276 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

and Chao had opportunities that were not open to either Wei or Han
for extending her territory and improving her military technique, thanks
to her geographical situation on the border between the Sinic World
and the Great Eurasian Steppe.1 By contrast, Wei had for her western
neighbour not the Eurasian Nomad World but the potentially more
formidable Sinic anti-Nomad march-state of Ts'in; and Wei's territory
was not only smaller in the aggregate than Chao's; it was also divided
into three geographically discontinuous fragments, one of which lay on
the farther side of Chao's territory, and another on the farther side of
Han's, while Han's metropolitan territory, which lay south of the Yellow
River, was similarly insulated by both the territory of Wei and the
remnant of the imperial patrimony of Chou from a detached province,
north of the river, which was wedged in between the territories of Wei
and Chao.2 This awkward geographical distribution of the former
domain of Tsin condemned Wei to find herself perpetually at war with
her two fellow successor-states in addition to the wars with other neigh-
bours which she brought upon herself by her aggressive policy of
expansion.

The general war (gerebatur 419-370 B.C.) with which this cycle opened
consisted of a series of efforts on Wei's part to dominate her neighbours.3
Wei's first move was to take advantage of the domestic troubles, com-
mon to all states in the Sinic World of the day, by which Wei's western
neighbour Ts'in was paralysed during the years 415-384 B.C.4 In the
course of the years 419-409 B.C.3 Wei reconquered from Ts'in a strategi-
cally important belt of territory inside the great loop of the Upper Yellow
River which had been part of the original domain of Wei's parent state
Tsui but had been conquered from Tsin by Ts'in during the pre-
Confucian paroxysm of the Sinic Time of Troubles. This reconquest by
Wei of 'the Country west of the River' (Ho-si) in 419-409 B.C. was fol-
lowed up by a temporarily effective subjugation of Han; but in 386 B.C.
Chao succeeded, with Ts'i's help, in resisting Wei's efforts to complete
the reunification of Tsui's former domain by subjugating Chao like-
wise; and, though Wei inflicted defeats on Ts'i in 384,380, and 378 B.C.,
and on Ch'u in. 371 B.C., her bid for oecumenical supremacy was frus-
trated in 370 B.C. by the combined forces of Chao and Han after
Han had doubled her area and resources in 375 B.C. by annexing her
neighbour on the west, the state of Cheng.6

. This negative outcome of the General War of 419-370 B.C. was con-
firmed by the outcome of the supplementary wars of 354-340 B.C.7 This
bout of warfare opened, significantly, with a campaign in which Wei
lost to Ts'in part of the reconquered territory 'west of the River'. This
reverse was the signal for a general attack on Wei; and, though Wei
staved off her now inevitable fate by winning repeated victories against

See Franke, op, cit., vol. i, pp. 180-1.

See Maspero, op. cit., pp. 369-70; Herrmann, A.: Historical and Commercial Atlas
of China (Cambridge, Mass. 1935, Harvard University Press), p. 16; andxi, Map a6.
See Maspero, op. cit, pp. 592-3, 4 See ibid., p. 377.

See Ibid., p. 392 and p. 369, n. i.

See ibid., op. cit,, p. 369; Franke, op. cit., vol. i, p. 181.
See Maspero, op. cit., pp. 394-6,