Where Have All the Defeated Gone? —War Booty, Severed Heads, and the Surrendering Soldiers in Early Medieval China

Principal Investigator

TSE Wai Kit Wicky

Total Fund Awarded

HK$435,708

Funding Source

RGC General Research Fund
(2025/2026)

Abstract of Project

As the saying goes, “History is written by the victors.” Historical records usually direct us to read war from the perspective of the winning side, recounting their victory, gains, and treatment, lenient or brutal, of the losing side in the aftermath of wars, but the voice of the defeated is seldom heard. When recent interest in military and social history promotes the idea of “history from below” and draws attention to the experiences and activities of the voiceless ordinary soldiers and the civilians, historians have been painstakingly digging out the traces left by those who are long overlooked in the accounts of the past. The currently available records may not allow a detailed account of the losers, enough has survived to give insights into the cases of the defeated in wars. Focusing on the war-ridden early medieval China, the period roughly between the second and the sixth century A.D. that was notorious for its political disunion and ethnic conflicts, this project studies the history of the defeated, including the generals and their soldiers, as well as the property of the vanquished side, to provide another picture of warfare. It approaches the related history from three aspects. Firstly, it traces the role of war booty in early medieval warfare, the mechanism of distributing spoils, and the political and cultural meaning of certain significant trophies. It also examines the effectiveness of contemporary attempts at formulating laws and norms to limit plundering and other atrocities of war. Secondly, it examines the practice of severing enemy’s heads as a quantified assessment of military merits and looks closely at some notorious cases of trophy heads, which became symbols with significant meanings to political legitimation of the time. Thirdly, it analyzes how the winners absorbed the defeated or surrendering soldiers into their armies to meet the acute demand of manpower in incessant warfare. The integration of the defeated of mixed backgrounds into one’s army was a critical challenge to every state in the period, and its effectiveness not only underpinned one’s military capacity but also success in political consolidation. This project aims to place the stories of the defeated and their property in the wider military, political, social, and cultural context in early medieval China. It will also refer to cases in other civilizations, when appropriate, for brief comparisons.