ropean historians, that the Turkish and Mongolian tribes were
so savage or so pugnacious that they continually waged war just for the
love of it. The problem is much deeper, and to fail to recognize this is
to fail to understand Chinese history down to the Middle Ages. The
conquering Chou established their garrisons everywhere, and these
garrisons were surrounded by the quarters of artisans and by the
villages of peasants, a process that ate into the pasturage of the
Turkish and Mongolian nomads. These nomads, as already mentioned,
pursued agriculture themselves on a small scale, but it occurred to them
that they could get farm produce much more easily by barter or by
raiding. Accordingly they gradually gave up cultivation and became pure
nomads, procuring the needed farm produce from their neighbours. This
abandonment of agriculture brought them into a precarious situation: if
for any reason the Chinese stopped supplying or demanded excessive
barter payment, the nomads had to go hungry. They were then virtually
driven to get what they needed by raiding. Thus there developed a mutual
reaction that lasted for centuries. Some of the nomadic tribes living
between garrisons withdrew, to escape from the growing pressure, mainly
into the province of Shansi, where the influence of the Chou was weak
and they were not numerous; some of the nomad chiefs lost their lives in
battle, and some learned from the Chou lords and turned themselves into
petty rulers. A number of "marginal" states began to develop; some of
them even built their own cities. This process of transformation of
agro-nomadic tribes into "warrior-nomadic" tribes continued over many
centuries and came to an end in the third or second century B.C.

The result of the three centuries that had passed was a symbiosis
between the urban aristocrats and the country-people. The rulers of the
towns took over from the general population almost the whole vocabulary
of the language which from now on we may call "Chinese". They naturally
took over elements of the material civilization. The subjugated
population had, meanwhile, to adjust itself to its lords. In the
organism that thus developed, with its unified economic system, the
conquerors became an aristocratic ruling class, and the subjugated
population became a lower class, with varied elements but mainly a
peasantry. From now on we may call this society "Chinese"; it has
endured to the middle of the twentieth century. Most