Han Dynasty

Summary

During the Han Dynasty, China officially became a Confucian state and prospered domestically: extending its political and cultural influence over Vietnam, Central Asia, Mongolia, and Korea before it finally collapsed under a mixture of domestic and external pressures. The first of the two periods of the dynasty, namely the Former Han Dynasty (Qian Han 前漢) or the Western Han Dynasty (Xi Han 西漢) 206 BC - AD 9 was based in Changan. The Later Han Dynasty (Hou Han 後漢) or the Eastern Han Dynasty (Dong Han 東漢) AD 25 - AD 220 was based in Luoyang. The western-eastern Han convention is used nowadays to avoid confusion with the Later Han Dynasty[?] of the Period of the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms though the earlier nomenclature was used in traditional historical texts like Si-ma Guang's Zi Zhi Tung Jian[?]. The dynasty was founded by the Liu family.

The Emergence

Within the first 3 months after Qin Dynasty emperor Qin Shi Huangdi'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 30 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 all the insurgents at the time was Xiang Yu[?], an outstanding army commander without political expertise, who divided the country into 26 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. The beginning of the Han Dynasty can be dated either from 206 BC when the Qin dynasty crumbled or 202 BC when Liu Bang killed Xiang Yu, the leader of a competing rebellion that sought to re-instate the Zhou dynasty aristocracies.

Taoism and Feudal System

After the establishment of the Han Dynasty in 202 BC, Emperor Liu Bang divided the country into several "feudal states" to satisfy some of his wartime allies - only that he wanted to get rid of them once he had a firm grasp of his power. After his death, his successors from Emperor Hui[?] to Emperor Jing[?] tried to rule China combining the Legalist's methods with the Taoist's philosophic ideal. 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 compression of the Rebel of the seven states[?].

Emperor Wu and Confucianism

During the "taoism era", China was able to maintain peace with Xiongnu by paying tribute and marrying princesses to them. When Emperor Wu[?] sat the throne, the government had accumulated enough resources to fight back. When the power of Han reached its first height, it incorporated the present-day Qinghai, Gansu and Vietnam into China and opened up the Silk Road. It would be fair to say that Rome and China were the only superpowers in those days, and hence modern Han Chinese are calling themselves the "Han" peoples.

Emperor Wu decided that Taoism is no longer suitable for China, and officially declared China to be a Confucian state; however, alike the emperors before him, he combined Legalist methods with the Confucian ideal. This official adoption of Confucianism led to the compulsory knowledge of the Confucian classics of candidates for the imperial beauracracy, a requirement that only ended in AD 1912.

To draw funds for his triumphant campaigns against the Xiongnu, Emperor Wu relinquished land control to merchants and the riches, or in order words, legalized the privatization of lands. Land taxes were then drawn based on the sizes of fields, no longer on harvest. Though the Han government guaranteed itself a steady influx of taxes, lands were accumulating into the hands of a few merchant families. More peasants were lured to sell their lands, became empolyed farmers, servants and finally slaves of the rich as they solely depended on the harvest of the land they once owned. Eventually this policy would turn against the government as the landholding families provided inaccurate informations of subordinate peasants and lands to avoid paying taxes, which had then become one reason for the collapse of the "Western Han Dynasty".

Establishment of Eastern Han Dynasty

The economic situation deteriorated at the end of Western Han Dynasty. Wang Mang, a Confucian member of the landholding families, believed the Liu family had lost the Mandate of Heaven and it was now his turn to take over the country. His turned the clock back in vigorous monetery and land reforms, and hurted the economy even further. A distance relative of Liu royalty, Liu Xiu, led the revolt against Wang Mang with the support of the landholding families and merhcnats. He "re-established" the Han Dynasty at Luoyang, which is to be called "Eastern Han Dynasty" by historians to separate from the first Han Dynasty.

Rise and Fall of Eastern Han Dynasty

Liu Xiu, the future Emperor Guangwu, was then able to "restore" China to its height again.

During Eastern Han Dynasty, paper was invented and helped to lower the cost of education. Cai Lun, a Chinese eunuch who lived around AD 105, is conventionally regarded as the inventor.

Nevertheless the Eastern Han emperors did not even attempt to put forward any groundbreaking land reforms after the failure of its predecent dynasty. Adverse consequences of land privatizations lingered throught the dynasty and creeped into the bureaucrat corruption. Prestige of a newly founded dynasty during the reigns of first three emperors were able to hindered the corruption; however Confucian scholar gentry turned on eunuches for their corrupted authorities when consort clans and eunuches struggled for power in subsequent reigns. None of these three parties able to improve the harsh livelihood of peasants under the landnholding families.

Taiping Taoist ideals of equal rights and equal land distributions quickly spread within the peasants. 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 fell into the hands of local governors and warlords, despite supression of the main upraising by Zhang Jue[?] and his brothers. Finally, three overlords were able to control the whole China, ushering in the period of the Three Kingdoms. The figurehead role of Emperor Xian remained until AD 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 barbarians.

For a complete list of Chinese sovereigns, check Chinese sovereign.