second ruler of the Hsiung-nu, and his first successors undoubtedly
intended ultimately to conquer China, exactly as many other northern
peoples after them planned to do, and a few of them did. The main
purpose of this was always to bring large numbers of peasants under the
rule of the nomad rulers and so to solve, once for all, the problem of
the provision of additional winter food. Everything that was needed, and
everything that seemed to be worth trying to get as they grew more
civilized, would thus be obtained better and more regularly than by
raids or by tedious commercial negotiations. But if China was to be
conquered and ruled there must exist a state organization of equal
authority to hers; the Hsiung-nu ruler must himself come forward as Son
of Heaven and develop a court ceremonial similar to that of a Chinese
emperor. Thus the basis of the organization of the Hsiung-nu state lay
in its rivalry with the neighbouring China; but the details naturally
corresponded to the special nature of the Hsiung-nu social system. The
young Hsiung-nu feudal state differed from the ancient Chinese feudal
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