Sun Tzu - The Art of War Documentary

The man known to history as Sun Tzu is traditionally believed to have been born in the State of Qi in eastern China in the late sixth century BC. Sun Tzu is an honorific name meaning ‘Master Sun’, and his original name was Sun Wu. Although he is known as the author of the Sun Zi Bing Fa or Master Sun’s Art of War, one of the most influential military treatises in world history, Sun Tzu remains an elusive figure, and his biographical details are vague and quite contested. Based on the content of The Art of War, some historians

believe that he actually lived no earlier than the fourth century BC. There are even scholars who believe that Sun Tzu was not a historical figure at all and was instead invented by later generations of Chinese writers who wanted to show that the author of The Art of War was a successful military leader who was able to put his ideas into practice. What follows presents some of the main theories about who Sun Tzu was and also what is contained in the famous text which this elusive figure of ancient China is most keenly associated with, The Art

of War. The earliest mention of Sun Tzu can be found in the Shiji or Records of the Grand Historian, the monumental history of early imperial China written by Sima Qian, the Han dynasty historian regarded as the father of Chinese history, in the late second century BC and early first century BC. The Shiji is largely comprised of biographical accounts of eminent Chinese figures, of which Sun Tzu was just one. In the Shiji, Sun Tzu’s biography is paired with that of Wu Zi or Master Wu, another military theorist known for writing a famous book on the art

of warfare. On closer examination, the Shiji’s biography of Sun Tzu contains only a single paragraph about the author of the Sun Zi Bing Fa, with the remaining section covering episodes from the life of his descendant Sun Bin, a general and military strategist from the 4th century BC who was also known as ‘Master Sun’ and who too wrote a long-lost military treatise, now known as Sun Bin’s Art of War. This has led some scholars to believe that the two ‘Master Suns’ are in fact the same person, and that Sun Bin was the author of the famous

Art of War, though the fragments of Sun Bin’s Art of War uncovered at the Yinqueshan tombs in Shandong province in 1972 suggest that Sun Tzu and Sun Bin were different people who wrote different texts. A more extensive account of Sun Tzu’s military career can be found in the Wuyue Chunqiu or Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue, a historical chronicle of questionable reliability dating to the 1st century AD attributed to the scholar Zhao Ye. Thus, we have two ancient Chinese accounts which purport to relate details of Sun Tzu’s life, though both were nevertheless written

centuries after the military tactician’s alleged lifetime. While the Shiji claims that Sun Tzu was born in the State of Qi in modern-day Shandong province, the Wuyue Chunqiu states that he was a native of the State of Wu, which occupied the Yangtze River delta in eastern China around modern-day Shanghai. Both sources agree that his given name was Sun Wu, which rather appropriately means ‘martial’ or ‘military,’ while the familiar ‘Sun Tzu’ would have been bestowed upon him by followers who admired his work. Neither source gives any details about his parentage or his year of birth, but the

Shiji claims that he had already written The Art of War when he entered the service of King Helü of Wu in or around 512 BC. If this is accurate, then Sun Tzu would have been born in the middle of the sixth century BC, during the late Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. During the Spring and Autumn period, China was a patchwork of feudal states which paid homage to the King of Zhou at his capital in Luoyang in Henan province. The Zhou had gained control over the Central Plain of China in the eleventh century BC

after overthrowing its predecessor, the Shang dynasty. The kings of Zhou had their capital in Fenghao in Shaanxi province until the eighth century BC, when they were driven out by the Quanrong barbarians from the west and northwest in 770 BC. The surviving members of the royal family relocated the capital to Luoyang, marking the beginning of the Later or Eastern Zhou dynasty. The Eastern Zhou is further subdivided into the Spring and Autumn period between the eighth and fifth centuries BC, and the Warring States period between the fifth and third centuries BC. The Eastern Zhou was characterised by

weakened central authority and the emergence of de-facto independent states that nominally acknowledged the sovereignty of the king of Luoyang. Many of these feudal states had been founded in the eleventh century by Zhou princes and influential generals and statesmen who were granted dukedoms throughout the Central Plain in recognition for their contribution to the founding of the dynasty. Over several generations, these dukes established their own independent power bases and began to take less notice of the king, though they continued to consider the king of Zhou their nominal sovereign. By the time the Zhou court moved to Luoyang,

the king’s power had severely diminished and he could do little to prevent his hundreds of vassals from fighting among each other to expand their own territories. Hence, China’s history in ancient times is a tale of a relatively powerful polity emerging as early as the second millennium BC in the shape of the Kingdom of Zhou, but then followed by a period of royal decline and political fragmentation before a new imperial power would eventually emerge and unite China under Qin rule. All of this ensured that China was dominated by warfare and conflict for many centuries and Sun

Tzu apparently lived in the midst of this. Surely it was this instability that led figures like him in ancient China to consider The Art of War and how conflicts should be won and lost. In order to understand the background to Sun Tzu’s alleged government service, and how he was immersed in the high politics of late sixth-century BC China, we need to understand some of the political intrigue and machinations of the time. During the Spring and Autumn period, and despite the broad political fragmentation of China at the time, the Zhou kings still retained considerable moral and

spiritual authority over the Central Plain of China. For this reason, a series of powerful rulers who achieved leadership status among the feudal states either by war or diplomacy were granted the title ba or ‘protector’ by the Zhou king, though the term is usually translated into English as ‘hegemon.’ While several ancient sources including the Shiji refer to the ‘five hegemons,’ no two sources share the same list of five. The earlier hegemons were from dukedoms within the Yellow River valley who swore allegiance to the Zhou, including Duke Huan of Qi in the east in the middle of

the seventh century BC, and Duke Wen of Jin in the north in the 630s BC. By the beginning of the sixth century BC, political entities from outside the Yellow River basin began to challenge the Zhou feudal system. The first of these was the State of Chu south of the Yangtze River, whose rulers began calling themselves kings at the beginning of the seventh century BC as a challenge to the Zhou. Over the next decades these different powers, the Zhou, Chu, Wu, Jin and others would continue to intrigue and make war on one another. If Sima Qian’s

account is true then this is around the time that Sun Tzu was born and grew up. His experiences were ones of war and political chaos. It would only become more chaotic in the years ahead and soon Sun Tzu would be personally involved. In the spring of 514 BC, forces of the Kingdom of Wu invaded Chu in an attempt to take advantage of the death of the ruler there, King Ping, the previous winter. The Wu armies were commanded by Prince Gaiyu and Zhuyong, both of whom were brothers of King Liao. Prince Guang, a cousin of the

king, now seized the opportunity of the princes’ absence waging war on Chu to assassinate King Liao and take the throne of Wu for himself. He invited the king to his house for dinner, where, despite the presence of the royal guards, the assassin managed to stab the king with a dagger that had been hidden inside a grilled fish, his favourite dish. King Liao died instantly, and Prince Guang led a body of armed men to overpower the late king’s bodyguards. Prince Guang duly established himself as King Helü of Wu. Upon hearing the news of the usurpation, the

late king’s brothers defected to Chu. In his biography of Sun Tzu in the Shiji, Sima Qian states that Sun Tzu entered the service of this King Helü in the third year of his reign, around 512 BC. The Wuyue Chunqiu gives further context for the appointment, which is once again credited to Wu Zixu. By that time, King Helü had advanced his plans to launch a campaign against Prince Gaiyu and Prince Zhuyong, the two Wu princes who had defected to Chu after their brother was killed and his throne was usurped by King Helü. Our sources, sporadic as

they are, suggest that Sun Tzu was introduced to the king around this time with the intention that he might lead the campaign against Prince Gaiyu and Prince Zhuyong and their followers. According to the Wuyue Chunqiu, Sun Tzu was an expert in military affairs from Wu who lived in seclusion because his talents were not appreciated by others, and it was only when emissaries arrived from the Kingdom of Wu to implore him to take command of the armies that Sun Tzu’s abilities were recognised. During their first meeting, King Helü asked Sun Tzu several questions about military strategy

and was impressed with the perceptiveness of each answer. After he was satisfied with Sun Tzu’s knowledge, he asked him to demonstrate that he could put his ideas into practice. The Shiji offers a simpler explanation, namely that King Helü had read The Art of War and invited Sun Tzu as its author to his court to offer a practical demonstration of his methods, while the Wuyue Chunqiu does not mention The Art of War at all. Although Sun Tzu’s Art of War has become the most influential military treatise from ancient China, many scholars from different philosophical traditions wrote

extensively about military affairs during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods in ancient China. It is worth reflecting on the text itself here, before exploring the limited details of Sun Tzu’s life further. The standard text of Sun Tzu’s Art of War is divided into thirteen chapters, each of which opens with the formula, “Master Sun says.” While the modern text is based on a compilation dating to the eleventh century AD during the Song dynasty, Sima Qian quoted King Helü telling Sun Tzu that he had read all thirteen chapters of his military treatise. Furthermore, fragments of

The Art of War written on bamboo strips uncovered during excavations at Yinqueshan in 1972 indicate that the text was already divided into its current thirteen chapters in the second century BC. Although there are a few references to specific wars, such as the rivalry between Wu and Yue, or the exploits of the legendary Yellow Emperor, the content of The Art of War primarily consists of high-level principles that a military commander ought to follow if he is to achieve success in war. As such, there is a frustrating lack of internal evidence within the text itself which would

allow us to accurately date it or that could make clear when Sun Tzu was writing and what experiences he was drawing upon. The book opens with a statement concerning the importance of warfare. In modern translation this reads: “War is a vital matter of state. It is the field on which life or death is determined and the road that leads to either survival or ruin, and must be examined with the greatest care.” The first chapter then goes on to list a set of five criteria to determine the chances of victory for each side. The first is

the dao, or the way, referring to the ability of a military leader to persuade his subordinates that his cause is just; the second is climate, pertaining to weather conditions and changing seasons; the third is terrain and how it facilitates or restricts the deployment of troops or the supply lines for the army; the fourth is command, relating to how a leader can motivate and discipline the troops; and the fifth is regulation, referring to the organisation of the army, its logistics and lines of communication, and the structure of the chain of command. Sun Tzu argues that by

assessing each of these factors, it is possible to provide an assessment of the likelihood of victory before the start of a campaign. In the second and third chapters, Sun Tzu discusses the conduct and planning of campaigns. He places great importance on the need to keep the army well-supplied on campaign, advising that it is best to keep campaigns brief so that the army does not run out of supplies, adding that it is better to fight on foreign territory and live off the land than to rely on long supply lines. In Chapter 3, Sun Tzu goes even

further, famously stating that it is best for a commander to achieve victory over the enemy without fighting at all. Accordingly, a state’s best options are to undermine the enemy’s strategy and its diplomacy, and only resort to employing military force when there is no other choice. While Sun Tzu’s emphasis on avoiding war has become one of his most influential concepts outlined in The Art of War, he did recognise that there are times when the state has no choice but to mobilise its armies and fight. Sun Tzu goes on to offer several rules of thumb for how

to deal with the enemy depending on the size of each army, also stressing the importance of knowing the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses and acting accordingly in line with these. In Chapters 4 to 6, Sun Tzu discusses how a commander can recognise and exploit strategic positions and formations, and how to manoeuvre to gain strategic advantages from the enemy, forcing them to either fight a battle against the odds or to abandon their campaign entirely. Chapter 7 is about confronting the enemy in action and ensuring that enemy troops are in a poor state to fight, while Chapter 8

deals with adapting to changing circumstances and being prepared for contingencies. Chapters 9 to 11 concern the deployment of troops and the use of terrain, Chapter 12 covers the use of incendiary weapons, and Chapter 13 is on the handling of spies. Whether at the strategic, operational, or tactical level, Sun Tzu throughout emphasises how to wrong foot one’s enemy or enemies through deception. While the core text of The Art of War consists of these thirteen chapters, the Yinqueshan excavations of 1972, uncovered fragments of five hitherto unknown chapters which could have comprised a set of ‘outer chapters’ that

expanded on the core text. These chapters were written out on bamboo slips and were found in a Han Dynasty tomb. They may have been written by Sun Tzu himself or later writers to offer greater clarity to the original text. The five chapters in question are structured as dialogues between Sun Tzu and the King of Wu. Sun Tzu’s first interview with the king of Wu sets the scene for one of the most famous anecdotes in Chinese history, mentioned in both the Shiji and the Wuyue Chunqiu. At King Helü’s request, Sun Tzu used the palace women to

demonstrate his methods for training and drilling an army in front of the king. The Shiji states that 180 women were summoned for the demonstration, while the Wuyue Chunqiu gives a figure of 300. After the women were equipped with helmets, armour, swords, and shields, the group was divided into two companies, each commanded by one of the king’s favourite concubines. Sun Tzu began by beating the drum signals for advance, right turn, left turn, and retreat, repeating the demonstration several times to ensure that the instructions were understood. However, when Sun Tzu beat the signal for right turn, the

women collapsed into laughter. Recognising that his instructions may not have been clear enough, Sun Tzu clarified them and once again repeated them several times. When he beat the signal for left turn, the women still responded with hysterical laughter. The infuriated general then explained that while the failure to follow orders on the first occasion may have been down to the general’s commands, now that the orders were clear, it was the soldiers and officers who were at fault. Sun Tzu then gave orders to execute the two company leaders. An alarmed King Helü, who was watching proceedings from

a terrace, climbed down and begged Sun Tzu not to carry out the execution, telling him that if the two women were killed he would be so distraught that his food would become tasteless. Sun Tzu told the king that he had been appointed general, and while leading an army on campaign the general had full military authority and was not bound to follow the king’s orders on military matters. The two women were duly executed and replaced as company commanders by two others. When Sun Tzu beat the drum on this occasion, the women executed their orders to perfection

without turning their heads or making any sounds, marching left and right, advancing and retreating in perfect order. Sun Tzu invited the king to inspect the army, informing him that it was now ready for war and could march through fire and water on his commands. The grieving king replied that he had no interest in inspecting the troops and advised Sun Tzu to retire to his quarters. At this, the general admonished the king for only praising military strategies on paper, but being unwilling to put them into practice. The story was intended to show how Sun Tzu’s precepts

needed to be put into practice fully, not just viewed as theories, even when the implications were brutal. According to the Shiji, this rebuke persuaded King Helü that Sun Tzu was truly an expert in military affairs, though the Wuyue Chunqiu once again claims that another official intervened and told the king that he could not expect to achieve his ambitions of becoming hegemon without employing Sun Tzu to lead the armies. Thus, Sun Tzu was picked to lead the campaign against Chu. The ensuing campaign was enormously successful and the Wu army killed the exiled princes, Gaiyu and Zhuyong,

in battle. It was just the first of many campaigns which Sun Tzu allegedly led on behalf of the king. In 511 BC he led another invasion of Chu and conquered two cities. The following year, Wu invaded Yue on the pretext that the latter did not join Wu in its campaigns against Chu. The Wu armies were victorious and captured Zuili in modern Zhejiang province. In 509 BC, King Zhao of Chu sent an army under his prime minister Zichang to attack Wu, prompting Helü to send Sun Tzu to counterattack and besiege Yuzhang, modern-day Nanchang in Jiangxi province,

with orders to advance on the Chu capital at Ying. While the Wu armies successfully captured Yuzhang, the Wu commanders once again stopped short of attacking the Chu capital. Three years later, in 506 BC, Helü once again suggested a campaign targeting the Chu capital and asked Sun Tzu for advice. He argued that it was too risky for the Kingdom of Wu to launch such a campaign on its own and suggested seeking alliances with the states of Tang and Cai. After the alliance was formed, the coalition army assembled at Yuzhang and defeated Zichang in three battles on

the eastern bank of the Han River. In late 506 BC, the opposing armies met once again at the Battle of Boju. The king’s brother Prince Fugai proposed attacking the enemy straight away, arguing that Zichang was a poor leader and his soldiers would not be willing to fight hard for him. Although the king denied Fugai’s request, the latter disobeyed orders and led a column of 5,000 men to attack Zichang’s division, routing them and forcing their commander to escape to the State of Zheng in central China. The Wu army took advantage of the chaos in the Chu

camp to launch a pursuit, surprising the Chu army while they were eating. The Wu army went on to win another battle at Yongxi near the city of Jingshan in Hubei province, opening the road to Ying. By the time the Wu armies reached the city, King Zhao of Chu had already fled from his capital. In the aftermath of the clash, the Wu commanders, including Sun Tzu, also carried away the wives of the senior Chu generals as a further humiliation. Wu’s victory over Chu in the Boju campaign helped King Helü establish himself as the unofficial hegemon over

the states of the Central Plain. However, the desecration of King Ping’s tomb during the campaign prompted a Chu official named Shen Baoxu to request an alliance from the powerful State of Qin in the west to attack Wu. Despite some initial reservations, the ruler of Qin agreed to the alliance, as Qin foreign policy looked to Chu as a counterweight against Jin, its rival in northern China. In 505 BC, while Qin was preparing to send an army to invade Wu, the king of Yue took advantage of the fact that most of the Wu army was occupying Chu

and launched a surprise attack. Not long after, Qin forces joined up with the Chu army and defeated Fugai in battle, compelling him to return to Wu. The Qin then attacked Helü’s main army while a Chu detachment conquered Wu’s ally, the State of Tang. A couple of months later, with King Helü still fighting the Qin and Chu armies, Fugai usurped the throne and proclaimed himself the king. Helü was compelled to return to Gusu and retake the throne, forcing Fugai to seek refuge with Chu. Although Sun Tzu and his fellow commanders remained in Chu and managed to

defeat the Chu army, they were defeated in turn by the Qin. After discussing the issue among themselves, the Wu commanders decided to abandon the campaign and return home, enabling the king of Chu to return to his capital. The Kingdom of Wu appears to have recovered quickly following the defeat to Qin. Two years later a Wu army commanded by Prince Fuchai, Helü’s son and heir, invaded Chu and once again occupied Ying, forcing King Zhao to flee his capital once again. Fuchai’s victory enabled Helü to maintain his hegemony for the remainder of his reign. In 496 BC,

King Helü invaded Yue but was mortally wounded during the campaign and was succeeded by Fuchai. The following year, Fuchai conquered Yue and made King Goujian of Yue his prisoner. Fuchai’s success sowed the seeds of his undoing, as Goujian pretended to declare his allegiance to Fuchai and won his trust, enabling him to return home to Yue after three years in captivity. In the meantime, Yue paid the Wu general Bo Pi a large bribe, and the latter advised his king to end his campaign against Yue and turn his attention north towards the State of Qi. Neither the

Shiji nor the Wuyue Chunqiu mention Sun Tzu during King Fuchai’s reign, although a brief remark in Sun Tzu’s biography in the Shiji credits him with the strategies that led to the victories over Qi and Jin without indicating that he was present in those campaigns. The author of the famous The Art of War therefore disappears from history without a trace at the end of King Helü’s reign. Despite Sima Qian’s reference to Sun Tzu’s contributions to the strategy that led to Fuchai’s short-lived hegemony, the implication is that Wu would not have fallen to Yue had Sun Tzu

still been around. Since Sun Tzu is commonly mentioned alongside Wu Zixu in both the Wuyue Chunqiu and the Shiji, it is possible that he was either purged alongside his colleague, or he left the Wu court and retreated back into obscurity in protest at Fuchai’s tendency to listen to bad advisors and execute good advisors. In any case, the sources are silent about how and when Sun Tzu died. The biographical details of Sun Tzu from the Shiji and the Wuyue Chunqiu are regrettably brief, but this is the best picture available of Sun Tzu from the earliest Chinese

sources. He was either born in Qi or Wu around the mid-sixth century BC. He was invited to the Wu court in around 512 BC, either on the recommendation of Wu Zixu, or because the ambitious King Helü had been impressed by his military treatise. After demonstrating the effectiveness of his disciplinary methods with the palace women, Sun Tzu entered Helü’s service. During the Spring and Autumn period, there were no specific military ranks, and high officials often served concurrently in civil and military roles, so Sun Tzu’s role in King Helü’s establishment is unclear. Sima Qian states that he

served as jiang, a term that means ‘general’ or ‘commander’ rather than military advisor or strategist, but such appointments were not permanent and typically held for a single campaign or war. His presence on the field of battle is implied in several of Helü’s campaigns against Chu, in particular the Boju campaign and the occupation of Ying in 506 BC. While the methods of training and organisation that Sun Tzu introduced to the Wu army may have contributed to Wu’s continued military success in the early part of Fuchai’s reign, Sun Tzu himself appears to have left the scene by

this point. The details of Sun Tzu’s life are frustratingly unclear in places, but there is no doubt that The Art of War reflected the experiences of a veteran commander of the kind which Sun Tzu appears to have become in service to the Kingdom of Wu during these events between 512 BC and 506 BC. Every stage of leadership and warcraft is laid out in a text which in most modern editions comes in at about 10,000 words. For instance, Sun Tzu recognised that preparation was the key to victory in all instances. He who managed the terrain best,

prepared his forces well and ensured that everything was meticulously prepared for would always stand the best chance of victory. The varied landscape of China that Sun Tzu would have campaigned through in service to the Kingdom of Wu is reflected in his discussion of the different types of terrain. Equally, the torturous politics of the warring Chinese kingdoms and states in the sixth and fifth centuries BC is reflected in his perennial statements about the necessity of gathering lots of intelligence and maintaining a core of spies to do so. The Art of War is a product of its

time, yet Sun Tzu left the text vague and unspecific enough that its precepts could be applied widely, not just to ancient China, but any state or region, and not just to warfare, but to any sphere of activity which requires shrewd leadership and careful planning in order to achieve victory. The patchy details about Sun Tzu’s life have inspired a scholarly debate about whether the Sun Tzu of the Shiji and the Wuyue Chunqiu was a real historical figure or a person invented by later generations as both the author of the Art of War and one of the

contributors to the Kingdom of Wu’s ascendancy in the late Warring States period. One of the main arguments that Sun Tzu was not a historical figure is that he is first mentioned in Sima Qian’s work more than four centuries after he is said to have lived. As Sima Qian is usually considered a reliable historian, it is possible that he used earlier sources about the life of Sun Tzu which are now lost. It is not uncommon for biographical details of Chinese historical figures from this period to be incomplete. Furthermore, the biographies in the Shiji are not intended

to be detailed accounts of individuals from birth to death, Sima Qian instead chose a few episodes from an individual’s life to illustrate their character and moral values, although it is unlikely that Sima Qian would have only chosen only a single anecdote from Sun Tzu’s life if others were available. Interpretations of Sun Tzu’s biographical details are further complicated by the actions of some ancient Chinese rulers. For instance, in 213 BC, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, infamously ordered the destruction of many classic Chinese texts that challenged the Legalist doctrines he was trying to introduce

at the time across China. While copies of The Art of War were retained by the imperial library, these were destroyed when the rebel leader Xiang Yu sacked the Qin capital of Xianyang in 208 BC following the First Emperor’s death. These developments were deeply lamented by Sima Qian and undermined his efforts to write a comprehensive history. Nevertheless, Sun Tzu sceptics point out that the Zuo Zhuan, an influential set of commentaries to the Spring and Autumn Annals dating to the mid-fourth century BC, has a lengthy description of some of the campaigns which King Helu oversaw in the

late sixth century BC, but does not mention Sun Tzu or Sun Wu at all. Another common argument deployed against Sima Qian’s Sun Wu or Sun Tzu is that the text of The Art of War refers to several developments in military organisation and technology that did not take place until the Warring States era. While The Art of War refers to armies of 100,000 men, it is unlikely that armies of this size could be deployed by the states of the Spring and Autumn period. For these reasons, the American general Samuel B. Griffith, who translated Sun Tzu’s The

Art of War in 1963, rejected Sima Qian’s depiction of Sun Wu or Sun Tzu and argued that the text dates from the fourth century BC. The American historian Mark Edward Lewis suggests in the Cambridge History of Ancient China that the biography of Sun Tzu that appears in the Shiji, namely the anecdote about training the palace women, is a parable that underlines the essential principles of military command in Chinese warfare, and that the identity of any single individual historical figure behind the writing The Art of War is, quote, “lost beyond recovery.” This is not to say

that Sima Qian’s Sun Tzu was invented out of thin air, as the bamboo strips at the Yinqueshan tombs indicate that a tradition associating Sun Tzu with the Kingdom of Wu existed prior to Sima Qian, although the five dialogues with the king of Wu refer to the collapse of Jin, a hundred years after Sima Qian’s chronology. It may be possible to consider the Sun Tzu of the Shiji and the Wuyue Chunqiu as a composite figure based on the lives of other documented historical figures. It is worth assessing Sun Tzu’s The Art of War alongside the career

of another ancient Chinese military writer, Sun Bin, whom Sima Qian claims to be a descendant of Sun Tzu, not least because some scholars argue that they were possibly the same person. While Sun Bin’s life is better documented, there are still several gaps in his biography. He was born in the fourth century BC in the middle of the Warring States period and came from an old aristocratic family in the State of Qi, which Sima Qian also claims as Sun Tzu’s native state. His birth name is unknown, and he acquired the nickname Bin to describe a physical

deformity that was inflicted on him later in life. As a young man, Sun Bin studied with the Daoist sage Guiguzi and was recognised as an outstanding student. He was given no such recognition by the authorities in his native Qi state, and he was compelled to seek employment at the rival state of Wei, one of the three states that emerged after the collapse of Jin in 403 BC. Following his arrival in Wei, Sun Bin had an interview with the Wei commander Pang Juan, who had studied alongside him. When Pang Juan quickly realised that the new arrival’s

knowledge of military strategy was far superior to his own and was afraid that he might be replaced as commander of the Wei army, he falsely implicated him in a crime which resulted in Sun Bin having his kneecaps removed, permanently crippling him. After seeking assistance from a Qi diplomat who recognised his military genius, Sun Bin managed to escape captivity and return to Qi. After returning to his homeland, Sun Bin was presented at court and won the admiration of both King Wei and his general Tian Ji. The king offered Sun Bin the supreme command, but the latter

declined due to his disability and was instead appointed military advisor and deputy commander to Tian Ji. In 354 BC, a Wei army led by Pang Juan attached the state of Zhao and laid siege to its capital of Handan. Zhao was Qi’s ally, but rather than march to Handan to relieve the siege, Sun Bin proposed an invasion of Wei to rescue Zhao, which may have been part of a cynical move to exhaust both parties to prevent them from reuniting the former Jin territories. Although the Qi forces were outnumbered, Sun Bin divided his army into three detachments.

He sent the first into the midst of the enemy troops, where they were promptly massacred. Having given Pang Juan the impression that he had no clue what he was doing, Sun Bin sent a detachment of light troops to the important Wei city of Daliang. An overconfident Pang Juan left his heavy infantry behind at Handan and hurried to deal with the threat, stringing out his army in the process. With the third detachment, Sun Bin established a fortified position at Guiling on the road between Handan and Daliang. When Pang Juan blundered into the trap, the Qi army

sallied out and routed the enemy, capturing the Wei commander in the process. Pang Juan was eventually allowed to return to Wei and resume command of the army, and in 341 BC he invaded the small state of Han in central China. In response to Han’s pleas for aid, Qi adopted the same strategy as the Guiling campaign and Sun Bin and Tian Ji marched on Daliang. According to Sima Qian, Sun Bin gave the impression that the Qi army was falling apart by ordering the men to light 100,000 campfires on the first night, 50,000 on the second night,

and 30,000 on the third. Pang Juan repeated his mistake of thirteen years earlier and hurried from Han to confront the Qi force. Sun Bin laid an ambush at the narrow valley of Maling, where he expected Pang Juan to arrive at dusk. After hiding 10,000 crossbowmen on both sides of the road with orders to shoot once they saw a light, Sun Bin carved a message onto a nearby tree and awaited the enemy. As Sun Bin had predicted, Pang Juan arrived as darkness fell and noticed strange markings on the tree trunk. He lit a torch to take

a closer look, and while he read the words “Pang Juan will die under this tree,” 10,000 crossbow bolts flew towards him. Although he somehow survived the initial barrage, Pang Juan saw he was completely surrounded and cut his throat to avoid falling into captivity again. Sun Bin’s and Tian Ji’s victories enabled Qi to become the leading power in eastern China, but the weakening of Zhao, Wei, and Han strengthened Qin in the west, eventually leading to the Qin conquest and unification of China in the late third century BC. Like his reputed ancestor Sun Tzu, Sun Bin was

known in antiquity for writing a military treatise called The Art of War, which ran to 89 chapters. While Sun Bin departs from the historical record after the Battle of Maling, the fragments of Sun Bin’s Art of War uncovered in 1972 refer to battles fought by Qi armies at the end of the fourth century BC, implying he may have lived up to 40 years after his triumph at Maling. Both his text and that of Sun Tzu are clearly part of the same tradition of military thought, placing emphasis on identifying and exploiting the enemy’s weaknesses, using deception

and espionage to undermine the enemy on and off the battlefield, and achieving quick victories on campaign. Compared to Sun Tzu, Sun Bin is much better documented as a historical figure and there has been a debate about whether Sun Bin was even responsible for writing the thirteen chapter Art of War attributed to Sun Tzu. The rediscovery of part of the Sun Bin Art of War at Yinqueshan undermines this theory, and the Canadian Sinologist Roger Ames notes that ancient Chinese authors distinguished between two ‘Master Suns,’ and that the two military treatises by Sun Tzu and Sun Bin

were different texts. Despite this, the ancient military historian Chris Peers speculates that Sun Bin could have written the Sun Zi Bing Fa outlining the general principles of war, attributing it to a mythical ancestor who came from Qi but served Wu, before writing the lengthier treatise that bears his name as a more practical guide based on his own experiences on campaign. Although both treatises are part of the same cultural format and come from the same milieu of ancient China, a comparison between the two Arts of War uncovers important differences that suggest they were written at different

times by different people. One major difference is that while Sun Tzu’s Art of War advises against besieging walled cities, Sun Bin considers siege warfare a more legitimate method of waging war and gives advice on how to conduct siege operations. This would seem to indicate that Sun Tzu was writing during an earlier period in history when chariots dominated the battlefield, while by the time of Sun Bin the development of military technology meant that it was easier for armies to successfully besiege and plunder cities. The American scholar Ralph Sawyer, an expert in Chinese warfare, argues that Sima

Qian’s Sun Wu was a real historical figure who was responsible for writing most of the thirteen chapters of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, but that subsequent additions were made by later generations which became part of the core text. Roger Ames holds a similar view, but argues that Sun Tzu’s teachings might have been passed orally to his followers and descendants including Sun Bin, who then compiled the text and added their own commentaries. Sun Bin’s Art of War may have initially been part of this corpus before being regarded as an independent text given Sun Bin’s own subsequent

reputation as a talented military strategist. While it is unlikely that there will ever be a satisfactory or conclusive answer to the question of the authorship of The Art of War, and just exactly who its author was and how he came to know so much about the nature of military leadership, the influence of the text is undeniable. According to ancient Chinese scholar, Roger Ames, several Chinese classics from the third century BC display an intimate knowledge of Sun Tzu’s writings. By that time the study of warfare had become especially important among Chinese scholars and officials serving the

seven major warring states which were fighting each other for dominance of the Central Plain in the decades prior to the Qin Dynasty’s rise to imperial power. The eminent Legalist scholar of that time, Han Fei, who lived during the mid-third century BC, wrote, “Everyone in the realm discusses military affairs, and every family keeps a copy of the Wu Zi and the Sun Zi.” According to the traditional histories, the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, relied on The Art of War when planning his conquest of the warring states. The Shiji’s descriptions of the Qin conquests regularly

mention battles and campaigns in which Qin armies only managed to achieve victory after prolonged stalemates by sending agents into the enemy capital and undermining the enemy command structure in ways which Sun Tzu had recommended. In spite of his great influence, Sun Tzu’s ideas did not fit neatly into the major Chinese philosophical traditions and had many critics. Although his invocation of the dao or “way” appears to endorse a Daoist view of the world, his view that warfare is an undeniable fact of life distances himself from the more pacifist Daoists. Confucians criticised Sun Tzu’s emphasis on deception

and assassination as the key to military victory, while Legalists such as Han Fei criticised Sun Tzu’s humanitarian instincts and his desire to avoid war. The Han dynasty cavalry general Huo Qubing, who led devastating raids against the Xiongnu tribal confederation in the northern steppes, dismissed Sun Tzu by saying, quote, “the only thing that matters is how one’s own strategies are going to work. There is no need to study the old-fashioned rules of warfare!” Nevertheless, The Art of War retained its key position in the Chinese literary canon, and the statesman Cao Cao, who conquered northern China at

the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period in the third century AD, left behind extensive commentaries on Sun Tzu’s work. By the Song dynasty in the eleventh century AD, the Sun Zi Bing Fa became one of the Seven Military Classics, a compilation of seven texts which became required reading for aspiring army officers in imperial China. More speculatively, Sun Tzu’s ideas could also have been familiar to Genghis Khan even before the Mongol conquest of China in the thirteenth century. The Mongols certainly used swift manoeuvre and deception of the kind advocated for by Sun Tzu to great effect

in their conquests. Despite the reverence shown to The Art of War in China over the following centuries, in the late seventeenth century, the Qing Dynasty emperor Kangxi echoed Huo Qubing by criticising Sun Tzu in the following way: “In war it’s experience of action that matters. The so-called Seven Military Classics are full of nonsense about water and fire, lucky omens and advice on the weather, all at random and contradicting each other. I told my officials once that if you followed these books, you’d never win a battle.” Sun Tzu first came to the attention of the Western

world in 1772, when the Jesuit missionary Jean Joseph Marie Amiot published a translation of The Art of War. Napoleon Bonaparte, who trained as an artillery officer at several French military academies in the 1780s, is likely to have read Amiot’s translation as a young man. Napoleon’s own campaigns reflect several of Sun Tzu’s principles such as taking calculated risks based on an assessment of the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, fighting on enemy territory to shorten supply lines, seeking a quick decisive confrontation with the enemy on the field of battle rather than resort to long sieges. Napoleon’s ability to

take advantage of his army’s marching speed to surround the unfortunate Austrian general Karl Mack at Ulm in October 1805 encapsulates Sun Tzu’s doctrine of exploiting military advantage to defeat the enemy with as little actual engagement as possible. His use of deception a few weeks later at the Battle of Austerlitz, ahead of which he evacuated the high ground, left his right flank deliberately weak, and gave the impression to enemy envoys that his army was in no condition to fight, is reminiscent of Sun Bin’s campaigns against Pang Juan. The Napoleonic era inspired the two most influential military

treatises in the Western canon, Antoine Henri-Jomini’s The Art of War and Carl von Clausewitz’s On War. Both writers describe a new era of warfare characterised by full mobilisation of a state’s resources for war, and Clausewitz appears to reject Sun Tzu’s desire to, quote, “defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed” by stating that “war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.” Nevertheless, Clausewitz’s famous observation that war is a continuation of policy by other means is reminiscent of Sun Tzu’s declaration that war is an important matter of state

and a state can achieve its objectives through both political and military means, though it is still a matter of debate whether Clausewitz had read a translation of Sun Tzu or not. The British soldier and military theorist Basil Liddell-Hart, a veteran of the First World War, developed the concept of the ‘indirect approach,’ arguing that it was more effective to strike indirectly and rapidly at an army’s nerve centre than to rely on the costly frontal against fortified enemy positions of the Great War. After being introduced to an English translation of The Art of War in 1927, Liddell-Hart

was astonished to find that many of Sun Tzu’s ideas coincided with his own. During the following years, Liddell-Hart further developed his indirect approach theory and wrote several influential books on how tanks could be used as a rapid strike force. In his foreword to General Samuel Griffith’s 1963 translation of The Art of War, Liddell-Hart describes a meeting in 1942 with the military attaché of the Chinese Nationalist government, who informed him that his writings were among the principal texts of the Chinese military academy. When Liddell-Hart asked about Sun Tzu, he was informed that the younger officers considered

The Art of War out of date in an era of mechanised warfare. Liddell-Hart advised the Chinese officers to return to Sun Tzu, whose thirteen chapters were what he called, quote, “the best short introduction to the study of warfare, and no less valuable for constant reference in extending study of the subject.” Unlike the young Chinese Nationalist officers, the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was an admirer of Sun Tzu and used The Art of War to develop his theories on guerilla warfare. In more recent history, General Norman Schwarzkopf was one of the leading proponents of Sun Tzu

in the US Army, and put many of his principles into practice during the Gulf War in 1990 to 1991, using his tanks to roll over the Iraqi army from the west while threatening an amphibious invasion from the east, securing a quick and decisive victory at the cost of minimal casualties. Finally, while The Art of War was not well-known to the English-speaking world until after the Second World War, its influence as a guidebook for strategy and leadership now extends far beyond the military sphere. Brazilian football manager Luiz Felipe Scolari quoted Sun Tzu in team talks to

inspire Brazil’s national team to victory in the 2002 World Cup, while New England Patriots general manager Bill Belichick has cited Sun Tzu as a major inspiration in his coaching philosophy. The writer and consultant Mark McNeilly, a former officer in the US National Guard, has written books adapting Sun Tzu’s theories to military and business leadership in the modern age. The Art of War is considered essential reading for aspiring business leaders and may be found in the business and management sections of bookshops as well as military history. American interest in The Art of War is partly inspired

by the rise of China as a competitor to American global hegemony in the early twenty-first century. Any assessment of Sun Tzu must conclude by accepting that we know very little about him as a historical character. Indeed, there is still a debate as to whether or not he ever existed, with some scholars arguing that he was simply an invented figure who The Art of War was attributed to. This latter argument probably goes too far. What we can say, is that Sun Tzu was a military tactician and scholar who lived in the highly unstable political and military

environment of the Spring and Autumn Period in ancient Chinese history or perhaps the Seven Warring Kingdoms Period that followed. What is clear is that the text had emerged as an important piece of ancient Chinese literature by at least the third century BC. Out of Sun Tzu’s observations on the utter instability and chaos of his time came this short little guidebook. On the surface of it, The Art of War reads like a straight-forward text on military strategy, and there is quite a bit on that topic within its pages, but more than this, it is a reflection

on leadership and knowing how to lead and when to choose to fight one’s battles. It is this latter feature that has made it a timeless text, one which is cherished as much by business leaders today as it is by military generals. All in all, it is something of a shame that, barring some great archaeological discovery, we will probably never learn more about the mysterious Sun Tzu who compiled it two and a half millennia ago. What do you think of Sun Tzu and The Art of War? Does the identity of the historical figure behind The Art

of War even matter, or should we focus more on the ideas and principles contained within its thirteen chapters? Is the Art of War out of date in the age of satellites and drones or does Sun Tzu continue to offer valuable insights into the art of leadership in the modern age? Please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.