The Collapse of China's Later Han Dynasty, 25-220 CE

The Northwest Borderlands and the Edge of Empire

Wicky W. K. Tse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367589158
• eBook ISBN: 9781315532318
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In the Later Han period the region covering the modern provinces of Gansu, southern Ningxia, eastern Qinghai, northern Sichuan, and western Shaanxi, was a porous frontier zone between the Chinese regimes and their Central Asian neighbours, not fully incorporated into the Chinese realm until the first century BCE. Not surprisingly the region had a large concentration of men of martial background, from which a regional culture characterized by warrior spirit and skills prevailed. This military elite was generally honoured by the imperial centre, but during the Later Han period the ascendancy of eastern-based scholar-officials and the consequent increased emphasis on civil values and de-militarization fundamentally transformed the attitude of the imperial state towards the northwestern frontiersmen, leaving them struggling to achieve high political and social status. From the ensuing tensions and resentment followed the capture of the imperial capital by a northwestern military force, the deposing of the emperor and the installation of a new one, which triggered the disintegration of the empire. Based on extensive original research, and combining cultural, military and political history, this book examines fully the forging of military regional identity in the northwest borderlands and the consequences of this for the early Chinese empires.

1
Introductory orientations

The Later Han, its northwest frontier and regional identity

In the spring of 190 CE, capitalizing on the chaos after a palace coup and the ensuing power vacuum, Dong Zhuo (d. 192 CE), a warlord from the northwestern region who had just arrived in the imperial capital city Luoyang with his troops, suddenly assumed military dominance over the imperial center. To further shore up his power, Dong tried to make use of the remaining political legitimacy of the imperial house by deposing the reigning boy emperor and replacing him with another young prince, who was then no more than a puppet of the warlord. Nevertheless, Dong was not the only one to profit from the upheaval in the imperial center. Regional governors and local strongmen across the empire wasted no time in exploiting the opportunities to expand their military forces and territories. Meanwhile, some governors and officials based on the eastern sector of the empire decried Dong’s self-proclaimed regency and, in the name of restoring legitimate order, forged a military alliance against him. Since all diplomatic means of pacifying those rivals had failed, Dong announced at a court meeting that he was going to raise a large army to crush the resistance in the east. In a submissive atmosphere that permeated the imperial court in Dong’s grip, nobody but one courtier named Zheng Tai (ca. 152–192 CE) dared to object. Upon Dong’s query, Zheng addressed the warlord in winged words,

Now, the eastern provinces and commanderies have forged alliances with one another and mobilized their people. One would not say that they are not strong. However, since the reign of Emperor Guangwu [founding emperor of the dynasty], there has been no military alert in the interior of the empire. For a long time, the people have enjoyed peace and have forgotten about war. As Confucius said, “To send the people to war without giving them training is equal to throwing them away.” Even they [i.e. the populace in the interior] are numerous, they are unable to cause us any harm … Your Excellency is a man from the western province and has been a general of the empire since a young age. You have profound knowledge of military affairs and have frequently engaged in battle. Your name resounds over the whole realm and everyone is awed by Your reputation. [Leaders of the eastern provinces such as] Yuan Benchu [Yuan Shao (d. 202 CE)] is a descendent of grand ministers and was born and grew up at the imperial capital; Zhang Mengzhuo [Zhang Miao (d. 195 CE)] is a gentleman from Dongping, well-known for his strict adherence to the principles of courtesy; Kong Gongxu [Kong Zhou (fl. 160s–190s CE)] is good at pure conversation and abstruse talk that he is able to bring withered things to life and living things to die with his eloquence. None of them, however, have the ability of commanding armies. They are no match with Your Excellency in wielding arms and facing enemies in decisive moments … It is a commonplace that there is no well-trained and brave soldier in the east … Even if they have capable people, their ranks are in disorder and they lack the legitimation from the throne. Each of them will rely on his own strength and end up in a stalemate, in which wait for others to take action rather than coordinating with each other in their advance or retreat. [People of] various commanderies in the west are accustomed to the business of warfare. Since they have long been fighting with the Qiang, even women and girls can carry and use halberds, spears, bows and arrows. How could the ignorant [eastern] people resist the strong and brave soldiers [of the west]? The victory [of the west] is assured … The men of Bing and Liang, as well as tribes of the Xiongnu and the Tuge, the voluntary followers from the Huangzhong area, and the eight stocks of the Western Qiang are the most vigorous fighters under Heaven and are feared by the people. They are all under the command of Your Excellency and serve as your teeth and claws. [Sending them to the east] will be like driving tigers and rhinoceros into packs of dogs and sheep … Moreover, Your military officers are as close to you as your heart and stomach; they have gotten along with You for a long time. There is mutual trust between you. Their loyalty can be counted on; so is their sagacious advice. Despatching our solid cohort against the loose alliance [of the east] will be like scattering dead leaves with a violent wind …¹

By comparing and analyzing the leadership, the martial quality, and the preparedness of the two sides, Zheng pointed out the overwhelming advantages Dong and his men enjoyed and concluded that Dong would match no rivals on the battlefield. A large-scale campaign of the kind Dong was planning to mobilize would not only be unnecessary but also cause disturbances for those who were afraid of being enlisted, which would only undermine Dong’s administration. Not knowing that Zheng was a partisan of the eastern alliance, Dong was very flattered by the flowery words and halted his plan. When the eastern forces later continued on their advancement into the surrounding area of the imperial capital, Dong eventually abandoned the city of Luoyang and moved all residents, from the emperor to the commoners, westwards to Chang’an, an erstwhile imperial seat of the preceding dynasties that was now in his domain. The forcible exodus wreaked terrible havoc on the city of Luoyang as Dong’s troops looted and finally burnt it to the ground.²

The fire of Luoyang in 190 CE not only destroyed a splendid imperial capital but also drew the curtain on the reign of an empire that had ruled China for over one-and-a-half centuries (its formal and somewhat dramatic end, however, did not come until 220 CE when the emperor installed by Dong Zhuo, in response to the presumably drift of heaven’s mandate from his dynasty, abdicated in favor of a scion of another warlord family).³ Burning down the capital was the physical destruction of the political and cultural center of the empire, and the brutal dethronement and enthronement of monarchs by Dong Zhuo, an outsider of the imperial court, was undoubtedly an act of sacrilege against the sovereign’s authority.⁴ With the imperial authority reaching its nadir as the emperor was held in captivity by Dong Zhuo and his generals, Dong’s rivals in the east were given a free hand to pursue their own goals – some of them were even tempted to ascend the throne themselves. The imperial realm consequently devolved into various warlord domains, and thereafter unveiled a period of political disunity for almost four centuries in Chinese history.

The empire dismembered by Dong Zhuo and his foes is conventionally known in Chinese histories as the Eastern Han or the Later Han (sometimes given as the Latter Han), which formally lasted from 25 to 220 CE. To be sure, other factors also contributed to the decline and fall of the Later Han empire, but Zheng Tai’s speech quoted above hinted at a crucial one. It provides a contemporaneous perception of what befell the empire. While Zheng Tai’s purpose was to please Dong Zhuo, in the hope of dissuading him from his plan to summon a large army, his words were not entirely flattery. It must have pointed to something that, to a certain degree, Dong and his military officers recognized as the truth. Zheng, in fact, depicted a vivid picture of the division of the empire between its western and eastern halves. Dong Zhuo and his men, a group of seasoned warriors, were from the highly militarized west; on the opposite side was the eastern coalition constituted by people who, compared with their western counterparts, were weaker and slacker in the arts of battle, and led by highly cultured men who were famed for their prestigious background and personal networks but not their martial prowess. Zheng Tai provided a lens through which a sharp difference between the martial west and the civil east in the last days of the Later Han empire can be discerned. Such a regional contrast, however, was not a new phenomenon in Zheng’s times but antedated the establishment of the Later Han empire.

This monograph is a study that aims at investigating and depicting how and why the east-west regional contrast came into existence in early imperial China and analyzing how the regional confrontation triggered the disintegration of the Later Han empire. The nature and character of the Later Han dynasty will also be discussed throughout this book. For a long time, the significance of Later Han as a transitional period between the early unified empires that began in the last quarter of the third century BCE and the nearly four centuries of political disunion that ensued from the turmoil in the 190s CE has been downplayed.⁵ Studying the collapse of the Later Han will therefore not only enrich our understanding of the dynasty but also shed light on the rise of the various regimes from the ruins of the empire in the third and fourth centuries CE.

Since it was the warlord Dong Zhuo and his troops from the northwest who dealt a fatal blow to the imperial authority by desecrating the throne and the imperial capital, the question should be asked as to why the northwesterners, rather than other groups, played the role of harbingers of doom. In order to answer this question, this study traces the political, social, and cultural development of the northwestern region in the pre- and early imperial ages, then analyzes how a highly militarized frontier society was formed, in which forging a regional identity that progressively aliened the northwesterners from the imperial center. On the other hand, the attitudes of the imperial state towards the northwest also estranged the center from the periphery. The conflicts between the periphery and the center of the Later Han state tells a story that beneath the façade of a unified empire, regional cultures and identities would function in their own ways, but when the imperial grip was loosened, they would come into conflict with the center, at worst in a catastrophic way. To set the stage for the unfolding of this story, the remainder of this chapter will address the study of the Later Han period and the role of the northwestern frontier region in early China.

The Later Han

At the very beginning of the Later Han dynasty, the founding emperor and his associates proclaimed that their regime was the glorious restoration of the Han empire whose mandate was once disrupted by the notorious usurper Wang Mang (d. 23 CE). Riding the waves of the anti-Wang Mang sentiment and the nostalgia for the Han times that resulted from the failure of Wang’s administration, Liu Xiu (6 BCE–57 CE, r. 25–57 CE), posthumously known as Emperor Guangwu, and his supporters translated his distant kinship of the Han imperial house into valuable political capital and gathered support from regional military strongmen.⁶ They promoted in their propaganda the idea of Liu Xiu as the legitimate person to revitalize the Han empire and to restore order and prosperity.⁷ They based their own regime’s legitimacy on the unbroken linkage with the Han empire. Their newly built dynasty was, therefore, not entirely novel but rather a revival and continuation of the Han empire that had ruled China in the preceding 200 years. This self-fashioned image was tremendously successful and was generally accepted not only by contemporaries but also successive generations. Liu Xiu’s feat of establishing a dynasty was praised in traditional histories as the “Guangwu Restoration” (Guangwu zhongxing), a rightful revival of the Han dynasty. The early fifth-century historian Fan Ye (398–445 CE), as an example, lamented the aforementioned 220 CE abdication in his History of the Later Han Dynasty (Hou Han shu) by using the phrase “to end Our four-hundred [years of rule]” (zhong wo sibai), lumping the reigning years of both Han dynasties together.⁸ To distinguish the Han dynasty founded by Liu Xiu and the one to which he claimed to be the heir, later generations conventionally dubbed the earlier one as Former or Western Han (206 BCE–8 CE) and the latter as Later/Latter or Eastern Han. For the people of Later Han times, their dynasty was Han, nothing more or less, and referred to Former Han as the era of the Western Capital (xijing) when the imperial capital was located at Chang’an – the west of Louyang.⁹ Nevertheless, despite the same title of Han, the two Han dynasties were different in various aspects. As I have argued elsewhere, and will reiterate at appropriate points throughout this book, modern scholarship will benefit from taking the Later Han as an empire on its own terms rather than regarding it as a sequel to the Former Han.¹⁰

In the conventional studies of the Han empire(s), the two Han dynasties do not receive equal treatment. The state of the scholarship of Han history as a whole is shaped like a dumbbell, with much emphasis placed on the first century of the Former Han, roughly from the establishment of the dynasty until the end of the reign of Emperor Wu (r. 140–87 BCE), and the last years of the Later Han leading to the well-known Three Kingdoms era (220–265 CE), leaving the second half of the Former Han and most of the Later Han in between understudied. Comparing the scholarly treatments on the two Han dynasties, including the widely read general histories of the subject, in any language, one detects that the Former receives considerably more attention than the Later Han. For example, Qian Mu, an eminent Chinese historian in the twentieth century, ended his general history of Qin (221–207 BCE) and Han dynasties in the Wang Mang interregnum (9–23 CE) without any discussion on the Later Han; Nishijima Sadao, a renowned Japanese scholar of ancient China, spent nearly 300 pages on the Former Han but less than 100 on the Later Han ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of tables
• List of maps
• The emperors of the two Han dynasties
• 1 Introductory orientations: the Later Han, its northwest frontier and regional identity
• 2 Opening new territory and partitioning the space: natural and administrative geographies of the early imperial northwest
• 3 Being peripheralized: the northwesterners in the Later Han empire
• 4 The others within: the Qiang Wars and the abandonment of the northwest
• 5 Epilogue: the beginning of the end
• Bibliography
• Index