Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)

Han 漢
202 BCE–220 CE
The Han Dynasty in 2 CE with the Western protectorate in light green
Dominant mode of production	Feudalism
Government	Monarchy
Area
• Total	6,500,000 km²
Population
• 2 CE estimate	57,671,400

The Han dynasty was the second dynasty of imperial China founded in 206 BCE as the successor of the Qin dynasty. Liu Bang, a peasant rebel who overthrew the Qin dynasty, became its first emperor.

History

Collapse of the Qin dynasty

The doctrine of legalism proved to be a very effective system at gaining power, but not at retaining it. There was no method of self-regulation in this system, i.e. no restraint on how to wield power. Qin Shi Huangdi pursued this power purely in his own self-interest and died in 210 BCE. His son succeeded him on the throne, but proved unable to maintain the state his father had assembled, and he was killed only three years later.

In the five following years, several contenders emerged, trying to establish their dynasty over China. Fairly quickly, two principal contenders appeared: Xiang Yu (Xiàng Yǔ, 项籍), and Liu Bang (Liú Bāng, 劉邦). Xiang Yu was a general in the state of Chu prior to the unification under the Qin state, and was the most likely contender for the throne as he proved very popular in the empire.

On the other hand, hist opponent Liu Bang was a relatively minor figure; he was a jailer, escorting groups of prisoners from local jails to county jails. Around the time the Qin state was collapsing, Liu Bang embarked on one of this mission, which involved an overnight journey. He made camp with his prisoners in the night and, in the morning, found that several had escaped. He knew that this would have dire consequences for him as, under the Qin system, he had failed his duties and would be likely executed. To avoid this fate, Liu Bang resorted to the only other alternative available to him: he assembled his remaining prisoners and told them he would set them free if they followed him. They became the core of his rebel army who fought against the Qin and, after the collapse of the dynasty, he continued to raise an army which eventually grew to become a serious military challenger for power.

Xiang Yu and Liu Bang eventually came into direct conflict with one another. In the year 204 BCE, a battle took place in which Xiang Yu defeated the rival army, inflicting very strong casualties on Liu Bang's side and concluding that his army (and Liu Bang's struggle for the throne) was destroyed. However, Liu Bang had executed a strategic withdrawal which led his army into a port town on the Yellow river (named Ao). There, he seized the granary, recruited new followers and rebuilt his forces to resume the conflict with Xiang Yu.

Two years later, Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu in a very dramatic siege. The story, in traditional Chinese historiography, was that Xiang Yu found his encampment surrounded by the soldiers of Liu Bang—themselves former soldiers of the Chu—singing folk songs of their homeland. When Xiang Yu heard the songs, he knew that his cause was lost. He had a final evening with his favorite concubine, killed her, and then leapt on his horse straight into the enemy's lines where he was finally cut down.

With his main opponent taken out of the power struggle, Liu Bang was free to proclaim a new dynasty over China, which he called the Han, after the district from which he originated. The Han dynasty became one of the great ages in Chinese history, lasting for 400 years, reaching a geographical size, population and wealth never seen before. The Han dynasty was a contemporary of the Roman Empire in the west and the two indirectly traded through the Silk road.

Western Han

Liu Bang established the capital at Chang'an, the same city that was the first capital of the Zhou dynasty as well as the capital of the Qin empire. From there, he established a system of imperial governance which was at first a continuation of the Qin system but evolved over the next century of Han rule into a much more stable and viable order.

Liu Bang inherited however two systems of governance at the time of his ascension to the throne. The administration in the western half of China was run directly from the capital: the emperor appointed officials to serve in local government for relatively short fixed terms before being sent somewhere else. This allowed the imperial court and the emperor to exercise direct control and essentially administrate these regions himself. In the eastern half of the empire though, power was given to military leaders in Liu Bang's army who had secured these territories and pledged their loyalty to the new dynasty. This system had also been practiced by the Zhou and eventually led to their end, and indeed became a problem as well for the Han dynasty.

Nonetheless, Liu Bang was able to stabilize his rule and peacefully handed the succession to his son after his death in 195 BCE. A challenge emerged soon, however, when the family of the empress sought to develop influence at court. In 180, when the new emperor came to the throne, their plan was thwarted and the Liu family was able to keep control of the throne.

By that time, the military leaders who had been given land in the eastern part of the empire were becoming restless, and a number of efforts were made by Han emperors to maintain and extend their control over the east. This came to a head in 154 BCE when a rebellion took place: several military rulers in the east rose up and challenged the power of the Liu family. Not all of them backed the rebellion though, and the Liu family was able to manipulate these rulers in the east against one another so that they fought against each other instead of focusing on the empire. As those regions weakened themselves, the empire was able to bring them back into their direct administration (the system in the west) and use them as a base for operations against the remaining rebels. Within a few years, virtually all of east China came back under the direct administration of the Han.

This was a critical development: first, it indicated that the Han (and more globally the Chinese) had learned their lesson from the Zhou and how to counteract such situations. Secondly, it cemented the rulership of the Han dynasty: by 150 BCE, China was a single administrative entity, no longer divided by tributary rulers.

Emperor Wu

The immediate aftermath of this period saw one of China's most famous emperors on the throne, Wudi (Hàn Wǔdì, 汉武帝—Wu being his honorific title and Di coming from Huangdi, the title the Emperor of Qin established). His reign lasted for 54 years, making it the longest continuous reign in China at the time. Due to China being virtually free of internal strife and rebellion at the time of his ascension to the throne, Wudi was able to engage in many reforms that consolidated an imperial, administrative and ideological order which remained the basis of the imperial court for the next 2000 years.

This process started by emperor Wudi is often called the Han synthesis by historians, and is described as a blending together of three components: Confucianism, legalism (as an administrative practice) and metaphysics.

The Han legal system was inspired by the Qin system of rewards and punishments, but was made more "humane" by the inclusion of a Confucian element, which sought out to establish proper relationships between people. These two philosophies were however more concerned by the material world, and emperor Wudi was concerned with the metaphysical world as well, which he saw as an integral part (along with the material world) of a larger cosmic order.

This was theorized by the likes of Dong Zhongshu (Dŏng Zhòngshū, 董仲舒) who brought together a number of ideas that had been in China for a long time already into a system that is sometimes called correlative cosmology; correlative cosmology seeks to explain correlation and connections between phenomena that can observed in the natural world and actions taking place in human society. Dr. Hammond likens it to a "doctrine of interpretation of omens": an earthquake or an eclipse, for example, may be interpreted as a sign that the natural order of things is disturbed in some way. Human misbehavior—including the emperor's—would create such omens which were interpreted by the royal court to bring the emperor back on the right path.

Wudi had a vision of the state that was in agreement with Confucianism as a tool for doing good, but this vision was also a rationale for his many expansions: his reign is also marked with a period of great military expansions, going as far as to invade Korea in the north, Vietnam in the south and projecting power to central Asia, creating the largest Chinese empire at the time. Emperor Wudi famously apologized to the whole of China for the many wars he started near the end of his reign, which he considered a mistake.

His governing style was also new; he wanted the state to proactively solve problems for people and be engaged in the economic life of the country. He was against the manipulation of the market for mercantile profiteering and created government monopolies on critical goods such as salt, iron, alcohol, etc. to regulate and dispatch these commodities around the country.

Wudi also began the practice of meritocracy in the state administration. Under this system, the royal court held examinations (based on written tests) that anyone could take to demonstrate their scholarship and learning. Passing the test would let one be appointed to positions in government. This system was initially held at a very small scale, and was not the main tool for recruiting government officials in China: during Wudi's reign, most officials came into service of the government through reputation or recommandation.

Later emperors

After Wudi's death, his policies came under debate: in 81 BCE, six years after his death, a great debate took place at the royal court, surviving in written records known as the Debate on salt and iron. Two factions formed, arguing over whether it was a good thing or not (in Confucian terms) for the state to intervene in the economy. One faction argued that the role of the state was to regulate private greed so the interests of the common people could be protected, and the other faction argued that the government shouldn't be intervening in society but merely create a set of moral expectations: the government itself should be good and act in a proper way, which would set the example for people in society to follow. They also argued that it was improper for the government to enrich itself by participating in private economic activity. These debates were significant in their time and were also studied by the later Chinese to set out the parameters of how interventionist or active the government should be.

The result of these debates was that the government decided to abandon most of Wudi's monopolies, and allowed the economy to go its own way with a minimal amount of government intervention.

This moment—up until to around the turn of the millennium (and going into the Common Era)—was characterized by a very stable period in China's history, at least for the people. During this time, emperors became less and less engaged in the affairs of administration, instead preferring leisure and leaving the management of the state to their officials. This allowed officials to become corrupt and line their own pockets. The revenue of the state was neglected, and the day-to-day administrative tasks and military affairs were ignored. Additionally, in-law families (relatives by marriage) tried to manipulate the royal court in their favor.

Xin dynasty interregnum

In the year 7 CE, Emperor Zhangdi (漢章帝) died without an heir. A brief period followed where power was usurped by Wang Mang (王莽) who headed the Xin dynasty (Xīn Cháo, 新朝, literally "new dynasty") for about 20 years. This period is known as the Wang Mang Interregnum. Wang died without a successor in the year 23 of the current era, and another branch of the Liu family re-established their rule. This event started the period known as the later Han (or sometimes the eastern Han) which lasted for another 200 years. In 17 CE, following flooding in the Yellow River valley, Mother Lü led a rebellion that established two independent kingdoms.

Eastern Han

Internal conflicts start reappearing at the royal court, with in-laws trying to seize power at court, military leaders resenting this new class of landlords who, they felt, had stolen their titles. Eunuchs became a problem as well; Eunuchs were somewhat unique to Chinese society: they were castrated males who served in the private residential parts of the imperial palace, in which only the emperor himself was allowed. Their condition made them non-threatening to the line of succession, and while eunuchs were not unique to China per se, their specific role in imperial China was. Eunuchs also worked with the emperor's concubines. Most of the time, eunuchs kept to their menial role but in times when the succession led to a young emperor on the throne, eunuchs could be influential over the young emperor who likely had one as his tutor or companion.

The Daoist Yellow Turbans led another rebellion in 184 with 360,000 armed supporters.

Eunuchs gaining influence notably became a problem in the later Han when a series of young emperors came to the throne, which turned them into a major faction within the imperial court.

Making matters worse, the weakening of imperial oversight allowed local strongmen—not yet military figures, but mostly private land owners—to intensify their exploitation over the peasantry, raising taxes and rents and creating discontent. Unsurprisingly, this situation led to the outbreak of rebellions against landlords and the dynasty over large parts of China. The empire responded by leading military interventions to quell these rebellions which, in a domino effect, increased the power of the military.

By the latter part of the second century, the Han dynasty had ceased to be a functional political entity. Much like the later Zhou, it still existed and emperors succeeded one another on the throne, but real power dissolved and strongmen in the country expanded their territory as factionalism at court weakened the functioning of the state even further.

Eventually, in the year 220, the last Han emperor was set aside and the country broke up into three successor states, one of which was ruled by a member of the Liu family (the ruling family of the Han dynasty), named Liu Bei (Liú Bèi, 刘备).

Government

The first Han emperor banned merchants and their descendants from serving in government. The government taxed trade more than agriculture, and Emperor Wu, who ruled for 54 years, seized merchants' property.

The Han dynasty as a whole was a period during which the land ownership underwent significant changes.

Up until that point, land had been the property of lords (most of them military rulers), and the farmers that lived on the land were the possessions of the rulers as well. Most of these rulers were put in place in earlier dynasties by rewarding generals with the land they conquered, but some land grants were made to members of the political administration as rewards for services rendered.

As the Han dynasty dealt with the problem of local military rulers and unified the whole empire under their sole command, their administration naturally moved to a more civilian staff and was expanded to help manage the affairs of a centralized realm. The Han then began attributing land differently, forced by the material reality of this new order in which they were the sole owner of all the land and did not rely on the loyalty of tributary lords. The practice of rewarding administrators with land became an institution under the Han.

This policy also changed the make up of the agricultural economy which started resembling a market system, where individual estates owned by individual families produced grain and other commodities which were then sold over the whole of China.

In theory, land remained the property of the emperor. In practice however, land that was granted out to families (and passed on from generation to generation) developed into de facto private property. The state started to recognize this fact and issued charters and other grants of land started functioning more like property deeds. Conflicts between landlords (such as access to water) were mediated through a legal court that recognized their property and title as land owners.

The advent of private property was a very significant event in the history of China, and would survive for millennia after that. Generational wealth began being amassed in a process which could be likened to primitive accumulation.

Economy

Classes

The Han dynasty's measures against the merchants did not significantly improve life for the peasants. They had to give a third to a half of their harvest to lords and often starved if harvests were bad.

Means of production

The Han dynasty developed steel and wheelbarrows by the second century CE, over 1,000 years before Europe.

Culture

Given that the base changed, so did the superstructure of China. Chinese culture had, prior to the later Han, been focused primarily on tales of heroism and the glories of warfare, which were characteristic of the warring states period. The Han instead pursued cultural sophistication: learning and the pursuit of knowledge, being able to both read and write poetry, writing essays, became more culturally significant and valued in the later Han. This shift was spearheaded by the ruling class and mostly concerned them.