Main Points

History is Now

With the effective collapse of the Zhou dynasty in 771 BC, China entered a critical cultural period. The Chinese revere the Zhou as their founders, their longest ruling dynasty; and the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771 - 221 BC) was perhaps the most important phase of cultural development in Chinese history. However, historically it had little to do with the history of the Zhou emperor.

Learning, Literacy, and Education

The early years of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty are called the Spring and Autumns, named after the most important early historical document in Chinese history, the Spring and Autumn Annals. Reputedly written by Kung Fu Tzu, the Annals record the gradual intensification of the rivalries of the nobility. At first, the power of the largest state in China gave it preeminence, and its obvious advantage over the other nobles kept everyone else in line. The power of the Zhou emperor was greatly curtailed, but China still "functioned" as if was reasonably unified; conflict was at first only ritual and ceremonial. Nobles vied with each other for status and power in the meetings of the national council. However, for complicated reasons, the largest state collapsed. Little by little, the cooperation of the nobles disintegrated into more and more aggressive conflicts. In 480 BC, the Spring and Autumn Annals stop, marking the end of the period.

From 480 - 221 BC, rivalries among the nobles turned into open warfare; the end of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty is called the Warring States period for that exact reason. The power of the emperor was now challenged outright, by large states. The smaller kingdoms were swiftly gobbled up leaving only major power players. These states were no longer satisfied with status; they fought for the all out conquest of China and pursued the eradication of their enemies.

The intense conflict transformed China. Chinese technology developed dramatically, especially the military arts as the gloves came off and city walls came crashing down. Given what would ultimately happen in the Han dynasty, the Chinese military can make the strongest case for being the world's finest in the Ancient Era; its daring and innovative tactics and technology were developed during this time. The Warring States period also saw a dynamic exchange of ideas driven by the intense competition between the states. Real world politics, agriculture, construction practices, and other areas critical to military success not only flourished at this time, but created a lively culture in which learning lived and breathed in Chinese society in ways that were entirely revolutionary. However, the Warring States period not only saw intra-state competition drive learning, but led to some of the most dramatic social changes of any period in world history.

Early Chinese doctrines centered around Taoist esotericism and consultation of the I Ching to tell the fortunes of men and nations. From 551 - 479 BC, a philosopher named Kung Fu Tzu lived and taught moral philosophy which would come to overshadow these earlier traditions. Known in Europe by the corrupted version of his name, Confucius had an extraordinary impact on Chinese culture. Taoists had taught that women should be dominated by their husbands, and saw women as nothing more than property; among the rich, elderly men frequently would take child brides who held little power in their own homes. Kung Fu Tzu's teachings about women's responsibility to raise children was an important and highly original concept in the China of his day. That a wife would be responsible for raising children was virtually unheard of in a society where ideally she should be a child herself. Taoism and earlier philsophies were by no means replaced, they continued to enjoy broad popularity; and yet impact of his teachings were dramatic. Under the influence of Kung Fu Tzu, the age of marriage for women in China increased significantly and wives gained a measure of status and respect in the household as the caretakers and teachers of the next generation.

Nor were women the only beneficiaries of social change. The intense competition between the states caused the breakdown of traditional concepts of nobility. States that held to China's rigid social hierarchies were wiped out by those which sought the most talented generals and scholars regardless of their social class. Commoners gained the chance to prove themselves in battle, in diplomacy, and in any other service where their skills could support the survival of the state. These men found that China had become a land of surprising opportunities in the Warring States period. Nowhere would this be more evident than in the propaganda of Han Gaozu, the first Han Dynasty emperor. He used his peasant origins as a key part of building his new imperial mythology. Such opportunities would have been unimaginable before 480 BC.

By the end of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, only three states remained of the dozen or so that had shared China during the Spring and Autumns period. One small and one large state shared the plains, and a third mid-sized state, Qin, was centered around the mountainous Szechuan basin. The mountainous defense, and the narrow defile necessary to reach it proved to be the decisive advantage. Hundreds of years of warfare had raged back and forth across the lowlands since 480 BC; the states of the lowlands had long held the advantage, but 200 years of fighting had gradually ravaged the land. By contrast, the Qin heartland was inaccessible to its enemies serving as a secure base for armies and the farmers who supported them. In 221 BC, the Qin king defeated his last rival and established the first true state in Chinese history.

New Institutions and Limited Government

He proclaimed himself Qin emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, and ruthlessly eliminated his remaining opposition to establish a highly centralized state. Under his leadership a massive road building program was instituted, and the first sections of the Great Wall were built using massive convict labor forces. Convict laborers were plentiful, as even small crimes were punished with extreme severity. Qin Shi Huangdi survived numerous assassination attempts, but most likely had a hand in his own demise. Taoist tradition held that with the proper magical preparations, one could brew the Elixir of Life, a drink which bestowed immortality, and Qin Shi Huangdi abused himself mightily following the instructions of virtually any alchemist who promised to help him cheat death.

When he finally died, his son followed in his equally harsh footsteps. While the sword had brought the Qin to the height of power, it also undid them. A troop of farmers reporting for military service was caught in mountains by winter storms. Rather than report late, where they would have been executed, they became one of the many bands of outlaws that had multiplied in the mountains. But this band was led by an intelligent leader named Liu Bang. He gradually became the focus of anti-Qin sentiment and launched an all out civil war.

He would eventually win, and like all historical accounts it's difficult to determine what happened in the civil war from those records. However, Han Dynasty historians would write that the Qin won every battle of the war except the last. However, their incompetent, harsh rulership alienated their subordinates battle by battle until Liu Bang had gathered all the nobility to his banner. The Qin emperor was murdered and his palace burned down by his few remaining courtiers. Despite being a commoner – in fact he cultivated his common origins in his propaganda – Liu Bang invoked the Mandate of Heaven and was able to declare himself emperor. He took the name Han Gaozu, inaugurating the Han dynasty in 202 BC. These pivotal first two dynasties live on linguistically. The Qin gave their name to the land, China, and the Chinese still call themselves the Han people.

The stories of the civil war show the importance that the teachings of Kung Fu Tzu had taken on; Confucianism decried power for power's sake and taught that moral rulers would naturally command the obedience of their subjects; that people would flock to be ruled by a just ruler in exactly the way Liu Bang's propaganda depict the Qin's vassals switching sides as they fell out of favor with the emperor. The extent to which this was put into practice was always a tense issue, however, the Han emperors surrounded themselves with many men who believed staunchly in the literal truth of it, arguing that the emperor did not need armies to fight the barbarians beyond the Great Wall, but only needed to show them just rulership and they would fall into line. They never won that argument, and the Han emperors were engaged in almost continual wars beyond their borders.

However, just as Cyrus the Great ruled by something more than raw power, the Han emperors acknowledged that they were bound by moral precepts to rule justly. The use of Confucian propaganda and the promotion of many Confucian scholars are demonstrations of the new philosophy's importance at the pinnacle of Chinese power. The Han emperors also used their official power and resources to make many popular Confucian principles into cornerstones of Chinese culture. None pleased the new scholars more then when Han Wu Di, greatest of the Han emperors, created the first Chinese university in 124 BC. The university taught the values and the liberal arts education preferred by the Confucians who filled the ranks of a massive bureaucracy that ran China according to the emperor's wishes.

However, Han Wu Di is best known as a warrior. For hundreds of years, the powerful barbarian tribe known as the Xiongnu had raided China ravaging the northwest and carrying off all the loot they could. On the more practical advice of his anti-Confucian ministers in 120 BC, Han Wu Di began to wage a war of unprecedented scale against them. The barbarian Xiongnu were horseriding nomads of Central Asia, difficult even to engage much less defeat, but Han Wu Di was convinced that only a determined aggressive campaign would secure China's borders. In the end, he was right, though he did not live to see it. The Xiongnu wars would rage almost a hundred years (120 - 36 BC) when large portions of the Xiongnu began breaking away from their homeland. The power of the Chinese army was so great that they decided anywhere else would be better, and they headed west looking for safer pastures. It would be 100 AD before the last Xiongnu were chased out, but these wars were finally successful in driving out the Xiongnu once and for all.

It was one of the most fateful wars of the Ancient Era. It secured the borders of China, but caused intractable problems in other regions as the Xiongnu were not finished in the pages of history. Their steady westward drive (fleeing the Chinese) disrupted other barbarians whom they conquered creating a tidal wave of barbarians steadily rolling west. These were the tribes who crashed into the Roman empire after 250 AD. Then circa 400 AD, the Xiongnu themselves burst into Europe intent on destroying everything in their path. Their leader was called Attila, and the Romans called them the Huns. And while the Huns themselves were unsuccessful in destroying the empire, they ravaged Europe and became the stuff of Roman nightmares. Worse, the waves of Goths, Vandals, Suevi, Alans, etc., etc. which the Han armies had indirectly set in motion proved too much for Rome, precipitating the collapse of Western Europe.

Culture and Empire

The conclusion of the Xiongnu Wars was one of the most important peaks of Chinese history. After 120 BC, Han China had enjoyed stability, internal peace, commerce, art, culture, and a powerful military. It was almost certainly the most powerful and most advanced state of the Ancient Era. Han China also saw the arrival of an important new religion, Buddhism, though it would be years before the new faith found a central place in Chinese culture.

Yet not all enjoyed in Han prosperity equally. Wealth and power was once again creating a class of privileged nobles; this deeply offended the Confucians. In 9 AD a principled Confucian scholar named Wang Mang seized power from a newly crowned 5-year old emperor. Wang Mang instituted extensive Confucian reforms which included seizing the vast estates of the nobles and dividing them among the poor. His reforms did not last long but the population of roughly 60 million was thrown into an uproar as the extensive Chinese bureaucracy, about 130,000 officials, were effective at implementing it. The rich were outraged, the poor were not particularly supportive, and after a series of earthquakes and floods provided a ritual excuse for rebellion, Wang Mang was finally seized in a coup and beheaded in 23 AD. The nobility returned the Han emperors to the throne, but like the Zhou before them, they never truly recovered.

Eunuchs in charge of the royal harems became important political players for the first time and would cause problems throughout Chinese history until the destruction of the empire by the Communists in the 20th century. A succession of young emperors, possibly encouraged by assassination, gave power players the opportunity to fight for control of the regency. One particularly unruly regency was dominated by eunuchs who massacred their opponents and sold offices to the highest bidder to raise money for their luxurious living. In 189 AD, their relatively young charge died. Rather than face another long interregnum dominated by the eunuchs, a group of nobles with 2,000 troops stormed the palace and slaughtered the eunuch-controlled court. It was hard to argue with the logic at the time, but Han power had been long on the wane. This became the signal for warlords throughout the country to look out for themselves. The next year, in 190 AD, warlords sacked the Han capital, Louyang; the dynasty limped on for several more decades, a pale shadow of power, but in 220 AD, the last Han emperor was forced to abdicate in favor of a warlord.

The Age of Division (220 - 589 AD) was obviously a period of political fragmentation, and as with the collapse of Rome in Europe, it had serious repercussions for the territorial integrity of China. While the powerful Xiongnu were gone, so were the powerful Han armies which had kept them at bay. Barbarian incursions into China found not the mighty Han armies opposing them, but three states vying for power; 220 - 280 AD is a period known as the Three Kingdoms. Historically, this was a brief period where a series of warlords weakened each other slowly, destroying China from the inside. What 200 years of eunuch mismanagement had securely started, 60 years of selfish, self-destructive military campaigning completed; finally the barbarians no longer saw China as a land rich with plunder... but a prize for the taking.

After the Three Kingdoms, barbarian invasions conquered most of Northern China, greatly demoralizing Chinese pride. The cultural stress and soul searching which followed led to the rise of Buddhism, marking 280 AD as the beginning of the Medieval Era in China.

After 280 AD, barbarian raids gave way to invasions that conquered North China. It can therefore be argued, that the Three Kingdoms was a time of tremendously short-sighted warlords who stripped China defenseless in the pursuit of their own glory. As time passed, however, a rose colored vision of the period began to emerge. China began to see the Three Kingdoms as the British saw the collapse of the Roman Empire. This age was viewed as a desperate fight for the preservation of civilization, similar to the Arthurian legends of Western Europe. Specifically, numerous tales of the smallest kingdom record the splendor of its exploits. Though it was eventually defeated by its more powerful neighbors, the bravado and martial prowess of its greatest warriors live on in story and song to this day. The romance genre was not as important to Chinese history as it was to the Christians of Europe or the Muslims of the Middle East, but even China has stories of chivalry and knightly courage, and the historical events upon which these stories are based date to the Three Kingdoms period.