Han dynasty
The Han dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty and a warring interregnum known as the Chu–Han Contention, and it was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. The dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty established by the usurping regent Wang Mang, and is thus separated into two periods—the Western Han and the Eastern Han. Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history, and had a permanent impact on Chinese identity in later periods. The majority ethnic group of modern China refer to themselves as the "Han people" or "Han Chinese". The spoken Chinese and written Chinese are referred to respectively as the "Han language" and "Han characters".
The Han emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society and culture. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and the appointed ministers who came largely from the scholarly gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas directly controlled by the central government called commanderies, as well as a number of semi-autonomous kingdoms. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States. From the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesizing it with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu.
The Han dynasty experienced periods of economic prosperity as well as significant growth in the money economy, which had first been established during the Zhou dynasty. The coinage minted by the central government in 119 BC remained the standard in China until the Tang dynasty. The period saw a number of modest institutional innovations. In order to finance its military campaigns and the settlement of newly conquered frontier territories, the Han government nationalised private salt and iron industries in 117 BC, creating government monopolies that were later repealed during the Eastern period. There were significant advances in science and technology during the Han period, including the invention of papermaking, rudders for steering ships, negative numbers in mathematics, raised-relief maps, hydraulic-powered armillary spheres for astronomy, and seismometers that discerned the cardinal direction of distant earthquakes by use of inverted pendulums.
The Han dynasty had many conflicts with the Xiongnu, a nomadic confederation centred in the eastern Eurasian steppe. The Xiongnu defeated the Han in 200 BC, prompting the Han to appease the Xiongnu with a policy of marriage alliance and payments of tribute, though the Xiongnu continued to raid the Han's northern borders. Han policy changed in 133 BC, under Emperor Wu, when Han forces began a series of military campaigns to quell the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu were eventually defeated and forced to accept a status as Han vassals, and the Xiongnu confederation fragmented. The Han conquered the Hexi Corridor and Inner Asian territory of the Tarim Basin from the Xiongnu, helping to establish the Silk Road. The lands north of the Han's borders were later overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Emperor Wu also launched successful conquests in the south, annexing Nanyue in 111 BC and Dian in 109 BC. He further expanded Han territory into the northern Korean Peninsula, where Han forces conquered Gojoseon and established the Xuantu and Lelang commanderies in 108 BC.
After 92 AD, palace eunuchs increasingly involved themselves in the dynasty's court politics, engaging in violent power struggles between various consort clans of the empresses and empresses dowager. Imperial authority was also seriously challenged by large Taoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Five Pecks of Rice Rebellion. Following the death of Emperor Ling, the palace eunuchs were massacred by military officers, allowing members of the aristocracy and military governors to become warlords and divide the empire. The Han dynasty came to an end in 220 AD when Cao Pi, king of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian.
Etymology
According to the Shiji, after the collapse of the Qin dynasty the hegemon Xiang Yu appointed Liu Bang as prince of the small fief of Hanzhong, named after its location on the Han River. Following Liu Bang's victory in the Chu–Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief.History
Western Han (202 BC – 9 AD)
China's first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty. The Qin united the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their regime became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang. Within four years, the dynasty's authority had collapsed in a rebellion. Two former rebel leaders, Xiang Yu of Chu and Liu Bang of Han, engaged in a war to determine who would have hegemony over China, which had fissured into Eighteen Kingdoms, each claiming allegiance to either Xiang Yu or Liu Bang. Although Xiang Yu proved to be an effective commander, Liu Bang defeated him at the Battle of Gaixia in modern-day Anhui. Liu Bang assumed the title of Emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu. Chang'an was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han.At the beginning of the Western Han, also known as the Former Han, thirteen centrally controlled commanderies—including the capital region—existed in the western third of the empire, while the eastern two-thirds were divided into ten semi-autonomous kingdoms. To placate his prominent commanders from the war with Chu, Emperor Gaozu enfeoffed some of them as kings.
By 196, the Han court had replaced all of these kings with royal Liu family members, with the lone exception of Changsha. The loyalty of non-relatives to the emperor was questioned, and after several insurrections by Han kings—with the largest being the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154—the imperial court began enacting a series of reforms that limited the power of these kingdoms in 145, dividing their former territories into new commanderies under central control. Kings were no longer able to appoint their own staff; this duty was assumed by the imperial court. Kings became nominal heads of their fiefs and collected a portion of tax revenues as their personal incomes. The kingdoms were never entirely abolished and existed throughout the remainder of Western and Eastern Han.
To the north of China proper, the nomadic Xiongnu chieftain Modu Chanyu conquered various tribes inhabiting the eastern portion of the Eurasian Steppe. By the end of his reign, he controlled the Inner Asian regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and the Tarim Basin, subjugating over twenty states east of Samarkand. Emperor Gaozu was troubled about the abundant Han-manufactured iron weapons traded to the Xiongnu along the northern borders, and he established a trade embargo against the group.
In retaliation, the Xiongnu invaded what is now Shanxi, where they defeated the Han forces at Baideng in 200 BC. After negotiations, the heqin agreement in 198 BC nominally held the leaders of the Xiongnu and the Han as equal partners in a royal marriage alliance, but the Han were forced to send large amounts of tribute items such as silk clothes, food, and wine to the Xiongnu.
File:Huo Qubing horse.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|Statue of a horse trampling a Xiongnu warrior, at the mausoleum of Western Han general Huo Qubing, who fought in the Han–Xiongnu War. This is the first known monumental stone statue in China.
Despite the tribute and negotiation between Laoshang Chanyu and Emperor Wen to reopen border markets, many of the Chanyu's subordinates chose not to obey the treaty and periodically raided Han territories south of the Great Wall for additional goods. In a court conference assembled by Emperor Wu in 135 BC, the majority consensus of the ministers was to retain the heqin agreement. Emperor Wu accepted this, despite continuing Xiongnu raids.
However, a court conference the following year convinced the majority that a limited engagement at Mayi involving the assassination of the Chanyu would throw the Xiongnu realm into chaos and benefit the Han. When this plot failed in 133 BC, Emperor Wu launched a series of massive military invasions into Xiongnu territory. The assault culminated in 119 BC at the Battle of Mobei, when Han commanders Huo Qubing and Wei Qing forced the Xiongnu court to flee north of the Gobi Desert, and Han forces reached as far north as Lake Baikal.
After Wu's reign, Han forces continued to fight the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu leader Huhanye finally submitted to the Han as a tributary vassal in 51 BC. Huhanye's rival claimant to the throne, Zhizhi Chanyu, was killed by Han forces under Chen Tang and Gan Yanshou at the Battle of Zhizhi, in modern Taraz, Kazakhstan.
In 121 BC, Han forces expelled the Xiongnu from a vast territory spanning the Hexi Corridor to Lop Nur. They repelled a joint Xiongnu-Qiang invasion of this northwestern territory in 111 BC. In that same year, the Han court established four new frontier commanderies in this region to consolidate their control: Jiuquan, Zhangyi, Dunhuang, and Wuwei. The majority of people on the frontier were soldiers. On occasion, the court forcibly moved peasant farmers to new frontier settlements, along with government-owned slaves and convicts who performed hard labour. The court also encouraged commoners, such as farmers, merchants, landowners, and hired labourers, to voluntarily migrate to the frontier.
File:Summer Vacation 2007, 263, Watchtower In The Morning Light, Dunhuang, Gansu Province.jpg|thumb|left|The ruins of a Han dynasty watchtower made of rammed earth at Dunhuang, located at the eastern edge of the Silk Road
Even before the Han's expansion into Central Asia, diplomat Zhang Qian's travels from 139 to 125 BC had established Chinese contacts with many surrounding civilizations. Zhang encountered Dayuan, Kangju, and Daxia ; he also gathered information on Shendu and Anxi. All of these countries eventually received Han embassies. These connections marked the beginning of the Silk Road trade network that extended to the Roman Empire, bringing goods like Chinese silk and Roman glasswares between the two.
From until, Han forces fought the Xiongnu over control of the oasis city-states in the Tarim Basin. The Han were eventually victorious and established the Protectorate of the Western Regions in 60 BC, which dealt with the region's defence and foreign affairs. The Han also expanded southward. The naval conquest of Nanyue in 111 BC expanded the Han realm into what are now modern Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam. Yunnan was brought into the Han realm with the conquest of the Dian Kingdom in 109 BC, followed by parts of the Korean Peninsula with the Han conquest of Gojoseon and establishment of the Xuantu and Lelang commanderies in 108 BC. The first nationwide census in Chinese history was taken in 2 AD; the Han's total population was registered as comprising 57,671,400 individuals across 12,366,470 households.
To pay for his military campaigns and colonial expansion, Emperor Wu nationalised several private industries. He created central government monopolies administered largely by former merchants. These monopolies included salt, iron, and liquor production, as well as bronze coinage. The liquor monopoly lasted only from 98 to 81 BC, and the salt and iron monopolies were eventually abolished in the early Eastern Han. The issuing of coinage remained a central government monopoly throughout the rest of the Han dynasty.
The government monopolies were eventually repealed when a political faction known as the Reformists gained greater influence in the court. The Reformists opposed the Modernist faction that had dominated court politics in Emperor Wu's reign and during the subsequent regency of Huo Guang. The Modernists argued for an aggressive and expansionary foreign policy supported by revenues from heavy government intervention in the private economy. The Reformists, however, overturned these policies, favouring a cautious, non-expansionary approach to foreign policy, frugal budget reform, and lower tax-rates imposed on private entrepreneurs.