'm a big fan of Kurosawa's film Kagamusha which is about a warlord who uses a double or his family does to conceal the fact that he's been killed by a sniper now that particular warlord is a historical figure Takeda Shingen

he carried a banner with four Chinese characters on which are straight out of the Sunza and this is historical and the characters were wind, forest, fire, mountain. When you said that, what was he meaning? Okay, well, in the original Sunza context, you've got to strike like a wind, be as tranquil as a forest, be as devastating as a fire, and as firm as a mountain.

What does this mean about the... When you're talking about impact on Japan, Did it change the way Japan run their army or port or what? It means they run their strategy that way. But in fact, I think the problem is that although they run their strategy that way, the armies are organised still along a slightly heroic model with the warlords and the samurai class at the top. and this has persisted in the sense that when in the 20th century with the onset of imperialism

there has been was in Japan a certain hearkening back to the samurai ethos so there is a concept of heroism which actually at the time of the revival was sparked as much by Victorian ideals of wholesome manliness as any traditional. traditional ideals because Britain was at that point the successful imperial power. It was a man in the society. Absolutely. So the whole approach to militarism in Japan is not quite Chinese in the sense that there is a strong sense of a warrior elite still that's been revived. Whereas the idea of a warrior elite is very very.

foreign to Swindlerc. Can we take it, can we let it march through time now? Can we talk about Asia, it's moved to Asia and then to Europe, Hilda? Yes. This book. Indeed. It came up slightly later the translation of Swenz had done some other Chinese classical text. The first translation that we know of is a French translation by Joseph Amio in 1772.

He was a Jesuit at the court of the ruling. Qing emperor. He'd been there for a while, and what was interesting, he didn't come up with this idea by himself. He kept up a very frequent correspondence with the then minister of finance or the equivalent of that under Louis X, Louis X, Louis X, and he asked him whether he could inform him better about the military situation in Qing China. And Joseph Amio decided that this was a opportunity to translate not just to Swenza but all sorts of other military classics and at the same time he also included plates of what the army actually looked like at the time and he goes through we're near the end of the program now Jim but you mentioned Mao earlier

and he is supposed to have taken note of this certainly quotes the Suns yes and do you think he quoted it to show that he knew it or quoted it because he was acting on it but both I think that he had a certain level of classical education, the sort of key texts of the heritage, and of course it helped to demonstrate that. But at the same time, there are elements in the Sunza that he would have been familiar with,

and he would have... What elements? Well, the whole idea of keeping the enemy guessing, the idea of making sure that the enemy is surprised, the whole idea of out-thinking the enemy, then in a hundred battles you will never be defeated. Know your enemy, know yourself. Finally, Imra, what status has the art of war today?

Well, it's still one of the most important and most revered classical Chinese texts, a text that everybody would know about in China and obviously also in the West. So just to give you sort of an example how much publications are happening about the Sun Tzu, just in 2015 there were 240 books published in China and in Japan and partly in the West about the Sun Tzu. And these include a certain number of scholarly academic publications, but also books about Sun Tzu and Mao

and management, Suns Zsze and all sorts of things. So it's very much alive and it's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Emerald Amos, thank you Tim Barrett. Thank you, Hilded de Bitt. Next week we'll be discussing the Highland Clearances,

which followed the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Is scholarship continuing about a more precise view of the origin of this? Oh, absolutely. And how are you going? Because you're still very tentative about it. Well, it's not me.

I think it's, I do you understand. I'm as representative of the whole field, the whole world of Chinese scholarship. Well, no, it's not just the suns. and it's just not just me, but when we have these attributions to the past, we don't know. I mean, we can only go back, we can only say for certain if we have evidence, right? We have material evidence, and these are archaeological texts, or sometimes we find other texts, which might quote this text. So it's scholarship is going on, actually. So it's, there are new and new findings.

people come up with new theories. What about the Chinese today? Are they taking a lot of notice of it? Absolutely. If you walk into a bookstore, you're going to find as many editions as you would find. But are the Chinese High Command taking notice of it?

Are they saying we must follow some of these ideas? Good question. They certainly are citing a lot of other texts. I'm not sure that they particularly focus on this one. They have been going back to some other ones Jim Guan government. Oh, yes, a lot of that is, but I think the underlying idea that can be traced back to the Sunza whenever that emerges, that of an intellectual approach to warfare, to have an intellectual class that is comfortable with the use of violence,

has persisted right the way through Chinese history. The rhetoric, of course, maybe of moral higher ground is always seized by those who wish to discomfort their enemies. But the actual practice tends to be somewhat more along the lines of Sunza. And certainly, there is in Sunzaa, a sort of validation of the use of violence, which means that with the formation of the modern Chinese state, in response to imperialist incursion, by nations of whom the British were the most notable, there has been an emphasis on, not on a military elite,

but on what one could call a martial awareness throughout the whole population. And that would be something that would then extend into even the lower levels of education, not just Boy Scouts, but real sense that from an early age people should understand military matters. And what I find interesting about China, which I don't visit very often, but is the extent to which there is public discourse about modes of warfare. That, you know, what are our weapons?

What are our opponent's weapons? That's on the television in a way you don't find in any Western society that I know. But I would say the core leadership, to my knowledge, brings it up far less. And I think that may have to do with the fact that sort of core values now are harmony and the sorts of things that may be. not be the core characteristics of this particular text. But it certainly is there, but I think it's there for different audiences.

It's being used. Does this make the Chinese attitude to war different from America and the British and so on? You mean today? Yeah. Is it an influence on the Chinese attitude? No, I think actually the Sun Tzu is very much in the minds

of present-day Chinese. It's a very short text. and everybody knows it. Everybody probably would have had read it. There's a very strong tradition of seeing and thinking about these texts through literature. So there are all these martial novels going back actually centuries before,

but many new ones. And so people think about this and it becomes kind of part of everyday culture, popular culture. In Japan as well, that is partially the case, that when it gets adopted, it's also adopted in military novels, in theater. So a lot of these texts are sort of being adapted to popular cultural genres. And in that way, people absorb it too.

They may not have read the text, but they will have sort of absorb the language from other media. And so they also occur in movies today. And so probably to a different extent than how warfare would occur in movies in the West. I don't see that. But despite of the sort of general education in a way, that it isn't in the West is what you're saying. One of the things that surprised me, I taught in Tennessee for a while,

and you have military, students in military training take those courses as well. They were also reading that text, and they were also telling me that in West Point as well. I was trying to get you to say that. No response to. So it says you were teaching you, and these young military students

were coming and bringing the art of war with them. And making the point out at West Point, that's on the curriculum. And I think it wasn't French military circles as well. Immediately after it appeared, it got rave reviews from key military personnel. The 19th century was more difficult

because that was the time when China was losing battles and then they forgot about it for a while. But then it came back again in the 20th century. And I think now it is a classic in many military academies. Now that they're winning. Indeed. Again, the century of shame has passed.

I hope you enjoyed it. No, thank you very much. Thank you. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, presenter of Desert Island Discs. Each week, I ask some of the world's most outstanding and impressive people to reflect on their life as they contemplate being cast away to a Desert Island. All they're allowed to choose is eight discs, a book and a luxury item.

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