Thanas wrote:No, it is not. For there is nothing really ethnic about being a subject of "ruler A" during that time. That people try to claim past glories is also not something that is borne out of nationalism. For example, one can easily be a member of public grouping A without being born a member of public grouping A.
There is a noted incident in Sima Qian's history of Qin documenting a debate in the court in 237 BC with one side advocating for expulsion of non-Qin foreigners from the state (on the basis of where they were born), which would have included members in the Qin bureaucracy including one of the high officials, Li Si, who was Chu born. His written petition arguing against it is documented as 諫逐客書. Clearly there was a sense among a significant enough segment of the court that simply by virtue of being born in another state, they were non-Qin and would forever be non-Qin, and this was independent of whoever was sitting on the throne. This is directly analogous to other past attempts by states elsewhere to expel foreign ethnicities. Wouldn't a movement to say get all non-Germans (defined purely by place of birth) expelled from Germany be viewed as evidence of German nationalism and xenophobia (Germany was picked purely at random)? I don't see how it can get much clearer than that in showing a sense of distinct ethnic identity, associated with the kingdom of one's birth, existed, i.e. nationalism. That this sense was subsequently extinguished by war and mass migration doesn't mean it was not real or present.
Yes. Why should that be a problem unless you have some kind of agenda like "ZOMG BIGGEST BATTLE EVER?" History should try to deal with facts and concepts, not ancient or modern dick-measuring.
The problem appears to be you doubting that it was a major battle at all, when even just by relative reported figures in Sima Qian it stood out as a massive battle for that period, even if you regard the absolute numbers as unreliable.
Hell go look up 白起豆腐 aka 白起肉 (Bai Qi tofu aka Bai Qi flesh), which is still a traditional food dish from that region, named after the Qin general that conducted the massacre so that he may be torn to bits by the diners. If the locals at some point hated Bai Qi enough to immortalize him in the local food culture, that gives a sense albeit circumstantial of how big an impact the battle had on the local area.
That number is less than impressive, really, considering the low tech base, even if you accept all those numbers at face value (which I do not).
And how many other Bronze Age state of that approximate period were mustering a million troops for its campaigns? Offhand I can think of Xerxes and Darius, if you accept certain numbers given for their forces. But they were troops of an empire already. Qin was still just one among 7 divided kingdoms. Again you seem to be dismissive of anything not Roman or Western.
I shall await hard evidence of such a population reduction then.
You seem to be setting the goalposts at an unprovable level in order to avoid acknowledging that it was a major battle or the effect on Zhao. You've rejected the textual evidence from Sima Qian, and presumably therefore all subsequent historical texts that might reference Sima Qian on this topic. You've rejected the finding of mass war dead dated to that time period at the site (but which in any case would never have been complete enough after over 2000 years to match any numerical claims by Sima Qian). We know Zhao official census records and that of all the defeated Warring States were officially destroyed by Qin, and any remaining copies did not appear to have survived the fall of Qin. You seem to have set up a situation where you will reject any evidence because it will never be good enough for you and the only one that perhaps might be is conveniently destroyed. Convenient to set up situations where nobody can ever prove otherwise.
Yes, it does. Maintaining chariots was easier than maintaining good cavalry for a myriad of reasons, one being that chariots are easier to produce and train for than good heavy cavalry.
What is the hard evidence for the maintenance costs of chariots relative to the productive capacity of the time? In an age where you didn't have heavy cavalry of the same heavy shock nature as later due to the lack of stirrups, the chariot was the functional equivalent. The point isn't that chariots are cheaper on an absolute scale but that relative to the means of the noble or state or whoever doing the funding, they filled the same niche.
Archeological evidence from the terracotta army shows the cavalry forces were missile armed, so for the same time period being talked about, there was no Warring State heavy cavalry, at least if you are thinking in the armored knight or cataphract sense. They filled a different role from that of the chariot.
Again, just because chariots might be effective in a low-tech environment it does not mean that the use of them is "a good idea" or would have been a good idea in Europe.
Which was never the point being discussed in the first place. The point was the chariot filled functionally and sociologically the same role during the Spring & Autumn period, as being a weapon of warfare that was restricted to the nobles due to the high costs of maintenance and production relative to the means of the time period.
When warfare became more than the province of a few skirmishing nobles, the cost benefit ratio shifted as attested to by the universal adoption of mass conscripted armies replacing the old feudal system of nobles supporting their own chariot forces.
