Sixteen Kingdoms
The Sixteen Kingdoms, also known as the "Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbarians", lesser known as the Sixteen States, was a period of political disorder and division in northern and southwestern China from 304 to 439 AD. It ran concurrently with the Jin dynasty and later overlapped with the early decades of the Northern and Southern dynasties era.
The period was preceded by the brief reunification of China under the Western Jin following the Three Kingdoms before it was violently disrupted by the War of the Eight Princes. The princely civil wars led to widescale famines and numerous uprisings, and the imperial court was eventually driven out from the northern and southwestern parts of their empire. As they reestablished themselves as the Eastern Jin in the south at Jiankang, the political vacuum they left behind was filled by a series of dynastic states that rose and fell in quick succession. These states were founded by non-Han peoples who had resettled and lived in northern China for generations, known in recent historiography as the “Five Barbarians”, although a few regimes were also established and led by Han Chinese.
While the resettled non-Han groups had long been sinicized to varying degrees, the process was heightened during this period as their rulers adopted Chinese institutions of imperial governance and customs. Their states were all short-lived due to fierce competition among the states and the Eastern Jin as well as internal political instability. The Former Qin briefly unified northern China for seven years from 376 to 383 AD, but this ended when the Eastern Jin inflicted a crippling defeat on it at the Battle of Fei River, after which the Former Qin splintered and fell. Amidst the chaos and fighting, Mahayana Buddhism became increasingly accepted and popular, receiving official state backing for the first time in China. The Sixteen Kingdoms ended with the reunification of the north under the Northern Wei dynasty of Xianbei ethnicity, which would last for roughly a century.
The Sixteen Kingdoms
The term "Sixteen Kingdoms" was first used by the 6th-century historian Cui Hong in the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms, which was a compilation of available records from the states that appeared during the period. These were the five Liangs, four Yans, three Qins, two Zhaos, Cheng-Han and Xia.Despite the name, there were also several other states from this period that Cui Hong did not include, likely due to their short existence or lack of recordkeeping. Among the notable exceptions were the Ran Wei, Zhai Wei, Chouchi, Duan Qi, Qiao Shu, Huan Chu, Tuyuhun and Western Yan. Nor did he include the Northern Wei and its predecessor Dai, as the Northern Wei was still in power during Cui Hong's lifetime and doing so would have went beyond the scope of his annals. The history of the Dai and Northern Wei is mainly found in a later record, the Book of Wei, and historiography usually classifies the Northern Wei as the first of the Northern dynasties.
History
Background
Since the Western Han dynasty, the non-Han peoples of the northern steppe and western highlands had been resettling into northern China. Along the frontiers in the north, the Chinese court employed a policy of recruiting surrendered tribes to serve as auxiliaries to defend against attacks from nomadic enemies. In the northeast, the Wuhuan tribes submitted as Chinese tributaries, and in 50 AD, the Eastern Han dynasty established the Southern Xiongnu vassal state in the northern Bing province. In the Guanzhong region in the northwest, western herders known as the Qiang and Di were brought in, predominantly to work as farmers and slaves. As migrants, these people lived among the ethnic Han and were sinicized to different degrees while retaining their tribal affiliations. However, they also faced discrimination and oppression, leading to racial tension and frequent rebellions.The fall of Eastern Han and the Three Kingdoms period brought the non-Han people closer to the Chinese heartlands. After revolting and murdering their own chanyu, the Southern Xiongnu tribes dissolved their government and dispersed throughout the north. Several frontier commanderies had to be abandoned. The Han Chancellor, Cao Cao reorganized the remaining Southern Xiongnu forces into the Five Divisions and resettled them away from the frontier near Taiyuan in modern Shanxi, where they would be less likely to rebel. The Wuhuan also rebelled but were defeated, with many forcibly relocated and scattered throughout the Central Plains. The Xianbei tribes of the steppe such as the Murong and Tuoba were drawn to the power vacuum left behind in the northeast, and they too became Chinese vassals. In the Guanzhong, the population of the Qiang, Di and other tribes continued to grow. By the late 3rd-century, an edict to the court claimed that half of the Guanzhong population were "Rong and Di ".
Despite efforts to appease and punish, disparity between the ethnic Han and tribes persisted into the Western Jin period. The War of the Eight Princes during the reign of the Emperor Hui of Jin severely weakened and divided imperial authority. Corruption was rampant among the Chinese elites and administrators, and popular rebellions against heavy taxation and repression eruptred throughout the country. As the Jin princes exhausted the imperial army with their civil wars, they turned to the frontier auxiliaries as their source of military power, placing the tribes in prime position to exploit the chaos.
The beginning of the Sixteen Kingdoms period is often considered to be 304 AD. That year, as part of a rebellion that began back in 301, Li Xiong, a Ba-Di chieftain and refugee from the Guanzhong, formally claimed the imperial title of King and formed his state of Cheng-Han in Sichuan, notably becoming the only state among the Sixteen Kingdoms to be based in southwestern China. Most of the later states were also founded by non-Han leaders whose family had lived in China for generations, collectively known in more recent historiography as the "Five Barbarians".
Fall of the Western Jin to the Han-Zhao (304–318)
During the Jin civil wars, Liu Yuan, a noble from the Five Divisions and a descendant of the Southern Xiongnu chanyu, was serving as a general for one of the princes. The Five Divisions plotted to take advantage of the disorder by staging a revolt with Liu Yuan as their leader. After convincing his prince that he would rally his people to fight for his side, Liu Yuan was allowed to return home to Shanxi, and upon his arrival, he rebelled and openly declared his intent to restore the fallen Han dynasty. His regime, later renamed Zhao, is designated by historians as the Han-Zhao.By the end of the War of the Eight Princes in 306, the Jin military in northern China had become severely weakened and ineffective in dealing with the various uprisings led by both the Han Chinese and the tribes. Many of these rebel groups, aggrieved by the civil wars and ongoing famines, flocked to join the Han-Zhao and soon encroached on the Chinese capital of Luoyang. In 311, less than a year after the ascension of Liu Cong to the Han throne, his forces annihilated the Jin imperial army and captured Luoyang along with Emperor Huai in the Disaster of Yongjia. In 316, the Western Jin came to an end after Liu Cong's cousin Liu Yao seized Chang'an and Emperor Min, though pockets of Jin resistance continued to resist in the north. In the south, where the regions were mostly unaffected by the chaos in the north, the prince, Sima Rui claimed the imperial title at Jiankang, preserving the dynasty as the Eastern Jin.
Shi Le and the Later Zhao (318–351)
After Liu Cong's death in 318, a failed coup was launch which saw his successor and most of the Han imperial family wiped out. The empire soon split between Liu Yao in the west and the powerful general, Shi Le in the east. Shi Le was an ethnic Jie of Southern Xiongnu descent. He initially worked as an indentured farm laborer before joining Liu Yuan's rebellion, and during his stint as a Han general, he gained considerable power over the Hebei region, ruling in all but name. In 319, he founded the Later Zhao, and after a decade-long confrontation, he decisively defeated Liu Yao at the Battle of Luoyang and destroyed the Han-Zhao in 329, placing most of northern China under his control.To consolidate his rule, Shi Le reinforced the dual-system of government introduced by the Han-Zhao to impose separate governance for the Chinese and non-Chinese. After he died, his adoptive brother, Shi Hu seized the throne from his son in 334 and ruled the empire for the next 15 years. Shi Hu was described by records as a cruel and tyrannical ruler, especially towards the Han Chinese. On the other hand, he supported the proliferation of Buddhism in the north, employing the monk, Fotu Cheng as one of his chief court advisors and allowing commoners to practice through religious freedom. Shi Hu maintained a stalemate with the Eastern Jin, Cheng-Han and other neighbouring states, unable to make significant gains from his military campaigns. After his death in 349, his family members engaged in a fratricidal succession for the throne, culminating in his adopted Han Chinese grandson, Ran Min, seizing the government and carrying out a large-scale ethnic cleansing of the Jie people. The Later Zhao was soon destroyed by Ran Min in 351.
During the fall of Western Jin, some Chinese officials opted to find refuge in the farthest reaches of northern China, which later remained largely independent from Later Zhao control. In Gansu, the Chinese provincial inspector, Zhang Gui and his family governed the region as early as 301 and continued to do so long after the Western Jin's demise. Though they outwardly remained loyal to the Eastern Jin and never claimed the imperial title, their remoteness from the southern court allowed them to self-govern without much intervention, so historiography often refer to them as a sovereign regime known as the Former Liang. The Former Liang preserved much of Han literati culture in the north and expanded their influence into the Western Regions.
Around the Liao river basin, the Murong clan of Xianbei ethnicity also professed their allegiance to the Eastern Jin, but internally vied for independence. The Murong allowed Chinese refugees to settle in their domain and employed them as officials to serve in their civil administration. In 337, while still claiming to be a vassal of Jin, their chieftain, Murong Huang took the title of Prince and founded the Former Yan. He conquered the rival Duan and Yuwen tribes as well as forced the Goguryeo and Buyeo into submission, thus allowing his state to compete with the Later Zhao. Other regimes that existed around this time but are not listed among the Sixteen Kingdoms are the Tuoba-Xianbei of Dai and the Di-led Chouchi.