All month long we will be featuring speaker’s abstracts for the upcoming Equine History Conference: Why Equine History Matters. Register now!

The Equine Body and Human Labor in the Military Logistics of Early Seventeenth-Century China
Masato Hasegawa, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

   This paper’s analysis centers on the wartime transport of provisions in early seventeenth-century China. Primarily drawing on writings of one of the most prolific writers of the period on military logistics, Mao Yuanyi (1594-1641), this study probes the manner in which the reliability of packhorses and animal-drawn carts were being assessed in comparison with human labor. A military strategist and advisor, Mao participated in some of the major military campaigns in China’s northeast in the early seventeenth century. In his seminal study on the conduct of war, The Record of Military Preparedness (Wubeizhi), he extensively discussed the costs and benefits of the transport methods available in his time. His assessment not only considered the reliability of each method in the short term. He also calculated the costs and risks of employing each method over the long term, including fodder, wages, maintenance, illnesses, cheating, and seasonal weather patterns. Of all the methods considered, Mao clearly favored what he called “human transport” (renyun), which exclusively relied on the labor of human bearers. By analyzing his writings on the transport of provisions and his forceful argument in favor of employing human labor, this study highlights the manner in which consideration over transport entailed an appraisal of efficiency and reliability in both the short and long term. Also vividly illuminated in his writings is the critical importance attached to understanding the equine body and equine behavior in early modern China.