Riverine Warfare

This issue of the Journal of Chinese Military History features four articles exploring riverine warfare in premodern China. The articles show that rivers have played an important, but often overlooked, role in defensive and offensive warfare. Just as the distinctive qualities of water – flowing, nurturing, clear when still – helped to make it a “root metaphor” in Chinese philosophy, the watery qualities of rivers made them a fundamental part of military thought.1 In the military realm, successful armies took advantage of the potential of rivers to flow quickly, transport heavy objects, impede movement, and be stored, diverted, or released. Wicky Tse’s article, “The Tactical Role of Rivers in Early Chinese Warfare,” shows that many of these qualities were already integrated into warfare in Early China. Examples from Zhanguo ce, Mozi, and the Zuozhuan show that armies vied to control water for offensive, defensive, and logistical advantage. For instance, moats could provide defense for cities built next to rivers, but the same river could be diverted by besieging armies to flood the city or deprive it of access to supplies. In the realm of logistics, Tse shows that early Chinese regimes – much like later dynasties – used rivers to efficiently transport troops, weapons, and provisions. Tse also introduces a theme that runs through all four articles, that riverine warfare cannot be abstracted from the surrounding land. In the second part of his article, he analyzes “shore-based river-crossing campaign.” Rivers had to be crossed, but crossing at the wrong place, or in a