Every civilization in world history has had
a golden age, a peak where its cultural, economic and military might was considered the benchmark
by which all other nations were compared. For Rome, this was the age of Augustus, while
for Islam, it was the Abbasid Caliphate. In this video, we will be exploring the zenith
of ancient China, the rise of the Han Dynasty, and the reign of its greatest emperor Han
Wudi. In our opinion learning new stuff and developing
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full membership! The earliest Chinese civilization emerged
in the basins of the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers around the 2nd millennium BC, forming
into the early dynasties of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou, before dissolving into warring petty
kingdoms in an era known as the spring and autumn period. Despite controlling only a fraction of modern
China, these states were the originators of many pillars of Chinese culture, including
the philosophies of Daoism, Legalism, Confucianism, and the earliest form of the Chinese script. In 221 BC Qin Shihuang’s fierce army not
only united the kingdoms of spring and autumn, but also pushed beyond the traditional Yangtze
heartland, conquering the so-called barbarians of the south. Qin Shihuang is remembered today as the first
Emperor of a united Chinese nation. However, his rule was brutal, and as a result,
his Empire quickly disintegrated after his death, having lasted only fifteen years. Out of the turmoil rose the warlord Liu Bang,
King of Han, who reunited most of the middle Kingdom under one banner. In 202 BC, the Han Dynasty had been born,
and with it, the beginning of the golden age of classical China. The new Dynasty had major obstacles to overcome:
to the north it had powerful enemies - the Xiongnu, a fiercely warlike confederation
of nomadic horsemen who inhabited a vast territory across the northern Eurasian steppe, who are
believed to be the ancestors of the vicious Atilla who would ravage the Roman Empire six
centuries later. In 200 BC, they thundered southwards, besieging
the Chinese city of Taiyuan. Liu Bang, now the Gaozu Emperor, personally
led an army of 300,000 to confront the invaders, but the Han forces were handily crushed by
the nomadic horse archers, and the Emperor nearly captured. After this, the Han operated on a policy of
placation, offering the northern nomads exorbitant tributes of rice, silks, wine, and women. This kept the peace for a time, but Xiongnu
raids continued. To the south were the skilled seafarers of
the “Hundred Yue”, an agglomeration of tribes consolidated into the Kingdoms of Minyue
and Nanyue. Briefly ruled by the Qin, they had never been
reconquered by the Han. The peoples here were not Chinese; they cut
their hair short, tattooed their whole bodies, and spoke a variety of languages which were
probably more closely related to modern Vietnamese, Thai, and Malay than classical Chinese. They were fiercely independent and had ambitions
of their own. The Han dynasty also was highly decentralized,
with much of the eastern half dominated by ten Kingdoms, who had their own armies, taxes
and laws. Through conspiracy and political maneuvering,
the Gaozu Emperor managed to replace most of these Kings with members of the Imperial
family to ensure their loyalty to the government in Chang’an. Still, the vassal Kingdoms were prone to sedition,
and in 154 BC, the Emperor’s nephew, the King of Wu, orchestrated a rebellion of seven
states. While the insurgents were crushed, it became
evident that unless the Imperial Court in Chang’an could impose centralized rule upon
their vassal Kings, more rebellions would happen. Perhaps the most existential problem the Han
Dynasty faced was cultural. Here we must turn back the clock, and tell
the story of Confucius. Born amidst the states of the Spring and Autumn
period, the seminal philosopher despised the petty rulers of his time, yearning instead
for a world where Kings ruled by sagely virtue, and not through military might. He devised many precepts by which society
could be guided by moral example, tradition, and devotion to family and community. Although his teachings spread among many,
the petty kings had little interest in his ideas. Building a Kingdom around them was impractical
when it was soldiers that would prevent it from being eaten up by its warlike neighbours. This attitude was distilled in Qin Shihuang,
who established the strict and ruthless tenets of Legalism as the official form of social
control of the Qin Dynasty. To him, Moral Philosophers had no place in
an Empire that had been won by the sword, a policy he made clear through the burning
of Confucian books and exile of Confucian teachers. The Gaozu Emperor asked the same question:
“All I possess I have won on horseback! Why should I bother with the Book of Odes
and Book of History?” To this, his closest advisor replied: “Your
Majesty may have won the empire on horseback, but can you rule it on horseback?” The Han Emperor saw merit in these words. A warrior king could conquer an Empire, but
it took a sage king to keep it. Wanting to avoid the mistakes of the short-lived
Qin, he softened his stance towards Confucianism. Even then, the seminal philosopher’s legacy
still competed with legalism, Daoism and others to be China’s dominant worldview. So, early Han China was an Empire divided,
externally threatened, and culturally unsure of itself. It would take an Emperor of unparalleled will
and ambition to solve this, and such an Emperor was soon to be born. In 156 BC, a young Prince named Liu Che came
into the world, the 11th son of Emperor Jing of Han. His birth was precipitated by holy omen. According to legend, his mother had received
a vision while pregnant with him, dreaming of a bright sun falling into her womb. Furthermore, the day he was born happened
to be the same day that his father ascended onto the Imperial throne. These auspicious signs delighted the Emperor,
who quickly singled out Liu Che as his favourite son, declaring him heir apparent at the age
of nine. In 141, the Jingdi Emperor grew ill and passed
away. Thus, at the tender age of 16, Liu Che ascended
onto the Dragon Throne, becoming known as Han Wudi: Emperor Wu of Han. True to the shining prophecy under which he’d
been born, Emperor Wu would become perhaps the greatest reformer, conqueror, and cultural
father of Chinese history. The first thing Wudi tackled upon his ascension
to the throne was the issue of culture and philosophy. The young Emperor was faced with the same
question: Should a nation be governed internally by military discipline, or by moral integrity? In the first year of his reign, Wudi banished
the precepts of Qin legalism, declaring that Confucian virtues were the principal philosophy
by which his Empire would be run. The young Emperor sacked all non-Confucians
from his service, while giving Confucian scholars a privileged place in his Imperial court. In 136 BC, Wudi established the five literary
masterpieces of Confucius as the principal pillars of state-sponsored education, and
in 124 BC opened the Imperial Academy, where all prospective government officials were
given a standard education in the Confucian classics, ensuring that the diplomats, governors
and other bureaucrats would be united under the same code of ethics and social organization. The academy also served as the basis of the
Imperial civil service exam, which would become the backbone of bureaucracy of later Chinese
dynasties. This decision cannot be understated. The five Confucian classics, which taught
people how to live, love and lead, more or less became the official scripture of the
Han Empire, the closest the Chinese speaking world would ever come to an equivalent of
the Bible or the Qur’an. Just as Emperor Constantine would transform
the Roman Empire by establishing Christianity as its premier faith, so too did Wudi transform
China by embracing Confucius. Wudi’s next goal was the centralization
of his internally fragmented Empire. He curtailed the powers of the nobles in his
court, most of whom were related to the Emperor and considered themselves above the law, and
also targeted the Vassal Kings, seeking to remove their troublesome autonomy once and
for all by taking away their ability to levy taxes, reserving that power for the central
government alone. Naturally, Wudi’s reforms were deeply unpopular
with the aristocracy, whose privileges were diminished. Their leader was Wudi’s grandmother, the
Grand Empress Dowager Dou, an obstinate old woman who believed her grandson’s rash policies
would bring about their doom. Knowing that nearly his entire court was against
him, Emperor Wu displayed immaculate cunning. His grandmother’s influence permeated every
level of the Imperial palace, so he secretly recruited a circle of young, loyal supporters
from among the commoners, giving them low level, inconspicuous positions in the court,
where they could act on the Emperor’s behalf under the noses of the nobles. The political tides turned in 135 BC, when
Dowager Dou passed away. Now leaderless, the nobles were powerless
to stop Wudi from expelling them out of the capital, and replacing them with the young
and loyal insider court that the Emperor had been grooming for years. With this insolence quelled, Wudi moved on
to the Vassal Kingdoms. In 127 BC, he declared that all Kings had
to split the inheritance of their realm equally, between all their sons. This was a brilliant play at divide and conquer. It made their Kingdoms smaller, weaker, and
easier for the Imperial government to impose total control over. In the end, Wudi succeeded in passing all
his reforms, transforming the Han dynasty from a loose confederation, into a centralized
Empire. Military Conquests Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Emperor
Wu is the territorial expansions accomplished under his reign. Previous Han Emperors had been decidedly non-imperialistic. After all, war was expensive. Feeding, arming, and transporting armies that
often numbered in the hundreds of thousands was a monumental feat that put a massive drain
on China’s agrarian economy. Wudi, however, was far more ambitious. To counteract the costs, he completely monopolized
the production of China’s salt and iron, the two most profitable industries in the
nation. Furthermore he standardized the price of grain
and nationalized the minting of coins. These policies were considered downright tyrannical
by farmers and merchants, but it allowed the Celestial Monarch to field army after army. The first target was the troublesome Xiongnu,
who were placated with wine and silk for decades. In 133 BC, Wudi officially ended the tributes,
and launched the first of many campaigns aimed to subdue the troublesome horse lords for
good. The northwards march was a brutal struggle
of attrition, with battle after battle causing the loss of both Xiongnu and Han lives in
the hundreds of thousands. However, due to the leadership of brilliant
generals like Wei Qing and Huo Qubing, Han forces were able to finally make significant
gains against the northern nomads, annexing the Hexi Corridor for the Empire by 121 BC. In 119 BC, Han forces massacred 90,000 Xiongnu
soldiers at the battle of Mobei, driving the nomads north into the Gobi desert. Wudi settled these lands with 700,000 Chinese
colonists, securing it as part of the Han cultural sphere. As Wudi’s forces pushed their northern frontier,
the south had become equally volatile. The Kingdoms of the Baiyue people had long
seen the Han Chinese to their north as foreign interlopers, and relations between the two
were complicated. For one, The Kingdom of Nanyue was ruled by
the house of Zhao, a line of Chinese Kings that had assimilated into the local culture. Furthermore, the southern states were more
prone to fighting one another than the Chinese. In fact, when Minyue had invaded Nanyue in
138 BC, the latter had submitted to the Han, becoming an Imperial protectorate. However, Nanyue’s sentiments towards their
northern overlords would soon turn sour. In 112 BC, the native prime minister Lu Jia
assassinated his pro-Han King Zhao Xing, and rebelled against the Empire. Ruthless in response, Wudi dispatched an army
of 100,000, crushed the southern Yue in battle, and captured and executed Lu Jia and his puppet
King. This show of brutal force terrified the Kingdom
of Minyue, and their King, Yushan, launched a preemptive attack upon Han territory. However, realizing that all this accomplished
was to poke the proverbial bear, Yushan’s advisors performed a coup, executed him, and
surrendered to the Han. Awed by the events, the Kingdoms of Yelang
and Dian submitted to Han rule willingly, and became client states. The south was a profitable conquest for Wudi,
for the region’s goods, such as pearls, peacocks, and elephant tusks, provided luxuries
for the Han aristocracy, while its coastal regions boosted the Empire’s economy through
naval trade. In order to establish total control, Emperor
Wu was ruthless and decisive. The Kingdom of Nanyue was split into nine
counties, each ruled by a Han official. Minyue, meanwhile, was an ungovernable land
by virtue of its narrow, mountainous territory. As a result, Wudi ordered his army to commit
a mass deportation of the peoples there, forcing them from their homes and resettling them
between the Changjiang and Huai Rivers, leaving the land completely depopulated. Henceforth, the lands of the south would be
increasingly assimilated into Han Chinese culture. Today, the southern provinces of Fujian and
Guangdong are overwhelmingly Chinese speaking. In 109 BC, a breakdown in relations between
the Han Empire and Ugeo, King of Gojoseon, led to the latter executing a Han envoy. Infuriated, Han Wudi used this as a pretext
for war, annexing the northern tip of the Korean peninsula. This began an era of Chinese political dominance
over Korea. Meanwhile, back in 128 BC, the Chinese diplomat
Zhang Qian had embarked on a long trek westwards to find allies against the Xiongnu. There, he came into contact with the great
civilizations of Central Asia - the sophisticated city-states of the Red-haired Tocharians,
and the Hellenized Kingdoms of Ferghana and Bactria. We have already covered this fateful meeting
between the Greek and Chinese worlds in another video, and won’t dive too deep into it again. Suffice to say, by 102 BC, the armies of Wudi
had established their dominance across the Taklamakan Desert and into Ferghana, and had
the heavenly horses to show for it. The Emperor established Han military outposts
in many of the regions’ cities to ensure their loyalty. The increased stability brought to the region
by the Han allowed for the establishment of the Silk Road. This had several major consequences, namely
the introduction of Buddhism to China, and the introduction of Chinese luxuries to the
peoples of Europe, whose colonial Empires would come knocking on the middle Kingdom’s
gates centuries later. By 100 BC, Wudi’s constant campaigns had
caught up with him: Peasant revolts had erupted throughout the realm, and while ultimately
quelled, the realm’s main problem lay in the Imperial Court itself. The Emperor’s Palace had become bitterly
divided between two families, the Wei and the Li. Wudi’s Empress, and his Heir Apparent, Prince
Ju, belonged to the Wei bloodline. However, the Li Bloodline, also related to
the Emperor, was incredibly influential, and sought to take control of the succession. In 91 BC, Jiang Chong used his clout with
the Emperor to accuse the Crown Prince Ju of committing Witchcraft to sabotage his father’s
health. The young prince reacted rashly: fearing that
his father would believe the false accusation, he launched a military mutiny with his mother,
Empress Wei Zifu, aiming to kill Jiang Chong. With little other choice, an elderly Wudi
dispatched his Imperial army to fight his son, with many thousands dying on the streets
of Chang’an. In the end, Prince Ju was defeated, and both
he and his mother committed suicide. Wudi was heartbroken by the death of his son,
and in punishment, exterminated Jiang Chong’s entire extended family. Over the next four years the old Emperor’s
health deteriorated rapidly, and on March 27th, 87 BC, he managed to avoid civil war
by appointing his eight-year-old son, Liu Fuling, as his heir apparent, by virtue of
the fact he was related to neither the Wei or the Li. Two days later, he passed away at the age
of 71. Emperor Wu of Han had reigned for 54 years. It was the longest tenure of any Emperor in
ancient Chinese history, a record that would not be broken until the reign of the Kangxi
Emperor, 1800 years later. The impact that Han Wudi had upon the history
of the middle Kingdom and its people cannot be understated: the teachings of Confucius
became the principal form of social order in China for over 2,000 years, while also
expanding to deeply influence the cultures of Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Thanks to the ardent centralization of his
Imperial government, and his vast territorial conquests, the lands known to us today as
‘China’ came to be seen less as a loose patchwork of kingdoms and cultures, but as
a single people, with regional varieties perhaps, but nevertheless bound by a shared Chinese
identity. Was Han Wudi a cultural father who brought
China into a Golden age? Or a ruthless conqueror, whose endless ambition
led to the destruction of cultures, and the suffering of peoples both within and beyond
his Empire? It depends on who you ask, but either way
the mark he left on Chinese culture is one that is still felt today, and always will
be. We have more videos on Chinese history on
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