Crisis and Conflict in Han China, 104 BC to AD 9

Michael Loewe

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429849107
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études ethniques

This book, first published in 1974, studies the historical development of China during the Western Han dynasty (202 BC-AD 9), a time of great intellectual, religious and political change. The struggle between Reformists and Modernists is analysed using texts contemporary to the time, and this struggle was a key point in Chinese history, leading as it did to enormous change, including to economics and foreign policy.

CHAPTER 1

The Grand Beginning – 104 BC

According to the laconic record of the Han-shu, on the first day of the eleventh month of the first year of T‘ai-ch‘u, the day of the winter solstice, the Emperor made sacrifice to the Supreme Power in the Hall of Spirits.¹ The day corresponds with what would have been 25 December 105 BC had the western calendar been in use, and the economy of expression whereby the event is described may be paralleled by a famous entry in the Court Circular of St James (London) for 12 May 1937. This entry told the reader that ‘The coronation of the King and Queen took place in the Abbey Church of Westminster this day’. The entry had hardly been composed with a view to describing the intense emotion of the occasion, in which a sense of national pride and loyalty was intermingled with profound solemnity and a spontaneous outburst of rejoicing. Implications of a similar nature were almost certainly involved both in the act of worship which took place near Mount T‘ai at the end of 105 BC and in the symbolical and institutional changes which were introduced six months later. These implications derived from the intellectual outlook of the period and reveal the religious attitude of the state and the dynasty’s sense of purpose and imperial achievement.

Members of the court who attended that ceremony in 105 BC and who were aged forty or fifty years would have been glad to be alive, and thankful that they had survived so long, to an age that lay beyond that of most men and women. Had they looked to the past, on that day of the winter solstice, shivering in the sharp winds that swept in from the north, they might well have recalled with gratitude the progress that had been made in the last thirty years; progress in bringing stability to the Han court, safety to the cities and farms of north China, and a satisfying, convincing belief that the temporal order of which they formed a part was prospering under the benediction of cosmic powers.

There were men there, in all probability, who could recall the accession of the present emperor, in 141 BC, at the tender age of sixteen. For some years afterwards the court had been subject to the Empress Dowager with her passionate belief in the natural way of the world and of mankind.² Only on her death, in 135 BC,³ had it been possible to detect a change of emphasis in state affairs, an access of vigour in determining the policies of state and a resolute will to organise the empire so that it would develop to the greatest strength and wealth that it could reach. As the years went by, not a great deal was known about the new Emperor. Rumour had it that he was subject to the influence of a few magicians, some of whom had been shown to be unscrupulous charlatans,⁴ as they had failed dismally to substantiate their claims that they could bring the dead back to life, that they knew where to procure the drugs that would assure immortality, or that they possessed the secret of manufacturing gold. But this did not detract from the Emperor’s virtues. He paid a lot of attention to performing the cults of state, and he was manfully doing his best to raise a family of successors—four sons had been born by 105 BC, and one of these had carried the proud title of Heir Apparent for nearly eighteen years.

Intellectuals had found it an interesting thirty years since the emperor’s accession. The court had patronised the poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, who had come back from the south-west with strange tales of the uncouth peoples there. He had written a lot of poetry in the newly developing fu form of versification which was utterly different from the centuries’ old ‘Songs’ that had always been so highly esteemed. Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju’s works told a story, describing the deeds, lives and circumstances of sovereigns, which stirred the imagination and which could be verified in the things that one saw round about the palace. At the same time Ssu-ma Ch‘ien, who had succeeded his father as Director of Records,⁵ was in the last stages of the great history of mankind on which he and his father had been engaged for years. The book had started as a private venture, but it appeared that the author could call on the state archives when he needed first-hand evidence, and, by all accounts, the chapters would make far better reading than the other historical records such as the dry-as-dust Spring and Autumn Annals. They had the further advantage of being written in contemporary language, which any man of letters could understand.

There were other signs of the intellectual activity of these decades. Only some ten years previously the Office of Music had been founded to collect songs and to organise musical performances on state occasions. In addition, it seemed that some of the prominent men of the day were taking account of Tung Chung-shu, now either dead or on the point of death, who had done much to mould official opinion. He was a deep thinker, rather ‘touched’, as some said, for he heard the warning voice of Heaven everywhere, in a clap of thunder, or in the floods that burst out in east China all too often. But for all his insistence and his voice of doom, Tung Chung-shu may well have been right about a number of things, as he seemed to be able to explain where man’s place lay in relation to Heaven and Earth. Naturally enough he had never made much of a career in the public service, for the professional civil servants, those staid and highly efficient members of the administration, always made sure that people with a wide imagination or high intelligence were denied the highest honours or positions, in case they became too dangerous.

It was odd, perhaps, that the people who had been most admired in the last twenty years had not necessarily been those who held the highest positions of state, or those who had promoted the schemes of government. Kung-sun Hung, who had died in office as Chancellor⁶ in 127, had been one of the most respected of statesmen, but he had been somewhat old-fashioned in his views, not always in keeping with the vigorous ideas of the world in which he lived. He used to insist on the value of traditional morality, and he had had some difficulty in keeping his career going.⁷ Pu Shih had been a man of kindred spirit, who openly criticised the way in which the government was trying to organise the resources of China, and he had been dismissed from the post of Imperial Counsellor,⁸ the second most responsible position in the empire. That had been in 110.⁹

Some of the decisions which really affected people’s lives were being taken in the department of the Superintendent of Agriculture.¹⁰ The men there included a genius called Sang Hung-yang, who had been a mathematical prodigy in his youth and had gained considerable experience in business in his father’s counting house in Lo-yang.¹¹ Sang Hung-yang had been quick to apply commercial methods to the art of government, and it had been largely due to his influence that the state had established its monopolies in the mines some fifteen years previously. Naturally enough the private salt and iron magnates had loathed the scheme. They had seen the state take over the enterprises and manufacturies that they and their fathers had built up over many years and had operated by their own efforts, and they had seen the civil servants take over the plant and work it with corvée labour. Huo Kuang was another member of the government who may have been behind that scheme, but it was difficult to say for certain. He was a terribly shrewd man, but as he was not given to careless talk it was difficult to ascertain where his opinions lay. Possibly he felt that he had to be particularly careful as he was related to the Empress, and if he had got himself disliked or distrusted he might have found himself in grave danger from his rivals.

The service had expanded considerably during the last thirty years and all sorts of persons were now gaining admission and making their careers in the offices of the central, provincial or local government. Ever since the death of the Empress Dowager in 135 the government had been actively trying to attract good men to join the profession, so that there would be a sufficient number of civil servants, of whom a few would rise to become statesmen. The authorities had stipulated that candidates for the service should be honest and reasonably intelligent. They must have a good educational grounding in the right sort of texts, i.e. those with a feeling for the humanities and for moral values, and not those pragmatic books on which the previous dynasty had depended for its ruthless outlook,¹² and which had been out of favour since the beginning of the reign. The provincial authorities had responded by sending up quite a number of candidates, and some of these had been accepted for training.

But in addition there was a considerable proportion of riffraff in the service; there were a number of men whom the government had been forced to reward with official titles, for the brave way in which they had fought on the field of battle, and they were hardly fitted for public administration, by any standards.¹³ Hardship arose when such people found themselves in a position of authority to collect taxes. Such a task gave them an excellent chance of oppression and of filling their own pockets, and they would never think of sparing a household, however severely it had been hit by the quirks of nature—floods one year, droughts the next, or if a good harvest was sprouting, sure enough swarms of locusts would descend and leave the earth brown and the tree-trunks bare as leafless stumps. As it happened, this very year, the first of T‘ai-ch‘u, the locusts started spreading from the east in the summer, and had even reached as far as Tun-huang.¹⁴

Those who were really rich were all right; they could own as much land as they liked, and they could let some of it to the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface to New Issue
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 The Grand Beginning—104 BC
• 2 The Case of Witchcraft in 91 BC
• 3 The Grand Inquest—81 BC
• 4 The Fall of the House of Huo—68–66 BC
• 5 K’uang Heng and the Reform of Religious Practices —31 BC
• 6 The Office of Music—c. 114–7 BC
• 7 The Punishment of Chih-chih—36 BC
• 8 The Reign of Ai ti—7–1 BC
• 9 The Support for Wang Mang—AD 9
• Appendix The Institutions of Han Government
• Glossary of Chinese and Japanese Proper Names and Terms
• Index