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The Han Dynasty (202 B.C.E.–220 C.E.)

East Asian Civilization · Unit 2 · Civilization Packet

1. At a glance

Unit 2's big question: how do you hold a big thing together? The Han answer: keep the Qin's machine, make it softer, and make everyone share the same writing, money and ideas until they feel like one people.

2. The story of the Han in four parts

1. A village official beats a nobleman

• The Qin fell in 206 B.C.E., and China broke apart into war again. Two men fought for the empire:
  • Xiang Yu: a nobleman from the old state of Chu, and a famous general.
  • Liu Bang: from a farming village; before the war, a minor official for the Qin. Almost nobody expected him to win.
• In 202 B.C.E., Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu, re-united China and founded the Han Dynasty. As emperor he took the name Han Gaozu.
• The two men wanted different kinds of country:

• So Liu Bang made a strange choice: he kept the system of the Qin, the dynasty he had helped destroy. He made the punishments softer, but left the rest almost unchanged.

2. A Confucian face on a Qin body

• The adviser Lu Jia kept quoting the old Confucian books. Liu Bang lost his temper: he had won the empire on horseback, so what use were books?
• Lu Jia answered: "You won it on horseback. Do you mean to rule it from horseback too?" Liu Bang was ashamed, and asked Lu Jia to write a book about why the Qin had lost. But he still did not change the basis of his government.
• Sixty years later, under Emperor Wu (141–87 B.C.E.), Confucianism became the basis of government. Emperor Wu set up a school to train officials in the Confucian classics. More and more, officials were chosen for their learning, not their birth.
• The robes were new. The machine was old.

3. The Xiongnu, and the way west

• The Xiongnu were nomads on the grasslands north of China: the best horsemen in Asia.
• At first the Han could not beat them, so they paid: every year, tribute of silk, grain, and even princesses, for about 70 years.
• Emperor Wu stopped paying and went to war. He used the government Liu Bang had built, which could collect taxes from the whole empire and move an army a thousand miles.
• He sent the envoy Zhang Qian west to look for allies. Zhang Qian was captured by the Xiongnu and held for ten years. He came home with no allies, but with descriptions of rich kingdoms in Central Asia.
• The Han pushed the Xiongnu out of the Hexi Corridor, the only easy way west, between the mountains and the desert. They built forts and moved in soldiers and farmers. As a result, merchants could carry silk west, and goods and ideas came back. This route was later called the Silk Road. Nobody set out to build it. It was the leftover of a war.
• The Xiongnu were not wiped out. Some surrendered and were settled inside Han borders. Others moved far west. They did not disappear from the earth. They disappeared from the records.

4. The rot within: how the Han fell

• Child emperors and powerful in-laws. Emperors often came to the throne as children, and their wives' families ruled for them.
• One in-law, Wang Mang, usurped the throne in 9 C.E. (usurp = take power that is not legally yours). The Western Han ended.
• Rebellions broke out. Wang Mang was overthrown, and a member of the Han family restored the dynasty. The new capital stood further east, so this second Han is the Eastern Han.
• The Eastern Han was different: more emphasis on Confucianism, and more decentralized (power spread out, away from the centre, to powerful local families).
• Falling tax revenue. Rich families gathered land into huge estates and avoided taxes. Less land was taxed, so the government had less money, so the emperor depended even more on the great families.
• No foreign army conquered the Han. It fell from the inside.

3. SPICE-T: the Han Dynasty

SPICE-T = Social, Political, Interactions, Cultural, Economic, Technology.

S — Social

• Assimilation: making different groups slowly become one, by sharing the same ways of life. The Han did this on purpose.
• After 400 years of sharing the same writing, coin and rules, people stopped calling themselves Chu or Qi. They called themselves the people of Han. "Han" began as the name of a ruling family. It became the name of a whole people. Most people in China still call themselves Han today.
• Rich and poor: powerful families took more and more land. Common farmers were pushed off their fields.

P — Political

• A centralized bureaucracy, kept from the Qin. Officials collected taxes, kept records and carried out orders, and they held their jobs only because the emperor let them.
• Confucianism became the basis of government under Emperor Wu. Officials were trained in the Confucian classics.
• The fall: powerful in-laws, a usurper (Wang Mang), and a decentralized Eastern Han.

I — Interactions

• The Xiongnu: about 70 years of tribute, then decades of war under Emperor Wu.
• Zhang Qian's journey west, and the Hexi Corridor taken and guarded.
• The Silk Road: silk went west; goods and ideas came back.
• Surrendered Xiongnu were settled inside the empire. Some leaders were given Chinese names and Han titles, and their sons served in the Han army and court.

C — Cultural

• Confucianism: respect for tradition, for elders, and for correct behaviour between people.
• One standard set of characters: an official in the south could read an order from the north.
• The same books: educated men across the empire read the same books and learned the same ideas.
• A Han identity: made by a government, on purpose.

E — Economic

• The wu zhu coin (from 118 B.C.E.): one coin for the whole empire, round with a square hole. A farmer in the south and a trader in the north held the same money.
• One system of weights: a bag of grain weighed the same in every market.
• Silk traded west along the road the war had opened.
• The money problem: tax-free estates meant falling revenue (the money a government takes in).

T — Technology

• Roads joined the far regions to the centre.
• Forts guarded the Hexi Corridor and the way west.
• A government that could move an army a thousand miles.

4. Big ideas

1. New robes, same machine. The Han destroyed the Qin but kept its bureaucracy. Confucianism became the "robes" only 60 years later, under Emperor Wu.
2. Officials, not nobles. A noble's power could not be taken away. An official's power came from the emperor and could be taken back. That is why one man could hold China together.
3. The Silk Road was the leftover of a war. The Han fought the Xiongnu, took the Hexi Corridor, and the way west opened.
4. How to make a people. Shared writing, money, weights and books, over 400 years, turned many peoples into one Han people.
5. The rot within. Child emperors, powerful in-laws, a usurper, and falling tax revenue brought the Han down from the inside. It completed the dynastic cycle.

5. Key sources: how do we know what we know?

A source can be biased and still be useful. Ask who wrote it, who paid them, and what they had reason to say. Then use what it tells you.

6. Timeline and vocabulary

7. Connections

Before: the Qin (Unit 2)

The Han criticized the Qin, but kept the Qin's machine: the bureaucracy run by appointed officials. The Han made the punishments softer and added Confucianism. See the Qin packet.

Before: the Zhou and the dynastic cycle (Unit 1)

Xiang Yu wanted to go back to the Zhou way: land for great families. The Han then completed the whole dynastic cycle: rise, rule well, grow weak, fall. See the Zhou packet.

Across Asia: Yamato Japan

In China, a powerful in-law (Wang Mang) could take the throne for himself. In Japan, a rival could never become the emperor, so he could only control him. See the Yamato packet.

After: Korea's Three Kingdoms (Unit 2)

As the Han declined, it could no longer hold its towns in northern Korea. Three Korean kingdoms rose in the space it left. See the Korea's Three Kingdoms packet.

8. Where students lose marks on this topic

Self-check

Cover the answers. Can you answer these in complete sentences?

1. Identify who Liu Bang defeated, and the dynasty he founded.
2. Describe the system of government Liu Bang kept from the Qin, and what Xiang Yu wanted instead.
3. Describe what Zhang Qian was sent to find, and what he actually brought back.
4. Explain how the war with the Xiongnu opened the Silk Road.
5. Explain how sharing one writing system and one coin helped make one Han people.
6. Explain how court politics and falling tax revenue together led to the fall of the Han.