CH Module 2:4 Flashcards
Why did the Qin end?
Harshness of rule left country in tunrmoil, exhausted people, drained treasury, alienated educated upper classes.
206 BCE
Rebel armies occupied and burned the palace.
Liu Bang
Rebel leader born a peasant, founded Han dynasty in 202 BCE.
Han Gaozu (“High Progenitor”) emphasized Confucian government
What governmental measures did Liu Bang take while in power?
Abolished controls on travel, education, thought
Lowered taxes, encouraged learning (a pool of talent for the state)
Kept conscription army, forced labor for public work, division into xian (“counties”) controlled by magistrates.
Imposed its model on a regionally/culturally varied area.
Han Wudi’s rule
Tightened imperial control, regulations on trade and merchants, new taxes, and controls on salt, iron, and grain.
Conquest under Han Wudi
Yue (N. Vietnam) in Fujian and Guangzhou areas, S. Manchuria and N. Korea, looser control over Yunnan and Guizhou.
Great Wall
Built for northern and northwestern frontiers but couldn’t stop infiltrations by horse-riding nomads of the steppe border zone.
Silk Road
Paths went through the Gansu corridor and along the northern/southern edges of the Tarim desert, meeting at Kashgar, and crossing the Pamirs into Central Asia.
Silk only taken as far as Xinjiang.
Islam in China…?
Uighurs became oasis farmers of Xinjiang, embraced Islam, and passed it onto China Proper, a concentration of Chinese Muslims in the northwest.
Zhang Qian’s Adeventure
Sent to west in 139 BCE to make alliance against Xiongnu, but was captured for 10 years.
Escaped and returned to Chang’an in the Wei valley, with firsthand accounts of Central Asia.
Info about India and routes to it, where the silk went (Rome).
Tributary system in regulate foreign contact
Wudi’s decline?
His campaigns and impositions exhausted the people and the resources.
Censors convinced him to issue a penitential edict apologizing for his excess and promising to be more deserving of the mandate.
Abandoned conquest, now defensive
Successors sent an expeditionary force across the Pamirs into the Samarkand.
In 42 BCE, successors of Wudi defeated a Xiongnu coalition at the Talas river near Tashkent, described people that sound like Roman Auxiliaries.
China’s westward expansion
Probed at the west, but were told to turn back by the Parthians.
Trade Patterns
Passage of goods and ideas in Central Asia was slow, difficult due to multiplicity and mutual hostility of cultural groups.
Arab ships traded by sea, Central Asian groups transmitted goods and ideas.
Han’s government
Confucianism was official orthodoxy and state ideology under Wudi.
Imperial civil service exam.
Officeholding
Became the most prestigious position, protected the political arena from corruption, mediocrity, and ineffectiveness.
Wang Mang’s Palace Coup :D
Empress’s nephew (9-23 BCE)
Confucian, tried to curb power of merchants and landowning gentry, extended controls over economy to reestablish egalitarianism.
Wang Mang’s fall
Alientated the rich and powerful by abolishing private estates (bc tax evasion)
Red Eyebrows murdered him (supported by peasants, merchants, and gentries).
Later Han
Reestablished in 25 CE at Luoyang, peace was reestablished along frontiers through conquest.
97 CE, an army made it to the Caspian sea.
89 CE, defeated the Xiongnu again.
Ban Chao
Sent in 73 CE to pacify area south of Xinjiang with enemy groups/tribes.
Beat drums inside the others’ fort to make them run out and built a huge fire in front of the fort.
The Chief surrendered and renewed his oath of vassalage.
Downfall of the Han
Loss of trade and revenue, indulgence, factional fighting.
Growing peasant revolts, imperial relatives/nobles jockeyed for power.
Eunuch groups acquired more and more power (reviled by Confucian record keepers, but payback).
Trade benefits
Trade with Mongolia, Korea, Central Asia, Vietnam, northern India + productivity and trade of southern China provided secure frontiers.
But control over them was lost with collapse of imperial structure and people moved from the outposts.
Role of women
Confucianism stressed on their subordinate role, for which they were respected and even able to wield power in some cases.
Powerful empress dowagers, Queen Mother of the West, Ban Zhao (wrote History of Han the Dynasty, Admonitions for Women).
What lead to the fall of the Han dynasty?
Cao Cao’s Wei dynasty (didn’t work out).
Xiongnu and others took over the North, disintegrated into minor rival kingdoms.
South into rival Chinese states.
