Wikipedia says the great wall of china was built over a period of more than a thousand years as a defense against invasion by neighboring tribes. But the problem with that is the people who build the wall must have eventually faced population pressure and wanted to expand their settlements outward. Wouldn’t a big wall have severely hampered that? Some sections of the wall took hundreds of years to build – how come by the time they got halfway done, nobody said “wait, stop building that cause we’re expanding our empire another 50 miles northward”?
Wikipedia does say that much of the early wall wasn’t really a wall, but more of a trench with moats and such. So I get that there were temporary sections of the wall that could be easily dismantled when needed. But what about the famous big parts of the wall we see in pictures? Didn’t they realize they were fencing themselves in?
The Chinese civilizations were based on agriculture. In general, the areas north of the Wall were less suitable for agriculture, which is why they were mostly inhabited by nomadic herdsmen. So the Chinese were walling off areas where they were not much interested in expanding into anyway.
The Chinese had no real interest in expanding northward. What’s there? Siberia and Mongolia, not exactly prime settlement territory. From their point of view, China was the centre of the world (geographically and culturally) and so why would you want to move anywhere else? China itself is huge, about the size of the USA, so there was no need to conquer land elsewhere for lebensraum. Historically any expansion the Chinese did attempt was more directed to the south (Vietnam) and south-west (Tibet).
Furthermore the wall did not stop anyone determined from crossing it (in either direction). Its main purposes were to serve as a series of watchtowers so the Chinese knew who was coming, from where; to make it hard for horse warriors (such as the Mongols) to cross it with their mounts, and to make it harder to take loot out of China.
Well, you are on the right track. The wall was built to keep people in. Imagine if you wanted to raid a town inside the wall. You sneak in and then ransack the town. Now what are you going to do? The Chinese army knows where you are and you can’t go back the way you came. All of the watch towers are on alert. You are screwed.
Now as to your question. If you want to expand by another 50 miles, Just build another section of wall 50 miles further out. The wall is not contiguous and there are overlapping sections.
north (or maybe north-east) of the Wall was not Siberia and Mongolia, it was Manchuria. And yes, you can certainly do agriculture there. The Manchu dynasty used the Willow Palisade - Wikipedia , among other measures, to restrict Chinese agricultural settlement for awhile, and eventually the region was fully taken over by the Chinese settlers by early 20th century. As a result, Manchuria became a wealthy and powerful region / proto-state under the rule of warlord Zhang Zuolin - Wikipedia .
But if you look at the Wall from the anti-nomad policy standpoint, it only makes sense to have multi echelon defense and defend what you care about right now first and foremost. The job of the current government is to protect its already settled, tax-paying areas right now, not worry about some hypothetical settlement in the future. If some subsequent government decides to settle and defend areas outside the Wall, let them build new walls / bribe nomads / do whatever else.
well, they did “pioneer and settle” Manchuria and Taiwan, neither of which had much of an agriculturalist population before them. In southern areas of China proper there were agriculturalists everywhere so they got either kicked out or assimilated or still remain in the 55 national minorities list.
Clearly that’s not the case, or you misinterpreted my question and you’re trying to be snarky.
China is a mixed bag of ethnicities. In relation to the question about whether the wall kept out enemies but also kept in the populace and prevented them from expanding, I posed my question because I don’t know if the historical boundaries were principally influenced by pioneering and resettling (e.g., the United States and Canada as they are today), or by simply conquering and assimilating (hence my comparison to the Romans).
Today there’s a lot of talk about Tibet losing its ethnic distinction because China is allegedy moving large quantities of non-Tibetens in, but I suspect that that’s a modern strategy and not necessarily something that’s taken place historically.
Both have happened, in both places. Where pioneers met resistance or conflict in their settlement of the American west/south/Texas, the state intervened and it would be conquest by anyone’s reckoning. This process was mostly a one way one characterized by violence, but it only lasted for around 100 years. Over the thousands of years of Chinese history obviously there would be migrations and displacements in both directions, sometimes peaceful sometimes not. Lots of things can happen over thousands of years. For significant periods of time, Chinese living in China proper were either subject to or lived in fear of invasion by Tibetan armies, sometimes it was the opposite.
While we are pointing out the obvious, The great wall didn’t stop Chinese people from going out, while it was under Chinese control, because it wasn’t an impassable mountain range, but a series of fixed fortifications that were built for armies to fight from. It had doors. just as the Maginot Line didn’t stop any French who wanted to go to Germany. Just as the walls of my house do not stop me from leaving as long as the house remains mine. Similarly, when Chinese armies lost control of the wall, the wall did nothing to stop those on the outside from entering.
Also Askance Tibet isn’t to the south-west of China. Look at a map sometime.
In the past infrastructure did not exist for anyone to go to (or leave) Tibet easily, which is not to say it didn’t happen, but not in large numbers. There also wasn’t any particular reason for anyone to go there. Today, large numbers of non-Tibetans enter Tibet because it is relatively backwards in terms of economic development and thus there exist both opportunities and the need for greater integration with the rest of China, and since the Chinese government considers Tibet to be a part of China, this is something they would welcome, even if they didn’t actively encourage it. The US government could have welcomed and encouraged migration of Okies into California for the same reasons, and one doesn’t have to suspect it a nefarious plot to displace native Californians.
OK then, done. Oh, lookit thet! More of China is north of Tibet than south of it, and more of it is east of Tibet than west of it. What direction from China would you call that?
If you visit Beijing, for example - it’s basically a flat river valley area, not much hill in the city or surrounding areas. about 60 miles out, give or take, you run into the photogenic scrub and steep rocky hills that we see in most pictures of the Great Wall. Yeah, you can farm north of there, but for many miles it’s nowhere near as useful farmland as south of the wall.
It’s more than just watchtowers. The most touristy area (Badaling?), and the flattest valley approach and main road, has huge walls (mostly rebuilt). The most often used, toured by politicians or seen in shows like Amazing Race, it’s 30 to 50 feet high. Further along, I went to Jingshanling(?) where much of it has not been restored, it’s still 10 to 20 feet high and built on the spine of ridges that fall off at about 45-degree angle.
The mongols could easily overwhelm a 10-foot wall section if they brought thousands of troops, but getting thousands of troops through the rough terrain and up the hills to one section of wall would probably give the Chinese enough time to move a defence force there… and the mongols were known for their horse attacks presumably on flatter terrain, not storming difficult fortifications.
In the valleys, where ther would logically be roads going north, there were guarded gates just like a castle wall.
The wall also occasionally has spurs going out into the north which would give archers a good shot at anyone trying to attack the easier-approached sections of the wall.
