Dynastic Rule and the Chinese
Zhou dynasty declines | Warring States Period begins | Warring states | Shihuangdi's rule and beginning of the Han dynasty | Emperor Wen, Confucianism and a new order | Emperor Wu, expansion and decline |Failed reform and chaos | Return of Han rule and properity | Yellow Turbin Rebellion | End of Han rule |Three Kingdoms Period | Xiongnu in the north and Jin dynasty in the south | Genetic diffusions and religious rivalries in the 5th Century
The Zhou Dynasty Declines...
the 700s BCE the Zhou Dynasty began to decline in power. According to legend, a Zhou emperor named You Wang appointed the son of his concubine as his heir, rather than the son of his wife. This angered the queen, and she and her father allied themselves with a nearby nomadic tribe called the Chuanrong. You Wang is described as having wasted his energies on pleasures and as having neglected the defense of his realm. In 771 BCE, Chuanrong tribesmen overran the Zhou capital (in the Wei Valley near what in the coming centuries would be the city of Xianyang). They killed the emperor, and then with friendly wishes they sent the queen, her father and the queen's son away to a new capital, Luoyang, and the queen's son become the next Zhou emperor.
Local lords across the Zhou empire responded to the Chuanrong victory over You Wang by making themselves powers in their own right, and the new Zhou emperor and his successors were unable to recover their power over these local lords. The new Zhou emperors lost the revenues that previous Zhou emperors had received from the provinces, and they survived on the taxes they received from those who worked their personal, nearby lands. The Zhou emperors continued to issue edicts and to conduct religious ceremonies that according to custom they alone were allowed to perform. They also maintained at their court numerous officials and many priests, but they now ruled the Zhou empire in name only.
With the decline in power of Zhou emperors came wars between the local lords. Each local lord had his own army. Each jealously adhered to the formalities that symbolized his status, and each created his own court of law. Some local lords pursued vendettas against a neighboring lord, or one raided another lord's land in search of loot. Lords entered into alliances with each other, sometimes through marriage. They made treaties and exchanged goods. But for some lords war was a sport – better than a good hunt. Often wars were fought as a gentleman's activity, with battlefield courtesy such as letting an opponent cross a river and form ranks before attacking. They believed that heaven disapproved of extreme measures and that a ruthless victor might suffer from the displeasure of the gods.
Exercising what they believed was their religious authority, the Zhou emperors maintained a collection of scholarly specialists on morality, festivals and sacrifices. And local lords imitated the Zhou emperors and attracted scholars to their courts to conduct their sacrifices and funerals and to teach their children. A new age of scholarship had appeared, and among the scholars was a man named Kongfuzi, to be Latinized to Confucius.
Warring States Period Begins
Zhou Dynasty rule had broken up into various political entities that can be called states – a state commonly defined as a civil government, a political institution, that maintains a monopoly over the use of force within its territory.
Historians have been interested in the balance of power dynamics between the states that for a while prevented one state from growing in its ability to dominate or conquer all the other states. The balance of power worked as states that felt threatened by the growing power of the strongest and most aggressive state united against that state. Their combined power controlled the expansion of the strongest state, as did the costs that always accompanied attempts at expansion and the possibility of strong states to weaken themselves.
The state called Chu began as the most powerful of the states and the state others had to reckon with. Of 148 or so powers, Chu was the largest in the size of its territory and the richest in natural resources, and it was strengthened by a freedom from Zhou Dynasty feudalism – in other words, there was respect for centralized authority that is commonly diminished by feudalism. Chu expanded territorially and was the first of the states to appoint dependent officials tied to central authority rather than to create hereditary nobles as fiefs
The Period of Warring States had begun. Weapons were of iron and steel. By the end of the 400s the power of the Chu state was in decline. The Chu government had become corrupt and inefficient. Much of the state's treasury paid for a large official retinue (advisors and such), with many officials having no meaningful task other than receiving money. Chu's corrupt and awkward bureaucracy reduced the quality of its military.
There were more aggressions. Historian Victoria Tin-bor Hui writes of 160 wars "involving great powers" between 656 and 357 BCE note10 Some of the powers had been gobbled up by others, and of the 148 or so powers that had existed, the tendency of big powers to absorb smaller powers reduced that number to something like seventeen, at the beginning of the Warring States Period, considered as having begun around the mid-400s BCE.
Among the Chinese states were alliances that contributed to holding in check any one power from becoming so big and powerful as to overwhelm the others. But the tendency of one power to emerge dominant remained as it had elsewhere in the world: in ancient Sumer, in Egypt and eventually with Macedonia dominating the city states of Greece. The balance of power among the Chinese states failed, and the state that would conquer the others was Qin (pronounced chin) – the word from which the state today called China gets its name)
Qin (pronounced chin) was a state in the Wei River Valley, where the Chuanrong had overrun the Zhou king in 771 BCE. It was seen by peoples of the other Chinese states as inferior and semi-barbaric because of the many Tibetan and Turkish people that it had absorbed. Qin retained the martial spirit and vigor of nomadic herdsmen, and Qin was a thoroughfare for trade between Chinese civilization and the tribal lands in Central Asia, a trade that contributed to Qin's wealth.
Before the Warring States Period began (475 BCE) Qin was one of the balancing powers, joining others to hold off domination by any one power. Between 413 and 409, Qin suffered losses in a conflict with neighboring Wei, but it turned itself around through reforms. Qin's ruler had an innovative chief minister, Shang Yang – philosophically aLegalist. He drew from the innovations of others, namely the state of Wei. Shang Yang borrowed Wei's idea of peasant-infantry soldiers and an elite professional standing army rather than an army of aristocrats in chariots. And Shang Yang's army had the horsemen common to tribal herdsmen.
Shang Yang, chief, minister in Qin
Shang Yang moved to intensify the strength of his military and the strength of his Qin through incentives. He created a system of rewards and punishments that were clear to society members. As chief minister he rewarded battlefield heroism. He wrote of war as something people hate, and added that "a fearful people, stimulated by penalties, will become brave, and a brave people, encouraged by rewards, will fight to the death." He claimed that given these incentives, Qin would have no match
Shang Yang applied his incentives to the development of Qin's economy. He convinced the ruler to apply law to all his subjects and to reward people for good service and merit rather than give favor according to kinship. Rather than Confucianism's disdain for commerce, he encouraged trade and work. He encouraged the making of cloth for export. He threatened with slavery any able-bodied man who was not engaged in a useful occupation.
He asked educated and talented persons from other states to move to Qin, and he offered farming people from other states virgin land and promised them exemption from military service. Many came to Qin, increasing Qin's manpower and food production and strengthening its military.
With commoners flooding into the army of Qin, the ruler of Qin was able to align himself more with common people and less with the wants of his warrior-aristocrats and nobles. In one revolutionary sweep the ruler of Qin divided his principality into counties and had these counties administered by appointed officials rather than by nobles. What is today thought of as modern state was in the making.
He asked educated and talented persons from other states to move to Qin, and he offered farming people from other states virgin land and promised them exemption from military service. Many came to Qin, increasing Qin's manpower and food production and strengthening its military.
With commoners flooding into the army of Qin, the ruler of Qin was able to align himself more with common people and less with the wants of his warrior-aristocrats and nobles. In one revolutionary sweep the ruler of Qin divided his principality into counties and had these counties administered by appointed officials rather than by nobles. What is today thought of as modern state was in the making.
Shang Yang introduced a range of administrative techniques: new methods to record available resources. He standardized measures and coinage, kept records of granary storage and initiated an accounting that prevented tax evasion – tax evasion being a threat to the state's growth.
When the ruler of Qin died, Shang Yang was left without protection at court, and jealous persons at court had Shang Yang executed. But his work lived on.
In 314 BCE – twenty-four years after the death of Shang Yang – the kingdom of Qin won a military victory over nomads to its north. In 311, Qin expanded southward onto fertile plane against more nomadic people and defeated a state called Shu, and a Qin general, Zhang Yi, founded a new city, Chengdu.
Other states were also expanding: Yan against so-called barbarians east of the Liao River, and Chu was expanding southward across the Yangzi River. War and conquest reduced the number of states to eleven.
One of the eleven, Wei, had been reduced as a power by its war againstQi (pronounced chi). Qi appeared to be the dominant power, and Qin joined a coalition of four other states against Qi, which the allies of Qin feared more than they did Qin.
Qi was well organized and densely populated relative to most other states. It was high in food production and had grown wealthy also from trade in iron and other metals, and, in 256 BCE, Qi absorbed Lu.
Qin expanded into Zhou family territory, an area around Luoyang containing about 30,000 people and thirty-six villages. A Zhou prince counter-attacked, trying to claim the Zhou throne for himself. Qin's army defeated him, and this brought the great Zhou dynasty, dating from 1045 BCE, to an end, 256 BCE.
In 246 BCE, Yong Zheng, the thirteen-year-old son of the ruler of Qin, succeeded his father. After sixteen years of rule, Zheng embarked upon the conquest of the remaining states that had been a part of Zhou civilization. According to Victoria Tin-bor Hui, the historian Mark Edward Lewis describes Qin, in his words, as having enjoyed "a splendid geographic situation... It was accessible from the East only through the Hangu Pass and from the southeast through the Wu Pass." And, writes Victoria Tin-bor Hui, Ralph D. Sawyer "similarly thinks that Qin occupied a 'virtually unassailable mountainous bastion'." note11
In the wars that led to a unification of what had been Zhou civilization, armies of hundreds of thousands were involved on both sides. Qin was driven by the fear that if it didn't defeat all of the others they would combine and crush it. Qin defeated one state after another: Han in the year 230, Zhao in 228, Wei in 225, the large but more sparsely populated and less tightly knit Chu in 223, Yan in 222 and Qi in 221. Occasionally, to eliminate possible military opposition, Qin's armies slaughtered all enemy males of military age.
The Warring States Period was over. Zheng had become ruler of all that had been Zhou civilization. He went to a sacred mountain, Dai Shan, where, it would be said, he received the Mandate from Heaven to rule the "entire world." He took the name Shihuang-di (di signifying emperor). He was also named Qin Shi Huang.
He then expanded his frontiers southward to Guangzhou and to Guangxi, creating what would thereafter be considered China. And he pushed into Annam, or northern Vietnam – an area the Chinese would hold only temporarily. Shihuangdi had become the first emperor of China.
Emperor Wu altered laws of inheritance. Instead of a family's land remaining under the eldest son, he gave all the sons of a family an equal share of their father's land, which did much to break great estates into smaller units.
Emperor Wu made Confucianism China's official political philosophy. Confucianism became dominant in the civil service. Examinations for China's 130,000 or so civil service positions tested an applicant's knowledge of Confucian ideology, knowledge of ancient writings and rules of social grace rather than technical expertise. Theoretically these examinations were open to all citizens, but in reality they were open only to those with adequate respectability, which excluded artisans, merchants and others of lesser status than the gentry.
Emperor Wu, meanwhile, sent China's first known explorer, Zhang Qian, to Parthia (today, northeastern Iran), to establish relations with the Kushan (Yuzhi). With economic prosperity, Emperor Wu believed he could be more assertive in foreign policy. He believed that he was strong enough to stop payments to the Xiongnu begun by Liu Bang. He was concerned that the Xiongnu might send an army into northern China's sparsely populated steppe lands or that they might ally themselves with the Tibetans, and he wished to make trade routes for commerce with Central Asia secure from assault. So Emperor Wu launched a series of military campaigns.
Emperor Wu's drive against the Xiongnu was costly in manpower but it pushed most of the Xiongnu back from China's northern frontier. Perhaps as many as two million Chinese migrated into the newly conquered territory, and there Emperor Wu created colonies of soldiers and civilians. Those Xiongnu who stayed behind were converted to farming, drafted for construction labor and employed as farm laborers. And some of them were drafted into China's army while their families were considered hostages to assure against treason.
The war against the Xiongnu stimulated exploration farther westward. After a thirteen-year absence and ten years of captivity by the Xiongnu, the explorer Zhang Qian returned to Emperor Wu's court and brought with him the first reliable description of Central Asia. Emperor Wu ordered Zhang Qian and assistants back to Central Asia, and they gathered information about India and Persia and explored the fertile farmlands of Bactria. Their explorations and China's success against the Xiongnu brought an exchange of envoys between China and states to the west, and it opened for the Chinese the 4000-mile trade route that would become known as the Silk Road. China began importing a superior breed of horses, and it began growing alfalfa and grapes. For additional revenue he demanded that neighboring states pay his empire to sell their goods to the Chinese, and he began military campaigns to force them to do so.
In 108 BCE, for the sake of control in the northeast, Emperor Wu conquered an iron-using kingdom in northern Korea. This was a kingdom equal in many ways to the Chinese states before the unification of China in 221 BCE, and it was a kingdom with many Chinese refugees from the previous century.
Emperor Wu sent his armies southward and conquered territory that China had lost during the civil war that had brought the Han dynasty to power. This included regaining the port town of Guangzhou. And Chinese migrants followed Emperor Wu's army.
When the ruler of Qin died, Shang Yang was left without protection at court, and jealous persons at court had Shang Yang executed. But his work lived on.
In 314 BCE – twenty-four years after the death of Shang Yang – the kingdom of Qin won a military victory over nomads to its north. In 311, Qin expanded southward onto fertile plane against more nomadic people and defeated a state called Shu, and a Qin general, Zhang Yi, founded a new city, Chengdu.
Other states were also expanding: Yan against so-called barbarians east of the Liao River, and Chu was expanding southward across the Yangzi River. War and conquest reduced the number of states to eleven.
One of the eleven, Wei, had been reduced as a power by its war againstQi (pronounced chi). Qi appeared to be the dominant power, and Qin joined a coalition of four other states against Qi, which the allies of Qin feared more than they did Qin.
Qi was well organized and densely populated relative to most other states. It was high in food production and had grown wealthy also from trade in iron and other metals, and, in 256 BCE, Qi absorbed Lu.
Qin expanded into Zhou family territory, an area around Luoyang containing about 30,000 people and thirty-six villages. A Zhou prince counter-attacked, trying to claim the Zhou throne for himself. Qin's army defeated him, and this brought the great Zhou dynasty, dating from 1045 BCE, to an end, 256 BCE.
In 246 BCE, Yong Zheng, the thirteen-year-old son of the ruler of Qin, succeeded his father. After sixteen years of rule, Zheng embarked upon the conquest of the remaining states that had been a part of Zhou civilization. According to Victoria Tin-bor Hui, the historian Mark Edward Lewis describes Qin, in his words, as having enjoyed "a splendid geographic situation... It was accessible from the East only through the Hangu Pass and from the southeast through the Wu Pass." And, writes Victoria Tin-bor Hui, Ralph D. Sawyer "similarly thinks that Qin occupied a 'virtually unassailable mountainous bastion'." note11
In the wars that led to a unification of what had been Zhou civilization, armies of hundreds of thousands were involved on both sides. Qin was driven by the fear that if it didn't defeat all of the others they would combine and crush it. Qin defeated one state after another: Han in the year 230, Zhao in 228, Wei in 225, the large but more sparsely populated and less tightly knit Chu in 223, Yan in 222 and Qi in 221. Occasionally, to eliminate possible military opposition, Qin's armies slaughtered all enemy males of military age.
The Warring States Period was over. Zheng had become ruler of all that had been Zhou civilization. He went to a sacred mountain, Dai Shan, where, it would be said, he received the Mandate from Heaven to rule the "entire world." He took the name Shihuang-di (di signifying emperor). He was also named Qin Shi Huang.
He then expanded his frontiers southward to Guangzhou and to Guangxi, creating what would thereafter be considered China. And he pushed into Annam, or northern Vietnam – an area the Chinese would hold only temporarily. Shihuangdi had become the first emperor of China.
Shihuangdi's Rule and the beginning of the Han Dynasty
The conqueror Qin Shi Huang, or Shihuangdi, had built an empire befitting his title and claim as First Emperor. Various areas were slow to end their resistance, and to further secure his rule he tried collecting weapons. He saw danger in what people thought, and in 213 BCE his agents began confiscating all books other than those on subjects thought practical, such as agriculture, forestry, herbal medicine and divination. The confiscated books were burned, except for one copy of each, which were to be kept from the public in the state's private library.
Across China, Shihuangdi took powers away from the local nobles – as had been done in Qin the century before – ending feudalism. He divided China into thirty-six administrative units, each staffed by people appointed by and responsible to his administration. He took from noble families the right to tax and gave his administration that exclusive right and the right to mint coins, and 120,000 noble families moved from what had been their power base in the provinces to the capital, Xianyang.
Shihuangdi was hardworking, setting daily quotas of administrative tasks for himself and not resting until he had completed them. He habitually consulted with his ministers. He standardized Chinese script, weights and measures, and laws. Across China he spread the right of people to buy and sell land – which increased his revenues from taxation. He built magnificent public buildings in his capital and great palaces for himself. He expanded canals for irrigation and transportation, and to interconnect his empire he also had a system of highways built.
Embittered aristocrats and oppressed intellectuals hated him, in part for his heavy taxation. And common people hated him for working them hard on his building projects. Fearing assassination, Shihuangdi had secret passages throughout his great palace and slept in a different palace apartment each night. It was not the serene life sought by the Taoists, but he was a man of religion, and he worried about the sexual morality of his subjects, believing that behavior displeasing the gods would adversely affect the well-being of his kingdom
Shihuangdi was hardworking, setting daily quotas of administrative tasks for himself and not resting until he had completed them. He habitually consulted with his ministers. He standardized Chinese script, weights and measures, and laws. Across China he spread the right of people to buy and sell land – which increased his revenues from taxation. He built magnificent public buildings in his capital and great palaces for himself. He expanded canals for irrigation and transportation, and to interconnect his empire he also had a system of highways built.
Embittered aristocrats and oppressed intellectuals hated him, in part for his heavy taxation. And common people hated him for working them hard on his building projects. Fearing assassination, Shihuangdi had secret passages throughout his great palace and slept in a different palace apartment each night. It was not the serene life sought by the Taoists, but he was a man of religion, and he worried about the sexual morality of his subjects, believing that behavior displeasing the gods would adversely affect the well-being of his kingdom
Shihuangdi liked touring his capital city incognito at night, and he liked to travel through his empire, to cities, mountains, rivers, lakes and to the shores of the sea. It was said that when a strong wind impeded his crossing a river, he sent 3,000 prisoners to deforest a nearby mountain that was believed to be the home of a goddess who had created the wind.
Later in his life, Shihuangdi travelled about looking for the location of the source of eternal life rumored among the Chinese. Before finding it he became sick on one of his journeys and died, in 210 at the age of forty-nine.
Shihuangdi had claimed that his dynasty would endure "for generations without end." His death, however, was followed by an exercise of power other than from within his family. Palace eunuchs attempting to hold onto their influence murdered some of Shihuangdi's top aids. They withheld news of Shihuangdi's death and sent a forged note to Shihuangdi's son and heir, ordering him to commit suicide, which he did. Then they elevated to the throne a younger son of Shihuangdi – a boy whom they hoped to control.
Some in areas that had been conquered by Shihuangdi saw in his death an opportunity to break from Qin rule, and some intellectuals came out against the rule of Shihuangdi's younger son. Peasants decided it was an opportune time to express their displeasure with imperial authority. Some commoners began killing local officials. Among common people arose local leaders who led them in rebellion. And in an attempt to regain their former powers, noble families began organizing their own gangs of armed men.
Early during the chaos, a middle-aged rebel leader and former Qin policeman named Liu Bang gathered an increasingly large army under him. He allied himself with a nobleman, Xiang Yu, who was hoping to re-establish the privileges of his family. Respecting the power of Liu Bang's force, Xiang Yu made Liu Bang prince of the district of Han.
In the year 206, the army under Liu Bang defeated an army under the authority of the eunuchs and the boy-emperor. Liu Bang entered the capital city, Xianyang, and there all members of the royal family were slaughtered, including the boy-emperor. Xianyang was burned to the ground, and historians speculate that the state library that contained the only copy of various forbidden books burned with it. The centuries old writings of Confucius and others would have to be recreated from memory and imagination.
With the Qin emperor defeated, sometime after 207 Liu Bang and his former ally, Xiang Yu, began to war against each other. Xiang Yu has been described as a brilliant general but as having relied too much on violence as a means of winning obedience. He slaughtered defeated troops, and in taking cities he looted and seized attractive women. Liu Bang was colorless but he made an effort to conciliate and convert those he defeated. He surrounded himself with men of intelligence. Liu Bang aimed more at winning hearts and minds than did Xiang Yu.
In an opera titled Farewell My Concubine, Liu Bang's rival, Xiang Yu, complains:
Having established military supremacy, Liu Bang, prince of the district of Han, made himself emperor of all China. The era of Chinese history called the Han had begun.
Later in his life, Shihuangdi travelled about looking for the location of the source of eternal life rumored among the Chinese. Before finding it he became sick on one of his journeys and died, in 210 at the age of forty-nine.
Shihuangdi had claimed that his dynasty would endure "for generations without end." His death, however, was followed by an exercise of power other than from within his family. Palace eunuchs attempting to hold onto their influence murdered some of Shihuangdi's top aids. They withheld news of Shihuangdi's death and sent a forged note to Shihuangdi's son and heir, ordering him to commit suicide, which he did. Then they elevated to the throne a younger son of Shihuangdi – a boy whom they hoped to control.
Some in areas that had been conquered by Shihuangdi saw in his death an opportunity to break from Qin rule, and some intellectuals came out against the rule of Shihuangdi's younger son. Peasants decided it was an opportune time to express their displeasure with imperial authority. Some commoners began killing local officials. Among common people arose local leaders who led them in rebellion. And in an attempt to regain their former powers, noble families began organizing their own gangs of armed men.
Early during the chaos, a middle-aged rebel leader and former Qin policeman named Liu Bang gathered an increasingly large army under him. He allied himself with a nobleman, Xiang Yu, who was hoping to re-establish the privileges of his family. Respecting the power of Liu Bang's force, Xiang Yu made Liu Bang prince of the district of Han.
In the year 206, the army under Liu Bang defeated an army under the authority of the eunuchs and the boy-emperor. Liu Bang entered the capital city, Xianyang, and there all members of the royal family were slaughtered, including the boy-emperor. Xianyang was burned to the ground, and historians speculate that the state library that contained the only copy of various forbidden books burned with it. The centuries old writings of Confucius and others would have to be recreated from memory and imagination.
With the Qin emperor defeated, sometime after 207 Liu Bang and his former ally, Xiang Yu, began to war against each other. Xiang Yu has been described as a brilliant general but as having relied too much on violence as a means of winning obedience. He slaughtered defeated troops, and in taking cities he looted and seized attractive women. Liu Bang was colorless but he made an effort to conciliate and convert those he defeated. He surrounded himself with men of intelligence. Liu Bang aimed more at winning hearts and minds than did Xiang Yu.
In an opera titled Farewell My Concubine, Liu Bang's rival, Xiang Yu, complains:
His concubine, Yu Ji, replies:My strength could pull mountains, my spirit pales the world. Yet, so unlucky am I that my horse just refuses to gallop! What can I do if my horse denies me even a trot? Oh my dear Yu Ji, what would you have me do?”
She commits suicide. Eventually, so too does Xiang Yu.The Han [Liu Bang] has invaded us. Chu’s songs surround us. My lord’s spirit is depleted. Why then should I still live?”
Having established military supremacy, Liu Bang, prince of the district of Han, made himself emperor of all China. The era of Chinese history called the Han had begun.
Emperor Wen, Confucianism and a New Order
Liu Bang fought to consolidate his power across his empire. He had to fight numerous small wars, some against former allies. Another power consideration that Liu Bang faced was the confederation of tribes on China's northern border, led by a Turkish speaking people called the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu were nomadic herders with supplementary agriculture and some slaves. And like other nomads they had a warrior tradition and their warriors had grown up in the saddle. The Xiongnu had been making raids into China. Liu Bang believed that he was not yet strong enough to defeat the northern tribes, so he bribed the Xiongnu with food and clothing in exchange for their agreeing to no longer raid. And he gave the king of the Xiongnu a woman in marriage whom he claimed was a Chinese princess.
Liu Bang sought support also from China's small farmers – the peasants. He lowered their taxes, and in places he protected them from former nobles trying to retrieve lands they had lost. He made amends to peasants by not working them as hard as had the former emperor, Shihuangdi. And the peasants believed that because Liu had been a peasant that he would continue to govern in their interest
Drawing on his peasant origins, Liu Bang demonstrated his disdain for scholars by urinating into the hat of a court scholar, but in trying to govern he came to see benefit in the use of scholars, and he made peace with them. Many scholars were Confucianists, and he began treating the Confucianists with more tolerance than had Shihuangdi while he forbade Confucianist denunciations of his policies.
For Liu Bang, good government was a strong government – one that could maintain adequate submission. For centralized management of his empire he needed an army of civil servants. For reliable control, he installed his brothers, uncles and cousins as regional princes. He sought the continued support of local warlords who had been a part of his coalition in winning power, and those who had served him as generals or as chancellors he made lesser nobles. Those local Qin administrators who had supported him he left in place, and some friendly nobles he restored to their lands.
Liu Bang and his aides discovered that civil war comrades were inadequate administrators. He had little faith in the innate abilities of soldiers as administrators, and, like a lot of peasants, he distrusted merchants. So he turned to men from moderately wealthy landowning families. A new class was in the making – the gentry – which was to send its most able sons into careers in government and let its less able sons run the farm. And with a new interest in opportune marriages, the new class began that accorded its daughters more respect.
Liu Bang died in 195 BCE at the age of sixty, and in death he was given the honorific name Gaodi. The common problem with succession followed. Power remained with Liu Bang's wife, the Dowager Empress Lu. She removed members of Liu Bang's family from positions of power and replaced them with members of her own family. After five years of rule she died, and Liu Bang's relatives moved to take back their family's dominance, and they killed every member of Empress Lu's side of the family. A son of Liu Bang, born to a concubine, became emperor, reviving Han rule, and he became known as Wendi (Emperor Wen).
For a while, China had good fortune with Emperor Wen. He was known for his concern regarding the interests of his subjects. When famines occurred he provided famine relief. He provided pensions for the aged. He freed many slaves, and he abolished China's cruelest methods of executions. During his reign, economics was seriously studied, and Emperor Wen gave economic matters serious consideration. He helped the economy by reducing restrictions on copper mining, by spending money frugally and by keep taxes imposed on the peasantry relatively low. Under Emperor Wen, China enjoyed internal peace and unprecedented prosperity. With this came magnificent art that would dazzle people in modern times. And, with prosperity, China's population began to increase, and people pushed into and began clearing and cultivating new lands.
For Liu Bang, good government was a strong government – one that could maintain adequate submission. For centralized management of his empire he needed an army of civil servants. For reliable control, he installed his brothers, uncles and cousins as regional princes. He sought the continued support of local warlords who had been a part of his coalition in winning power, and those who had served him as generals or as chancellors he made lesser nobles. Those local Qin administrators who had supported him he left in place, and some friendly nobles he restored to their lands.
Liu Bang and his aides discovered that civil war comrades were inadequate administrators. He had little faith in the innate abilities of soldiers as administrators, and, like a lot of peasants, he distrusted merchants. So he turned to men from moderately wealthy landowning families. A new class was in the making – the gentry – which was to send its most able sons into careers in government and let its less able sons run the farm. And with a new interest in opportune marriages, the new class began that accorded its daughters more respect.
Liu Bang died in 195 BCE at the age of sixty, and in death he was given the honorific name Gaodi. The common problem with succession followed. Power remained with Liu Bang's wife, the Dowager Empress Lu. She removed members of Liu Bang's family from positions of power and replaced them with members of her own family. After five years of rule she died, and Liu Bang's relatives moved to take back their family's dominance, and they killed every member of Empress Lu's side of the family. A son of Liu Bang, born to a concubine, became emperor, reviving Han rule, and he became known as Wendi (Emperor Wen).
For a while, China had good fortune with Emperor Wen. He was known for his concern regarding the interests of his subjects. When famines occurred he provided famine relief. He provided pensions for the aged. He freed many slaves, and he abolished China's cruelest methods of executions. During his reign, economics was seriously studied, and Emperor Wen gave economic matters serious consideration. He helped the economy by reducing restrictions on copper mining, by spending money frugally and by keep taxes imposed on the peasantry relatively low. Under Emperor Wen, China enjoyed internal peace and unprecedented prosperity. With this came magnificent art that would dazzle people in modern times. And, with prosperity, China's population began to increase, and people pushed into and began clearing and cultivating new lands.
The gentry benefited from the economic boom, and many of them moved to the city. Gentry wished to be thought of as gentlemen like the nobles. This elitism, and the prosperity, benefited Confucianism. With time to read, the gentry became interested in the old scholarship. With a renaissance in scholarship, attempts were made to recreate the books that had been burned during the rule of Shihuangdi. Attracted to Confucianism's respect for authority and proper behavior, gentry intellectuals became predominately Confucian. Emperor Wen promoted Confucian scholars to his government's highest offices. He became the first emperor openly to adopt Confucian teachings – as Confucius had dreamed that emperors would.
Emperor Wu, Expansion, Class Conflict and Decline
In 156 BCE, a son of Emperor Wen succeeded his father and became Emperor Jing. He ruled sixteen years and attempted to extend his family's domination over noble families. War between these nobles and Emperor Jing ended in compromise, the nobles keeping some of their privileges and powers but no longer permitted to appoint ministers for their fiefs.
In 141 BCE, Emperor Jing was succeeded by his son, Emperor Wu, a bright and spirited sixteen year-old who enjoyed risking his life hunting big game. Emperor Wu prolonged the Han dynasty's good times. He began his rule with a hands-off approach to commerce and economic opportunity which allowed the growth of the economy's private sector.Emperor Wu altered laws of inheritance. Instead of a family's land remaining under the eldest son, he gave all the sons of a family an equal share of their father's land, which did much to break great estates into smaller units.
Emperor Wu made Confucianism China's official political philosophy. Confucianism became dominant in the civil service. Examinations for China's 130,000 or so civil service positions tested an applicant's knowledge of Confucian ideology, knowledge of ancient writings and rules of social grace rather than technical expertise. Theoretically these examinations were open to all citizens, but in reality they were open only to those with adequate respectability, which excluded artisans, merchants and others of lesser status than the gentry.
Emperor Wu, meanwhile, sent China's first known explorer, Zhang Qian, to Parthia (today, northeastern Iran), to establish relations with the Kushan (Yuzhi). With economic prosperity, Emperor Wu believed he could be more assertive in foreign policy. He believed that he was strong enough to stop payments to the Xiongnu begun by Liu Bang. He was concerned that the Xiongnu might send an army into northern China's sparsely populated steppe lands or that they might ally themselves with the Tibetans, and he wished to make trade routes for commerce with Central Asia secure from assault. So Emperor Wu launched a series of military campaigns.
Emperor Wu's drive against the Xiongnu was costly in manpower but it pushed most of the Xiongnu back from China's northern frontier. Perhaps as many as two million Chinese migrated into the newly conquered territory, and there Emperor Wu created colonies of soldiers and civilians. Those Xiongnu who stayed behind were converted to farming, drafted for construction labor and employed as farm laborers. And some of them were drafted into China's army while their families were considered hostages to assure against treason.
The war against the Xiongnu stimulated exploration farther westward. After a thirteen-year absence and ten years of captivity by the Xiongnu, the explorer Zhang Qian returned to Emperor Wu's court and brought with him the first reliable description of Central Asia. Emperor Wu ordered Zhang Qian and assistants back to Central Asia, and they gathered information about India and Persia and explored the fertile farmlands of Bactria. Their explorations and China's success against the Xiongnu brought an exchange of envoys between China and states to the west, and it opened for the Chinese the 4000-mile trade route that would become known as the Silk Road. China began importing a superior breed of horses, and it began growing alfalfa and grapes. For additional revenue he demanded that neighboring states pay his empire to sell their goods to the Chinese, and he began military campaigns to force them to do so.
In 108 BCE, for the sake of control in the northeast, Emperor Wu conquered an iron-using kingdom in northern Korea. This was a kingdom equal in many ways to the Chinese states before the unification of China in 221 BCE, and it was a kingdom with many Chinese refugees from the previous century.
Emperor Wu sent his armies southward and conquered territory that China had lost during the civil war that had brought the Han dynasty to power. This included regaining the port town of Guangzhou. And Chinese migrants followed Emperor Wu's army.
Then, with heavy fighting, Emperor Wu's army conquered northern Vietnam, an area the Chinese called Annam, meaning "pacified south." Here, too, Chinese migrants came, and some would settle near the Annamite Mountains in the center of Vietnam. The Chinese introduced Vietnam to the water buffalo, metal plows and other tools, and they brought to Annam their written language. The Chinese began to change the people of Annam from slash and burn cultivators into a more settled life. They divided Annam into administrative areas, each administration responsible for collecting taxes and supplying soldiers for the central government. But Chinese rule in Annam would remain tenuous, its jungles and mountains giving sanctuary to Vietnamese who would conduct continuous raids and skirmishes against the Chinese.
The cycle of economic prosperity and wars of expansion added to other concerns that weighed on China. Emperor Wu's maintenance of large armies of occupation more than offset the benefits from the increase in trade that followed his conquests. China's imports were contributing more to the pleasures of the wealthy than they were to China's economic vitality. Non-Confucianist government officials made matters worse. They were hostile to private tradesmen, and they led a drive for government control of the economy. Under their influence the government levied a new tax on boats and carts and took over trade in China's two most profitable industries: salt and iron. And with the rise of government involvement, the economy suffered.
The same move to larger land holdings that changed Roman agriculture was changing Chinese agriculture, except that in China the number of people in the countryside had been growing. With the size of lands of the wealthy increasing and the peasant population also increasing, a shortage of land developed. Gentry bureaucrats sought a hedge against insecurity by buying land and often taking advantage of their office to do so, and often they enjoyed tax exemption for their land, while ordinary peasants were paying a larger share in taxes, resulting in their greater need to borrow money, at usurious rates. Farming productivity declined. Many peasants were evicted or were forced to leave farming, making more land available for the gentry. Some were forced to leave farming, and they resorted to banditry, and some struggling peasants sold their children into slavery.
Conscription into the military and conscription for labor added to the peasantry's discontent. China's most renowned Confucian scholar, Dong Zhongshu, was outraged by the plight of the peasants, and he led the way in expressing concern about a class conflict that he identified as social decay. He complained about the vast extent of lands owned by the wealthy while the poor had no spot to plant their two feet. He complained of those who tilled the land of others compelled to give up as much as fifty percent of the harvests they produced. Dong Zhongshu recognized the disadvantage faced by those farmers who could not afford to buy iron tools, who had to till with wood and to weed with their hands. He complained that common peasants had to sell their crops when prices were low and then had to borrow money in the spring in order to start sowing when interest rates were high. And he complained about the thousands put to death every year for banditry.
Conscription into the military and conscription for labor added to the peasantry's discontent. China's most renowned Confucian scholar, Dong Zhongshu, was outraged by the plight of the peasants, and he led the way in expressing concern about a class conflict that he identified as social decay. He complained about the vast extent of lands owned by the wealthy while the poor had no spot to plant their two feet. He complained of those who tilled the land of others compelled to give up as much as fifty percent of the harvests they produced. Dong Zhongshu recognized the disadvantage faced by those farmers who could not afford to buy iron tools, who had to till with wood and to weed with their hands. He complained that common peasants had to sell their crops when prices were low and then had to borrow money in the spring in order to start sowing when interest rates were high. And he complained about the thousands put to death every year for banditry.
Dong Zhongshu proposed to Emperor Wu a remedy for the economic crisis: reduce the taxes on the poor; reduce the unpaid labor that peasants had to perform for the state; abolish the government's monopoly on salt and iron; and improve the distribution of farm lands by limiting the amount of land that any one family could own. Nothing came of Dong Zhongshu's suggestions. Emperor Wu wanted peasants to prosper, but he was often deceived by the gentry bureaucrats who governed at the local level. The drive for reform was being led by a Confucianist, but the Confucianist gentry did not rally against their own economic interests. Emperor Wu's only substantial response to the economic decline was to levy higher taxes on the wealthy and to send spies around to catch attempts at tax evasion. He chose to ignore land redistribution, not wishing to offend wealthy landowners, believing that he needed their cooperation to finance his military campaigns
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