Han Dynasty
The
Han Dynasty (;
206 BC"AD
220) followed the
Qin Dynasty and preceded the
Three Kingdoms in
China. The Han Dynasty was founded by the prominent family known as the
Liu clan.
The reign of the Han Dynasty, which lasted for 400 years, is commonly considered within China to be one of the greatest periods in the entire
history of China. As a result, the members of the ethnic majority of Chinese people to this day still call themselves
"People of Han," in honor of the Liu family and the dynasty they created. An alternative term Chinese people often use is the term "
Descendants of the Dragon" as a sign of ethnic identity.
During the Han Dynasty, China officially became a
Confucian state and prospered domestically:
agriculture, handicrafts and
commerce flourished, and the
population reached 50 million. Meanwhile, the empire extended its political and
cultural influence over
Korea,
Mongolia,
Vietnam, and
Central Asia before it finally collapsed under a combination of domestic and external pressures.
The first of the two periods of the dynasty was the
Former Han Dynasty (Qian Han 前漢) or
Western Han Dynasty (Xi Han 西漢)
206 BC"AD
9, seated at
Chang'an. The
Later Han Dynasty (Hou Han 後漢) or
Eastern Han Dynasty (Dong Han 東漢)
25"
220 was seated at
Luoyang. The western-eastern Han convention is currently used to avoid confusion with the Later Han Dynasty of the
Period of the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms although the former-later nomenclature was used in history texts including
Sima Guang's
Zizhi Tongjian.
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Han commanderies and kingdoms AD 2 |
Intellectual, literary, and artistic endeavors revived and flourished during the Han Dynasty. The Han period produced China's most famous
historian,
Sima Qian (
145"
87 BC?), whose
Records of the Grand Historian provides a detailed chronicle from the time of legendary
Xia emperor to that of the
Emperor Wu (
141"
87 BC). Technological advances also marked this period. One of the great Chinese inventions,
paper, dates from the Han Dynasty.
Several
Roman embassies to China are recounted in Chinese history, starting with a
Hou Hanshu (History of the Later Han) account of a
Roman convoy set out by emperor
Antoninus Pius that reached the Chinese capital
Luoyang in
166 and was greeted by
Emperor Huan.
The Han Dynasty was notable also for its military prowess. The empire expanded westward as far as the rim of the
Tarim Basin (in modern
Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region), making possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central Asia. The paths of caravan traffic are often called the "
Silk Road" because the route was used to export Chinese
silk. Chinese armies also invaded and annexed parts of northern Vietnam and northern Korea (
Wiman Joseon) toward the end of the
2nd century BC. Han control of peripheral regions was generally insecure, however. To ensure peace with non-Chinese local powers, the Han court developed a mutually beneficial "tributary system." Non-Chinese states were allowed to remain autonomous in exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han overlordship. Tributary ties were confirmed and strengthened through intermarriages at the ruling level and periodic exchanges of gifts and goods.
Within the first three months after
Qin Dynasty Emperor Qin Shi Huang's death at
Shaqiu, widespread revolts by peasants, prisoners, soldiers and descendants of the nobles of the
six Warring States sprang up all over China.
Chen Sheng and
Wu Guang, two in a group of about 900 soldiers assigned to defend against the
Xiongnu, were the leaders of the first rebellion. Continuous
insurgence finally toppled the Qin dynasty in
206 BC. The leader of the insurgents was
Xiang Yu, an outstanding military commander without political expertise, who divided the country into 19 feudal states to his own satisfaction.
The ensuing war among those states signified the 5 years of
Chu Han Contention with
Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han Dynasty, as the eventual winner. Initially, "Han" (the principality as created by Xiang Yu's division) consisted merely of modern
Sichuan,
Chongqing, and southern
Shaanxi and was a minor humble principality, but eventually grew into an empire; the Han Dynasty was named after the principality, which was itself named after Hanzhong (漢中) " modern southern Shaanxi, the region centering the modern city of
Hanzhong. The beginning of the Han Dynasty can be dated either from
206 BC when the Qin dynasty crumbled and the Principality of Han was established or
202 BC when Xiang Yu committed suicide.
The new empire retained much of the Qin administrative structure but retreated a bit from centralized rule by establishing vassal principalities in some areas for the sake of political convenience. After the establishment of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Gao (Liu Bang) divided the country into several "
feudal states" to satisfy some of his wartime allies, though he planned to get rid of them once he had consolidated his power.
After his death, his successors from
Emperor Hui to
Emperor Jing tried to rule China combining
Legalist methods with the
Taoist philosophic ideals. During this "pseudo-Taoism era", a stable centralized government over China was established through revival of the agriculture sectors and fragmentations of "feudal states" after the suppression of the
Rebellion of the seven states.
During the
"Taoism era", China was able to maintain peace with
Xiongnu by paying tribute and marrying princesses to them. During this time, the dynasty's goal was to relieve the society of harsh laws,
wars, and conditions from both the
Qin Dynasty, external threats from nomads, and early internal conflicts within the Han court. The government reduced taxation and assumed a subservient status to neighboring nomadic tribes. This policy of the government's reduced role over civilian lives (與民休息) started a period of stability, which was called the
Rule of Wen and Jing (文景之治), named after the two Emperors of this particular era. However, under
Emperor Wu's leadership, the most prosperous period (
140"
87 BC) of the Han Dynasty, the Empire was able to fight back. At its height, China incorporated the present day
Qinghai,
Gansu, and northern
Vietnam into its territories.
Emperor Wu decided that
Taoism was no longer suitable for China, and officially declared China to be a
Confucian state; however, like the
Emperors of China before him, he combined
Legalist methods with the
Confucian ideal. This official adoption of Confucianism led to not only a
civil service nomination system, but also the compulsory knowledge of
Confucian classics of candidates for the imperial bureaucracy, a requirement that lasted up to the establishment of the
Republic of China in
1911. Confucian scholars gained prominent status as the core of the civil service.
From
138 BC, Emperor Wu also dispatched
Zhang Qian twice as his envoy to the
Western Regions, and in the process pioneered the route known as the
Silk Road from Chang'an (today's
Xi'an,
Shaanxi Province), through
Xinjiang and
Central Asia, and on to the east coast of the
Mediterranean Sea.
Following Zhang Qian' embassy and
report, commercial relations between China and Central as well as Western Asia flourished, as many Chinese missions were sent throughout the
1st century BC, initiating the development of the
Silk Road: :"The largest of these embassies to foreign states numbered several hundred persons, while even the smaller parties included over 100 members... In the course of one year anywhere from five to six to over ten parties would be sent out." (
Shiji, trans. Burton Watson).
China also sent missions to
Parthia, which were followed up by reciprocal missions from Parthian envoys around
100 BC: :"When the Han envoy first visited the kingdom of Anxi (Parthia), the king of Anxi dispatched a party of 20,000 horsemen to meet them on the eastern border of the kingdom... When the Han envoys set out again to return to China, the king of Anxi dispatched envoys of his own to accompany them... The emperor was delighted at this." (
Shiji, 123, trans. Burton Watson).
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Han foreign relations AD 2 |
The Roman historian
Florus describes the visit of numerous envoys, included
Seres (Chinese), to the first Roman Emperor
Augustus, who reigned between
27 BC and AD
14::"Even the rest of the nations of the world which were not subject to the imperial sway were sensible of its grandeur, and looked with reverence to the Roman people, the great conqueror of nations. Thus even
Scythians and
Sarmatians sent envoys to seek the friendship of Rome. Nay, the
Seres came likewise, and the
Indians who dwelt beneath the vertical sun, bringing presents of precious stones and pearls and elephants, but thinking all of less moment than the vastness of the journey which they had undertaken, and which they said had occupied four years. In truth it needed but to look at their complexion to see that they were people of another world than ours." ("Cathey and the way thither",
Henry Yule).
In AD
97 the Chinese general
Ban Chao went as far west as the
Caspian Sea with 70,000 men and established direct military contacts with the Parthian Empire, also dispatching an envoy to
Rome in the person of
Gan Ying.
Several
Roman embassies to China soon followed from
166, and are officially recorded in Chinese historical chronicles. Good exchanges such as Chinese silk, African ivory, and Roman incense increased the contacts between the East and West.
Contacts with the
Kushan Empire led to the introduction of
Buddhism to China from India in the first century.
To draw a lot of funds for his triumphant campaigns against the
Xiongnu, Emperor Wu relinquished land control to merchants and the riches, and in effect legalized the privatization of lands. Land taxes were based on the sizes of fields instead of on income. The harvest could not always pay the taxes completely as incomes from selling harvest were often market-driven and a stable amount could not be guaranteed, especially not after harvest-reducing natural disasters. Merchants and prominent families then lured peasants to sell their lands since land accumulation guaranteed living standards of theirs and their descendants' in the agricultural society of China. Lands were hence accumulating into a new class of landholding families. The Han government in turn imposed more taxes on the remaining independent servants in order to make up the tax losses, therefore encouraging more peasants to come under the landholding elite or the landlords.
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A bronze coin of the Han Dynasty"circa 1st century BC. |
Ideally the peasants pay the landlords certain periodic (usually annual) amount of income, who in turn provide protection against crimes and other hazards. In fact an increasing number of peasant population in the prosperous Han society and limited amount of lands provided the elite to elevate their standards for any new subordinate peasants. The inadequate education and often complete illiteracy of peasants forced them into a living of providing physical services, which were mostly farming in an agricultural society. The peasants, without other professions for their better living, compromised to the lowered standard and sold their harvest to pay their landlords. In fact they often had to delay the payment or borrow money from their landlords in the aftermath of natural disasters that reduced harvests. To make the situation worse, some Han rulers double-taxed the peasants. Eventually the living conditions of the peasants worsened as they solely depended on the harvest of the land they once owned.
The landholding elite and landlords, for their part, provided inaccurate information of subordinate peasants and lands to avoid paying taxes; to this very end corruption and incompetence of the Confucian scholar gentry on economics would play a vital part. Han court officials who attempted to strip lands out of the landlords faced such enormous resistance that their policies would never be put in to place. In fact only a member of the landholding families, for instance Wang Mang, was able to put his reforming ideals into effect despite failures of his "turning the clock back" policies.
After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly during AD
9"
24 by
Wang Mang, a reformer and a member of the landholding families. The economic situation deteriorated at the end of Western Han Dynasty. Wang Mang, believing the Liu family had lost the
Mandate of Heaven, took power and turned the clock back with vigorous monetary and land reforms, which damaged the economy even further.
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A view of the tombs of the Han Dynasty |
A distant relative of Liu royalty,
Liu Xiu, prevailed after a number of agrarian rebellions overthrew Wang Mang's Xing Dynasty, and he reestablished the Han Dynasty (commonly referred to as the Eastern Han Dynasty, as his capital was at
Luoyang, east of the old Han Dynasty capital at
Chang'an). He and his son
Emperor Ming of Han and grandson
Emperor Zhang of Han were generally considered able emperors whose reigns were the prime of the Eastern Han Dynasty. After Emperor Zhang, however, the dynasty fell into states of corruption and political infighting among three groups of powerful individuals --
eunuchs, empresses' clans, and Confucian scholar-officials. None of these three parties was able to improve the harsh livelihood of peasants under the landholding families. Land privatizations and accumulations on the hands of the elite affected the societies of the
Three Kingdoms and the
Southern and Northern Dynasties that the landholding elite held the actual driving and ruling power of the country. Successful ruling entities worked with these families, and consequently their policies favored the elite. Adverse effects of the
Nine grade controller system or the
Nine rank system were brilliant examples.
Taiping
Taoist ideals of equal rights and equal land distribution quickly spread throughout the peasantry. As a result, the peasant insurgents of the
Yellow Turban Rebellion swarmed the
North China Plain, the main agricultural sector of the country. Power of the Liu royalty then fell into the hands of local governors and
warlords, despite suppression of the main upraising of
Zhang Jiao and his brothers. Three overlords eventually succeeded in control of the whole of
China proper, ushering in the period of the
Three Kingdoms. The figurehead
Emperor Xian reigned until 220 when
Cao Pi forced his
abdication.
In 311, around one hundred years after the fall of the Eastern Han, its capital
Luoyang was sacked by the Huns.
*
Battle of Jushi*
Chinese sovereign*
Emperor of China*
History of China*
Han Dynasty by Minnesota State University
