This book addresses one of the key questions in the history of Confucianism in China: at what point during the course of the Han dynasty did this system of thought achieve elevation to the position of state orthodoxy? Although for many centuries it has been customary to claim that this occurred during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty 漢武帝 (r. 141–87 bce), the answer to this question is in fact far from straightforward, given that the major source of evidence— the Shiji 史記 or Records of the Grand Historian— is profoundly flawed. One chapter, the “Basic Annals of Emperor Wu” (Xiaowu benji 孝武本紀) is known to be a later interpolation; the account given here of the position of the Confucian element within his government can be dismissed as fictitious. Meanwhile, the “Collective Biographies of the Confucian Scholars” (Rulin liezhuan 儒林列傳), provides a highly specious argument, designed to suggest that far from being a small and disunited group during the early years of the Han dynasty and past the reign of Emperor Wu, Confucian scholars or Ru in fact formed a strong and well-organized faction at court. As noted by the author, in recent years a number of different scholars in China and Japan have examined all surviving documentation concerning the backgrounds of senior Han dynasty officials and have universally come to the conclusion that prior to 87 bce the Ru represent a heterogeneous minority within the government of the Han dynasty. The Ru neither held significant positions of power nor were they able to assert any form of collective identity. However, the full implications of this have not been explored in previous scholarship.

Liang Cai's revised history of the Ru during the Han dynasty focuses specifically on the horrific events of the witchcraft scandal which engulfed the court during the later years of the reign of Emperor Wu, specifically the period 92–87 bce. The argument made here is that during this period enormous damage was inflicted upon the hereditary elite (who had hitherto held all the most senior government offices and held a stranglehold over appointments), with literally thousands of people being tortured to death because they were suspected of complicity in attempts by senior members of the ruling house to murder the emperor by shamanic techniques. (The degree to which the witchcraft trials were an attempt by the emperor to get rid of the hereditary elite remains controversial: while he may have initially intended to use this issue as a means to assert his authority over his restive children, in particular the Heir Apparent, it would seem that the situation quickly spun out of control as more and more people were accused of treasonous plots). What the author demonstrates, however, is that there was a significant change in the makeup of the government in the wake of these events; after the witchcraft scandal, the hereditary elite no longer dominated the court and for a very simple reason: they no longer survived in the necessary numbers. Effectively, the entire ruling class of the Han empire had perished in Emperor Wu's dungeons and prisons.

In the immediate aftermath of the witchcraft trials, power in the government rested largely in the hands of Huo Guang 霍光 (d. 68 bce), an imperial affine. It is the contention of Liang Cai that it was under the auspices of Huo Guang that the Ru were able to achieve preeminence at court; they presented themselves as well-trained and highly competent administrators and somebody still had to do the work, even though the people who had governed Han China for the previous one hundred and thirty years were dead. The author suggests that the Ru were deeply concerned lest they should be seen as having in some way taken advantage of the horrific witchcraft trials to come to power; it was for this reason that the official histories came to emphasize that they had already begun to dominate the government during the earlier part of the reign of Emperor Wu, thus severing the historical link between their rise and the deaths of so many innocent people. The elevation of Confucianism to the level of state-sponsored orthodoxy can thus be seen as an accidental side-effect, with the Ru achieving lasting political power and importance only through a completely unrelated series of events culminating in the murder of those who would otherwise have confined them to minor roles in the bureaucracy of the empire.

The timeline for these events provided by Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire is highly persuasive and the conclusions drawn from this evidence are unlikely to be seriously challenged. The same is not, however, true of the author's suggestion that the image of Confucius as the “Uncrowned King” (suwang 素王) was largely a late Han dynasty creation. A large number of ancient texts, both within the transmitted tradition and those excavated from dated contexts, testify to the importance of Confucius within late Warring States era and early Han dynasty thought. Indeed, it sometimes seems that he was being used as a kind of harbinger of the unification of China that was finally achieved in 221 bce. Where a political figure— particularly one associated with one of the major states of the era immediately prior to the unification— would have been unacceptable to many people, an individual like Confucius who came from a relatively powerless state (and one which had ceased to exist in 249 bce) could serve as a link between many disparate groups. This can be seen in the vast body of apocryphal stories which emphasize his extensive travels and vast store of knowledge; through Confucius’ wisdom the Chinese world could be bound together, presaging the way in which these same lands would become one country after the First Emperor achieved political unification by force.

Through a detailed analysis of the surviving textual evidence, Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire provides a powerful image of the destruction of one order in the last years of the reign of Emperor Wu and the creation of a new elite under Huo Guang. Though these events have already been the subject of at least one detailed English-language study (Crisis and Conflict in Han China by Michael Loewe), the narrower time-frame and more focused narrative in Liang Cai's study provides an even more powerful picture of the enduring aftermath of Emperor Wu's witchcraft trials.