state not only in depending on a nomad economy with only supplementary
agriculture, but also in possessing, in addition to a whole class of
nobility and another of commoners, a stratum of slavery to be analysed
further below. Similar to the Chou state, the Hsiung-nu state contained,
especially around the ruler, an element of court bureaucracy which,
however, never developed far enough to replace the basically feudal
character of administration.

Thus Kao Tsu was faced in Mao Tun not with a mere nomad chieftain but
with the most dangerous of enemies, and Kao Tsu's policy had to be
directed to preventing any interference of the Hsiung-nu in North
Chinese affairs, and above all to preventing alliances between Hsiung-nu
and Chinese. Hsiung-nu alone, with their technique of horsemen's
warfare, would scarcely have been equal to the permanent conquest of the
fortified towns of the north and the Great Wall, although they
controlled a population which may have been in excess of 2,000,000
people. But they might have succeeded with Chinese aid. Actually a
Chinese opponent of Kao Tsu had already come to terms with Mao Tun, and
in 200 B.C. Kao Tsu was very near suffering disaster in northern Shansi,
as a result of which China would have come under the rule of the
Hsiung-nu. But it did not come to that, and Mao Tun made no further
attempt, although the opportunity came several times. Apparently the
policy adopted by his court was not imperialistic but national, in the
uncorrupted sense of the word. It was realized that a country so thickly
populated as China could only be administered from a centre within
China. The Hsiung-nu would thus have had to abandon their home territory
and rule in China itself. That would have meant abandoning the flocks,
abandoning nomad life, and turning into Chinese. The main supporters of
the national policy, the first principle of which was loyalty to the old
ways of life, seem to have been the tribal chieftains. Mao Tun fell in
with their view, and the Hsiung-nu maintained their state as long as
they adhered to that principle--for some seven hundred years. Other
nomad peoples, Toba, Mongols, and Manchus, followed the opposite policy,
and before long they were caught in the mechanism of the much more
highly developed Chinese economy and culture, and each of them
disappeared from the political scene in the course of a century or so.

The national line of policy of the Hsiung-nu did not at all mean an end