The defining characteristics of the Chinese empire-and, indeed, of all . empires-were its large scale and the diversity of its peoples. While all of China's inhabitants have retroactively become "Chinese" today, this term is anachronistic for the pre-imperial period. The peoples of that time would have been known as the Qin, Qi, Chu, or by the name of one of the other Warring States, or as the inhabitants of a particular region (for example, the people "within the mountain passes"). The Qin's conquests united these groups politically in the third century B.C., but distinct regional cultures and "temperaments" survived. Such regional variations were not an inconvenient fact of life but, rather, became essential to an empire that justified itself by making just this kind of hierarchical distinction-between the universal, superior culture of the imperial center and the limited, particular cultures of regions and localities. This fundamental distinction manifested itself in political service, religion, literature, and many other aspects of Chinese life. And following the Qin, the Han empire would come as we will see below.The most important change brought about by the Qin conquest however, was the universal use of a single non-alphabetic script. By standardizing written communication among groups that did not speak mutually intelligible tongues, this innovation bound together all the regions of the empire and allowed the establishment of a state-sanctioned literary canon. Thus Keith Buchanan explained that "The real history of China is not so much the history of the rise and fall of great dynasties as the history of the gradual occupation of the Chinese earth by untold generations of farming folk." Buchanan, Transformation of the Chinese Earth, pp. 5-6. Worster, Rivers of Empire, 1970, ch. 2, "The Flow of Power in History." See also complete bibliography used for this case study, underneath)
In later periods even areas that did not become part of modern China-Korea, Japan, and Vietnam-shared significant elements of culture through their use of a common written script. Eventually, a common literary culture linked all those engaged in, or aspiring to, state service. In later centuries literacy would permeate lower levels of society, through Chinese theater, popular fiction, and simplified manuals of instruction.
In the centuries following the Qin conquest, the gradual demilitarization of both peasant and urban populations and the delegation of military service to marginal elements of society reversed an earlier trend among the competing states which had extended military service throughout the peasantry. In 3 I A.D. universal military service was formally abolished, not to reappear until after the end of the last empire in 1911. In place of a mobilized peasantry, military service was provided by non-Chinese tribesmen, who were particularly skilled in the forms of warfare used at the frontier, and by convicts or other violent elements of the population, who were transported from the interior to the major zones of military action at the outskirts of the empire. This demilitarization of the interior blocked the establishment of local powers that could challenge the empire, but also led to a recurrent pattern in which alien peoples conquered and ruled China.
Finally, "empire" as it developed in early China depended on the emergence of a new social elite-great families throughout the realm who combined landlordism and trade with political office-holding. Those families dominated local society through their wealth, which they invested primarily in land, and their ability to mobilize large numbers of kin and dependents. In the classical period, law and custom divided inherited property among sons, and therefore landed wealth was subject to constant dispersal. Even large estates (although no estates in this period were large by Western standards) devolved into a multitude of small plots within a few generations. In order to reproduce their wealth over time, families were obliged to find sources of income outside agriculture. Trade and money lending were vital occupations among the gentry, but the greatest source of wealth was imperial office-holding.
Like all of Chinese history, also the geography of the early empires is a tale of the country's many distinct regions. The state created by the Qin dynasty was not the modern China familiar from our maps. The western third of contemporary China (modern Xinjiang and Tibet) was an alien world unknown to the Qin and the early Han. Modern Inner Mongolia and Manchuria also lay outside their frontiers, as did the southwestern regions of modern Yunnan and Guizhou. While the modern southeast quadrant (Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi) was militarily occupied, it also remained outside the Chinese cultural sphere. The China of the early imperial period, and of much of its later history, consisted of the drainage basins of the Yellow River and the Yangzi. This area comprised all of the land that was flat enough and wet enough to be suitable for agriculture, and thus defined the historical limits of the Chinese heartland.
In the Roman
Empire, it was cheaper to ship grain or wine all the way from one end of
the Mediterranean Sea to the other than to transport it just a hundred
miles overland by wagon. Regions without water links were not integrated
in the Mediterranean economy. The same was true of China. Prior to the
construction of railroads in the nineteenth century, carrying grain more
than a hundred miles by pack animal cost more than producing the grain
itself. Except for luxury goods such as spices, silks, or gems, where small
amounts produced large profits, hauling goods overland was prohibitively
expensive. And a lack of good natural harbors in north China made trade
up and down the coast uneconomical. Consequently, almost all bulk trade
relied on inland waterways. But even this mode of transportation had its
limitations. Both of the major rivers-the Yellow River and the Yangzi-flowed
from west to east, with no navigable water links between them. No natural
intersecting lines of transport moved north and south. Over time, as the
bottom of the channel gradually rose, the river overflowed its banks. Dikes
were built ever higher to prevent flooding, and in some places the river
started to flow above the surrounding countryside. Today, in a stretch
of about 1,100 miles, the Yellow River moles along yards above the
plain. But dikes do not control silting, and floods continued to occur
on an ever larger scale. On more than 1,500 occasions during the history
of imperial China the Yellow River burst its dikes, destroying farmland,
killing villagers, and earning its description as "China's sorrow." But
under the Qin and Han empires, the Yellow River was the core of Chinese
civilization, home to around 90 percent of the population. It was separated
by mountains and hills into a northwestern region (modern Gansu and northern
Shaanxi), the central loess highlands (modern Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Western
Henan), and the alluvial floodplain (modern Henan, southern Hebei, Shandong,
northern Anhui, and northern ]iangsu). The Yangzi drainage basin, still
a frontier region in this period, was also naturally divided into three
regions: the mountain-ringed Min River basin (modern Sichuan), the middle
Yangzi (Hubei, Hunan, and ]iangxi), and the lower Yangzi (Zhejiang, southern
Anhui, and ]iangsu).
The Qin state's
conquests of its neighbors and the unified empire that emerged were built
on a foundation of reforms that Shang Yang, a minister from the state of
Wey, carried out in the years following 359 B.C. His radical, thoroughgoing
transformations of Qin military and civil life grew out of practices that
were first pioneered in Qi and in Jin and its successors. Internecine wars
among the Zhou nobility following the monarchy's loss of power and the
eastward shift of the capital in 770 B.C. had put pressure on Qi and Jin
to increase the size of their armies. Gradually these states extended military
service from the nobility and its followers to the entire population of
the capital, and then on to certain segments of the rural population. Under
Shang Yang's adaptation of these practices, Qin peasants who served in
the army were rewarded with land that their individual households could
hold and work and on which they paid taxes. But there were severe punishments
as well as rewards.
When the
fall of his last rival left the king of Qin master of the civilized world,
he and his court were fully aware of the unprecedented nature of their
achievement. As one courtier remarked, they had surpassed the greatest
feats of the legendary sages of antiquity. And now they would set about
enacting visionary programs designed to institutionalize a new era in human
history, the era of total unity.
Yet, the Qin
dynasty collapsed within two decades because it did not change enough.
Despite its proclamations of making a new start in a world utterly transformed,
the Qin carried forward the fundamental institutions of the Warring State
era, seeking to rule a unified realm with the techniques they had used
to conquer it. The Qin's grandiose visions of transformation failed to
confront the extensive changes that the end of permanent warfare had brought
about. It fell to the Han, who took over the realm after the Qin dynasty's
defeat, to carry out the major institutional programs and cultural innovations
that gave form to the vision of world empire.
Although more
than nine-tenths of the population worked on the land during the Qin and
Han empires, little was written about peasants. Elites preferred the color
and excitement of cities and the allure of power at court. Bound to the
soil, rural life smacked of the brutish and vulgar. However, Shen Nong,
the so-called Divine Farmer, figured in the Han pantheon. Credited with
the invention of agriculture, he was the patron sage of a Warring States
tradition that insisted all men should grow their own food. An early Han
philosophical compendium Master of Huainan (Huainanzi) quotes him as a
law-giver: "Therefore the law of Shen Nong says, 'If in the prime of life
a man does not plow, someone in the world will go hungry. If in the prime
of life a woman does not weave, someone in the world will be cold.' Therefore
he himself plowed with his own hands, and his wife herself wove, to set
an example to the world." (Huainanzi (The Master of Huainan). In Xin bian
zhu zi ji cheng (New Compilation of the Comprehensive Collection of the
Various Masters), Vol. 7. Taipei: Shijie, 1974.)
Some writers
adapted this doctrine to support the Qin regime, which was dependent on
rural households' productivity and suspicious of merchants' wealth, and
it was carried forward into the Han. Farming was even incorporated into
a rarely performed ritual in which Han emperors initiated the agricultural
season with three pushes of a plow in a special field. Major officials
then took a turn, in order to show through simulated labor the court's
interest in agriculture. The empress did her part by I . engaging in ceremonial
weaving for the feast of the First Sericulturist.
The limits of the Qin empire roughly defined the enduring borders of the Chinese people and their culture. Although the empire was sometimes extended into the northern steppes, Central Asia, southern Manchuria, Korea, and continental southeast Asia, these expansions were generally brief. The peoples of these regions remained beyond Chinese control until the final, non-Chinese Qing dynasty. The people surrounding China can be divided into two groups. To the north and west lay nomadic societies that lived on grasslands and formed states radically different from the Chinese model. Except for the oasis city-states of Central Asia, these regions would remain outside the Chinese cultural sphere. By contrast, the watery regions of the south and southeast, as well as the highland plateaus of the southwest, were progressively settled by Chinese emigrants. There, and in the northeast, sedentary agrarian states would gradually adopt Chinese forms of writing and state organization, but these developments had scarcely begun during the early imperial dynasties.
In dynastic terms, Emperor Wu's reign reached a peak in the Western Han. His long military expeditions and colonial efforts eventually exhausted the nation's economic resources and manpower, and hence affected, and even broke in some cases, the established political, economic, and intellectual balance and stability of the Western Han empire. In long-range terms, it was Wuti's great expansion that eventually precipitated the decline of the Western Han dynasty. Han Wu-ti and his new empire have been a highly controversial topic in Chinese history. On the one hand, many regarded the emperor as a model ruler and empire builder. But others considered him the personification of pretentiousness, ruthlessness, and selfishness and his great empire a project of selfdestruction and a symbol of the misery of the common people. This controversy dates even to Wu-ti's own time. In 89 B.C., he issued an edict deploring his expansionist adventures and expressing his regret about the sufferings they had inflicted on the people.All of this has increased the complexity and variations in historical discourses on the origins, development, and consequences of Emperor Wu's new empire.
The high degree of centralization in the Han government contributed to the internal stability necessary for the Han Court to mobilize large military campaigns. From the time Kao-ti ascended the imperial throne in 202 to the end of his reign in 195 B.C., practically every year the Han Court was threatened by the rebellions of feudal states. These states controlled almost two-thirds of the Han territory, and some of them were extremely large and powerfuL The Ch'i kingdom controlled six provinces (chun) with seventy-three districts (hsien), the Tai kingdom three provinces with fifty-three districts, the Ch'u kingdom three provinces with thirty-six districts, and the Wu kingdom three provinces with fifty-three districts. These kingdoms were virtually independent in every aspect. Furthermore, they had their own royal courts and governing systems, independent economic resources and financial institutions, and, most important, independent armies. The Wu, for example, had an army of over five hundred thousand men, with an additional three hundred thousand from its ally Nan-yueh in the south. Moreover, the powerful generals who helped Uu Pang (the later Kao-ti) create the empire also constituted a threat to the court. The reign of Emperor Hui (Uu Ying) lasted only seven years (195-188 B.C.). The emperor was young, and Empress Lii held the real power. Even though this was a period of consolidation of Han rule, the struggle for power between the Lii clan and the imperial family (Uu clan) was already under way. In the next period, under the reign of Empress Lii (187-180 B.C.), this struggle reached its zenith. The empress ruled through members of her own family; the important members of the imperial clan were in their distant kingdoms and marquisates. At the same time, the threat of the powerful generals continued. The court was in a state of great tension. After Empress Lii's death in 180 B.C., the whole Lii clan was massacred by a joint force of members of the imperial family and Kaotsu's old loyal henchmen. Emperor Wen (Wen-ti, Liu Heng, 180-157 B.C.) was enthroned, although he had not been the heir apparent. He was the oldest living son of Kao-tsu and had been the king of Tai (mainly Shansi) before being chosen emperor. Moreover, as he stated in an edict in the first year of his reign, at this time the king of Ch'u (Uu Chiao, Kiangsu) was his youngest uncle, the king ofWu (Uu P'i, Kiangsu and Chekiang) was his brother (actually a cousin), and the king of Huai-nan (Liu Chang, Anhui) was his younger brother. There were other strong kingdoms of the Uu clan in outlying regions of the empire. At one time, he was even reluctant to accept the throne under these circumstances. The emperor was not in a position to deal effectively with these feudal states, and tensions certainly existed between the states and the Imperial Court. Some of these kings disregarded the orders of the court and plotted rebellion against the emperor. At least two feudal kings openly rebelled against him: the king of Chi-pei in 177 B.C. and the king of Huai-nan in 175 B.C. By the beginning of the reign of Emperor Ching, the conflict between the feudal kings and the Han Court had reached a climax. While the imperial government was preparing to curtail the power of the various feudal kings, a rebellion of seven of the strongest kingdoms-Wu, Ch'u, Chiao-hsi, Chiao-tung, Tzu-ch'uan, Chi-nan, and Chao-broke out in 154 B.C. It was the most serious revolt during the former Han period. It lasted several months and was finally suppressed by the imperial forces under the generals Chou Ya-fu and Tou Ying, which killed more than 130,000 rebel troops. The kings of the seven rebel states all were forced to commit suicide or killed by the imperial forces.
It is clear that during the period from 202 to 154 B.C. the Han empire was not politically stable. The court was frequently threatened by various unruly groups and rebellions. It was impossible for the court to concentrate on external problems or launch all-out military campaigns against the Hsiung-nu and others while the constant threat of internal rebellions continued. For instance, during the reign of Emperor Wen the Hsiung-nu menace became more serious, and so did the threat of the feudal kings. In 177 B.C., the Hsiung-nu's Worthy (Wise) King of the Right invaded the regions south of the Yellow River and northern Pei-ti (in modem Ninghsia). But when Emperor Wen went to Tai (in northern Hopei) and prepared to lead a campaign against the Hsiung-nu the king of Chi-pei (in southern Shantung) immediately took the opportunity afforded by the emperor's absence from the capital to start a rebellion. The emperor was forced to call off the expedition and order his forces to attack the rebellious king.
After 154 B.C., the feudal kingdoms were never again a major threat to the Han Court. From this year to the last quarter of the second century B.C., the Han Court used various means to render the existence of feudal kingdoms merely nominal, and its effort to eliminate more feudal kingdoms continued: three more were destroyed early in Wu-ti's reign. After the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms, Emperor Ching also undertook special measures to change the structure of the feudal kingdoms. First, he took away the independence of their political system. He eliminated the position of yu-shih tai-fu (the imperial secretary or deputy chancellor in the royal court) in 147 B.C. and degraded the status of the chancellor in the royal court by changing its title from ch' eng-hsiang to hsiang (chief adviser) in 145 B.C. The next year he changed the governing system in the kingdoms by drastically reducing the number of officials and assigning new titles to them, showing their inferior status compared to officials in the central government. To further eliminate any possible regional division, the emperor even ordered in 142 B.C. all marquises (ch'e-hou) not to assume their posts in their respective marquisates. Second, starting in 147 B.C. the emperor gradually eliminated the feudal kings' economic independence by nationalizing mintage and the currency system and imposing a monopoly on various essential material goods. Third, Emperor Ching broadened the base of entrance into officialdom to include the common people in order to reduce the monopoly of official positions by the hereditary aristocrats and their wealthy followers. In 142 B.C., he reduced the long-established financial requirement for official appointments by 60 percent, from one hundred thousand to forty thousand in cash (copper coins). In the same year, he decreed that merchants, who were usually required to register with the government and were the allies and supporters of the ambitious feudal kings, be prohibited to serve as officials either by merit or by open purchase. With all these aggressive measures, the possibility of any successful challenge to the Imperial Court by the feudal kingdoms and their local supporters was almost completely eradicated under Emperor Ching.
At the same time, there were conscious efforts to transfer the administrative power from regular cabinet members to officials close to the emperor, as symbolized by the rise of the Inner Court (Nei-t'ing or Nei-ch'ao) to usurp the power of the Chancellery and the Imperial Secretariat. All these measures plus other formal and informal means of control and inspection brought fundamental changes in the power structure and distribution of the Han government. The power of the emperor and the centralization of the government reached their highest degree during the reign of Emperor Wu. The long struggle for power between such powerful pressure groups as the imperial in-laws, the imperial family, and those who were instrumental in the founding of the empire was finally ended during Wu-ti's reign.
Basic changes in relationship between the central political power and local society also took place. Before Emperor Wu, the monarchy was without real and close ties to local society. Kao-ti, founder of the dynasty, followed a Ch'in practice of moving the rich local elites and the powerful aristocratic families, which numbered more than one hundred thousand, from the eastern regions to the Kuan-chung area (Shensi) under the direct supervision of the central government so that these people could not induce tension and disturbances with their wealth and influence. At the same time, families of his meritorious assistants, who were given high-ranking positions in the government, were moved to the district where his tomb was constructed, which was hence named Ch'angling. Following this latter practice, succeeding rulers moved the families of officials with an annual salary of 2,000 bushels (shih) of grain and local rich elites, merchants and stalwarts to districts and towns of their tombs (ling-i), located in the capital area and constructed in their own times. This measure evidently combined the control of certain potentially dangerous segments of population-in the case of local elites and stalwarts-and the traditional system of hostage taking-in the case of high-ranking officials. All of these practices, however, were not strictly enforced on a large scale until Wu-ti's time. 's Moreover, even if they were, they would have achieved only one goal-social stability through population control-and that alone would not be effective enough to enable the central government to fully mobilize the massive manpower and economic resources needed for long and large-scale military expeditions against the Hsiung-nu.
Two basic measures were undertaken in the early period of Wu-ti's long reign. The first was the reinforcement of the practice of population migration. In 139 B.C., the second year of his reign, the emperor first established his tomb in Mou County, which was later called Mou-ling. Next year, for the sake of positive encouragement, he granted to those who moved to Mou-ling two hundred thousand ch'ien in cash to each household and 200 mu (or mou, Han acres) of land. In 127 B.C., two years after his new military offensives had begun, Emperor Wu ordered that stalwarts from provinces and kingdoms and those whose property was worth 3 million ch'ien in cash or more be moved to Mouling. The purpose was to increase the population of the capital area and at the same time prevent the spread of evil and vicious elements in the provinces and kingdoms. The second measure that Emperor Wu undertook to exert thorough control over local conditions was to gradually incorporate leaders of local pressure groups not moved to the capital area into governmental institutions as bureaucrats. This policy was usually carried out by the provincial governors. But their efforts were directed and controlled by the central government.
Another measure in the imperial government's quest for internal political and social control and stability was the use of "harsh officials" (k'u-li). These officials believed in strict legal order as the basis of good government, in the use of cruel measures against unlawful conduct, and in the equality of all peoplecommoners, noblemen and officials-before the law. They held positions of various types and ranks, such as governor (t'ai-shou or chun-shou), regional military commandant (tu-wei or chun-wei, chief commandant), capital commandant (chung-wei), prefect or governor of the capital (nei-shih), palace counselor (chung ta-fu), commandant of justice (t'ing-wei), general, clerks in offices of different levels, and others. They often employed tricky and vicious investigators to look for unlawful activities. Their main targets of investigation and persecution were members of the rich elite, the nobility, corrupt officials, stalwarts and men of evil influence, and racketeers and vicious merchants. With only one exception in Kao-ti's time, officials with such political and legal philosophies did not gain influence and prominence until late in Ching-ti's reign-after the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms was crushed in 154 B.C. Emperor Ching was the first Han ruler to send an official with a harsh reputation to a specific region. In about 151-150 B.C., the famous Chih Tu was appointed governor of Chi-nan (in central Shantung) to restrain the Hsien clan. This clan consisted of over three hundred households and was so notorious for its power and lawlessness that none of the two thousand officials in the area could do anything to control it. Chi executed the worst offenders of the Hsien clan, along w!th their families, and the rest were overwhelmed with fear. After a year or so under Chih T u's rule, no one in the province dared even to pick up belongings that had been dropped on the streets and roads. Other harsh officials operated in much the same way and at times employed even harsher measures. Among the people they arrested, prosecuted, and executed in the provinces and kingdoms, as well as in the capital area, were court ladies, feudal kings, high-ranking officials, local elites, rich merchants, and commoners. Such officials became more dominant early in Wu-ti's reign. They reached the highest echelon of the bureaucracy, and their measures became even more cruel. The governor of Tinghsiang (in southern Suiyuan) executed four hundred people in one day. The governor of Ho-nei (eastern Honan) executed over one thousand families. Their blood is said to have flowed over ten Ii (Han miles). In the inquest of conspiracy for rebellion conducted by the feudal kings of Huai-nan (mainly Anhui), Heng-shan (in Anhui), and Chiang-tu (central Kiangsu), Chang T'ang-the most influential harsh official of early Han times-was in charge of investigations and judgments. He put to death tens of thousands, at times merely on circumstantial evidence. These officials became so notorious that they were given such nicknames as Vicious Hawk, Vicious Killer, and the like.
Furthermore,
in 130 B.G Chao Yii and Chang Tang, two of the most notorious and influential
harsh officials at the time, were empowered by Emperor Wu to draw up various
new statutes and ordinances. Among these were the laws that anyone who
knowingly allowed a criminal act to go unreported was as guilty as the
criminal and that officials could be prosecuted for the offenses of their
inferiors or superiors in the same bureau. From this time on, the laws
became more complicated, and they were applied with increasing strictness.
This was a pronounced departure from earlier Han practice, which in general
stressed simpler laws and lenient applications. In the earlier reigns of
Emperors Kao and Hui and Empress Lii, as recently discovered Han era documents
show, there were only twenty-eight sets of statutes and ordinances and
a number of cases and precedents for reference and comparison. The principal
legal philosophy was "following the established tradition."20 The clear
intent of this change was to impose strict political and social order by
means of harsh legal institutions and enforcement. Small wonder, then,
that of the fifteen notorious harsh officials of Former Han times whose
biographies appear in the Shih-chi (Historical Records) and Han-shu (History
of the Former Han Dynasty), ten flourished in Wu-ti's time. All were extremely
influential in decision making at the highest level, and a majority of
them were instrumental in the formulation of the most important new political
and economic measures undertaken during Wu-ti's reign.
During the
seven years of the Ch'in-Han transition from 208 to 202 B.C., the main
force of production in the economy, the population of able bodies, was
drastically reduced because of the continuing war destruction and carnage.
There were at least eighty large-scale battles and over one hundred fifty
of lesser scale. However, the casualties in each of these bloody conflicts
ranged from several thousands to tens of thousands and even hundreds of
thousands. In 207 B.C., for example, over two hundred thousand Ch'in soldiers
were buried alive by the rebel leader Hsiang Yii (232-202 B.C.) in Hsin-an
(east of modern Mien-ch'ih in western Honan). Overall, the Chinese population
at the beginning of the Han dynasty was reduced to less than one-half of
the former Ch'in figure of 28 million by the end of the dynasty. In many
regions, the loss was even greater. Chii-ni District (in Hopei), for example,
had only one-sixth of the Ch'in era population left, down from thirty thousand
households to five thousand. The large cities generally, retained only
20 to 30 percent of their former populations due to war deaths and flight.
The great T'ang historian Tu Yu (A.D. 735-812) estimated that the population
of the Han dynasty at its founding was less than one-third of the population
of China in the Warring States period (404-222 B.c.). The modem scholar
Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (1873-1929) estimated the Han population in Emperor Kao-tsu's
time at only about 5 or 6 million, but more recently others have estimated
it to have been in the range of 8.8 to 18 million; my own estimate is 12
to 16 million.
The founders
of the Han took special measures to revitalize the bleak economic and social
conditions. The government first instituted a general policy of economic
relaxation and reduction of governmental spending. The theory was that
government should interfere in the people's lives as little as possible.
This was intended to correct the Ch'in policy of working the people so
hard in public works and military expeditions that they eventually rebelled.
At the same time, the Han Court also initiated various measures for economic
recovery in different realms of concern. During the early Former Han, industrial
and commercial growth was noticeable. But Han industry and commerce did
not begin their full development in the first three reigns, 202-180 B.C.,
of the new dynasty, since the primary concern of the Han leaders then was
full recovery of the agricultural sector. As it was in the Ch'in dynasty,
the main economic concern of the Han founders was agriculturalism (nung-pen),
with commerce and industry being regarded as "nonessential" economic pursuits
(mo-yeh). During the reigns of Emperors Wen and Ching, 180-141 B.C., commerce
and industry gradually achieved significant growth, as the empire's agricultural
production had reached a very high level, population had increased by four
times, and living standards (consumption of goods) had risen significantly.
On the average, the minimum annual rate of business profits was 20 percent
and higher. In fact, the profits of certain industries and businesses were
so huge that later in the next reign, Han Wu-ti's time, they were channeled
into a well-organized new system of governmeQt monopolies in order to finance
the large-scale military campaigns and eliminate the economic threat to
the imperial government posed by the tremendous wealth of the industrialists
and merchants.
There were,
according to Su-ma Ch'ien (145-86 B.C.), forty-six notable types of commodities
of great value-major sources of industrial and commercial wealth-in market
towns and commercial metropolises, and twenty-two of these were produced
through industrial processes of varying degrees of sophistication. Regional
specialization emerged and with it the rise of prosperous interregional
trade. Major industrial enterprises were those of iron, salt, and textiles.
The centers of the textile and clothing industries (silks, silken fabrics,
textiles made of vegetable fibers, and so on) were mainly in Ch'i and Lu
(modern Shantung), Ch'en-liu (in modern Honan), and Shu (in modern Szechwan).
Lin-tzu (Lin-tse) of Ch'i and Hsiang-i of Ch'en-liu were the two largest
centers. Lin-tse was famous for garments and Hsiang-i for fine embroideries.
The speciality of Shu was hemp cloth. Information on the size of these
industries in early Former Han times is not available. But in 48 B.C. each
of the three government garments offices (San-fu) in Ch'i alone generally
employed two to three thousand men. Together with the fact that textiles
were a major source of industrial and commercial wealth, this leads us
to assume that a large preexpansion textile factory could easily have employed
over a thousand men.
The iron and
salt industries were spread over various regions of the empire, with the
largest centers located in what are modern Shantung, Szechwan,' Kiangsu,
Chekiang, Anhui, and Hopei. From 120 to 110 B.C., the Han government reorganized
its system of salt and iron monopolies. It established special offices
for supervision and management in areas where salt and iron production
and profits were concentrated. In early Han times, there were forty iron
offices in forty chun (provinces) and kuo (feudal kingdoms), and thirty-eight
salt offices in thirty chun and kuo. Excluding regions that were acquired
during Wu-ti's expansion, forty-five iron offices and thirty-one salt offices
were in Han regions of the preexpansion period. These regions most likely
were centers-or, in some cases potential centers-of salt and iron production
in the pre-expansion period. The chun and kuo where these Han offices were
located are listed in table I, together with their modern geographical
locations. The wide geographical range of salt and iron production is clearly
shown in the table.
Information
on the total work force of salt and iron laborers in the early Former Han
period is not available. But certain sources indicate that salt and iron
magnates often employed more than a thousand men to manufacture salt and
process iron. Kung Yii (123-43 B.C.) observed in 44 B.C. that the various
iron offices employed an annual work force of over one hundred thousand
men, mainly slaves, to gather iron and copper. It seems that the salt and
iron monopoly implemented in the years 120-110 B.C. was mainly a new attempt
to control these businesses, not a rapid expansion of the existing enterprises.
Judging from our examination of salt and iron offices, about 88 percent
of the production facilities of salt and iron probably existed in the preexpansion
period. If this is the case, then very likely the total annual work force
of salt and iron laborers in the early Former Han was around eighty-eight
thousand men.
Salt and iron
businesses were evidently the most profitable enterprises in early Former
Han times. They produced such wealthy and powerful families as the Cho
and Cheng of Shu, the K'ung of Wan (in modern Honan), and the Ping of Ts'ao
(in modern Shantung), all in the iron enterprise; and the Tiao Hsien of
Ch'i in the salt enterprise. The Chos and Chengs grew so rich that they
each owned a thousand young slaves. Their pleasures in possessing lands
and in fishing, archery, and hunting were comparable to those of great
feudal lords. The K'ung family's fortune reached several thousand catties
of gold, and its head resembled the young men of princely rank in his behavior,
disposition, and activities. The wealth of the Ping family amounted to
100 million in cash. The Tiao Hsien's wealth grew to several tens of millions
in cash. Needless to say, all of these families engaged in diverse trading
and other commercial activities and employed every possible means-including
lending money, skillful use of slaves, and political contacts with feudal
lords, provincial governors, and prime ministers of feudal kingdoms-to
increase their fortunes. Their wealth and power exerted great influence
on the lifestyles and thinking of people in various walks of life. The
traders in Nan-yang (modem Hopei) all imitated the K'ung family's lordly
and openhanded ways. In Tsou and Lu (in modem Shantung), many people abandoned
scholarly pursuits and, following the model of the Ping family, turned
to the quest for profits. Various feudal states, particularly Wu in the
south and Chao (in Hopei) in the north, engaged in the production of iron
and salt for huge profits and at times became the largest producers of
these commodities. In fact, the tremendous financial strength derived from
iron and salt production enabled these states to threaten the central government
and invited it to take them over.
Copper, the
source of coins, was another profitable industry. It usually went with
iron manufacture. A considerable number of the iron manufacturers also
engaged in copper mining and casting. Shu and Tan-yang (in mqdern Anhui)
and part of the Wu kingdom (the lower Yangtze Valley), among others, were
the well-known copper-producing regions. At the time of the emperors Wen
and Ching (180-141 B.C.), the two most productive copper mines were located
in mountains in Yen-tao of Shu (modem lung-ching of Szechwan) and Ch'angshan
of Y ii-chang (modem An-chi of Chekiang). The former was granted to the
high official Teng Tung by Emperor Wen; the latter was in the territory
of the king of Wu (Uu P'i, 213-154 B.C.). Both Teng and the king of Wu
minted coins from copper mined from the two mountains by tremendous numbers
of workers. The result was that the coins of Wu and of Teng spread all
over the empire. Teng accumulated wealth that exceeded that of a vassal
king. For the king of Wu, the mintage of coins, together with his salt
enterprise, produced so much revenue that he not only dispensed with taxation
but was economically confident enough to start a rebellion against the
imperial government.
But Han expansionism
would also become their downfall, because the Han needed nomads to join
the army, yet they were never fully incorporated into the military hierarchy.
Instead, the Han government relied on the standing frontier commands to
keep them under control. As more and more tribes moved inside the frontiers,
this burden proved too great for the relatively small armies in the frontier
camps. Loyalty was also weak among the convicts and professionals who spent
their lives at the frontier and were linked to the Han state only through
the person of their commander. Another reason for the failure of the Eastern
Han army in the second century was its success in the first. Just as the
armies of the Warring States and early Western Han had been designed to
fight Sinitic rivals, so those of the Eastern Han had been aimed at the
northern Xiongnu. With their defeat, many of the "inner barbarians" who
had helped the Han in the first century turned against it. The Southern
Xiongnu, Wuhuan, and Xianbei lost their chief motive for submission to
the Han, as well as their chief source of bonuses for military service.
So the Wuhuan and Southern Xiongnu turned increasingly to internal pillage
for income, while the Xianbei replaced the Xiongnu as the chief external
threat. To the west, the problem was even more severe, for this area suffered
through the disastrous Qiang wars.
Every army
is intended to fight a certain type of war or counter a particular kind
of threat. The entire Eastern Han defense faced north, providing a screen
against small-scale raids and a warning in case of invasions. Its large
cavalry forces were assembled for offensive expeditions against a united
foe with substantial armies. Such dispositions were of little use against
the Qiang, located to the west beyond the Han's border defenses. These
nomads lacked any over arching political order and did not form large confederacies.
The consequences of any defeat were thus limited, and victories, however
small, soon led to major rebellions as scattered groups assembled under
a successful leader. For the same reasons, peace agreements with the Qiang
could not last for long. Moreover, scattered groups of Qiang lived throughout
the western and northwestern territories, as well as beyond the frontier.
There was no clear geographic boundary between the Qiang and the Han, and
under the Eastern Han the Qiang were resettled in the old capital region.
The only defense against such an adversary was to move Han farmers and
soldiers into the provinces, so that no settlements were left exposed to
low-level attacks and the Qiang could be absorbed into the Han economy
and polity.
But whenever
the Han attempted such a policy, it ended in failure. In 61 B.C. Zhao Chongguo
propose founding military colonies in the west (Honan), Ho-nei (Honan),
Chi-nan (Shantung), T'ai-shan (Shantung), and Shu and Kuang-Han (Szechwan).
In addition, shipbuilding, weaponry, and lumber were profitable industries,
particularly in regions such as Lu-chiang, Nan (Hupei), and Shu. Animal
husbandry was an important enterprise in northern and northwestern border
territories. Pottery and lacquerware also were prosperous industries in
certain regions.
With these
commercial and industrial developments, the cities rapidly expanded. In
Wu-ti's time, there were twenty Han cities with populations ranging from
50,000 to 650,000 people, and sixty cities of 20,000 to 56,000. The two
largest cities in population were Ch'ang-an, the imperial capital built
only in Hui-ti's reign (especially in 192-189 B.C.), and Lin-tzu (in Shantung);
the former had a population over 500,000 in a walled city of 13.5 square
miles, and the latter had 650,000 in a walled city of 9.31 square miles.
The next five largest were Yuan (in Nan-yang, Honan), with 4°0,000;
Ch'eng-tu (in Chengtu, Szechwan), with 380,000; Han-tan (Han-tan, Hopei),
with 27°,000; La-yang (Loyang, Honan), with 260,000; and Lu (Ch'ii-fu,
southern Shantung), with 23°,000. These seven cities were the major
Han commercial and industrial hubs and were located in the key economic
regions in the west, central, northeast, east, and southwest. They were
the distribution centers of special regional products such as iron, gold,
copper, textiles, lacquerware, and agricultural goods. In essence, they
were the nerve centers of the Han economic and business world. The cities
were naturally the centers of political command and economic and military
mobilization to support longtime war efforts. Considering the fact that
at the beginning of the Han dynasty these major urban centers had only
20 to 30 percent of the surviving Ch'in population, their tremendous growth
and size certainly informed the stupendous increase of the Han population
in the sixty some years before Wu-ti's reign. At the same time, it was
also recorded that all earlier Han reigns had made special and aggressive
efforts to promote population growth. Emperor Kao, for example, decreed
in 200 B.C. that all taxes be forgiven for a family with a newborn baby.
Under Emperor Hui, the court even ordered that a woman's whole family be
levied taxes five times higher than normal if she was not married by the
age of twenty-nine (thirty sui). Under these aggressive population policies
and favorable economic conditions, it is reasonable to assume that the
population would have increased over time. In fact, the Han population
is estimated, in different primary sources and later references, to have
reached the range of 40 to 50 million before 150 B.C. and increased to
the range of 50 million by Wu-ti's early reign, almost five times the early
Han total.
By examining
the availability of the Han economic sources and resources and the strength
of the Han military, modem scholars have estimated that in Wu-ti's time
the Han government revenue was about 12 billion in cash. However, as soon
as the colonists had pacified the were allowed to return to their former
homes. A few years I was another attempt to settle a permanent agricultural
popula1 region, and others between 101 and 104 A.D. But when the Q exploded
on a large scale in IIO A.D., the government pulled back to Chang' an.
Loc;al officials sent out from the interior, I knowledge of the region,
ordered the abandonment of three (eries, the confiscation of crops, and
the leveling of homes so d would return. By 111 the population of the entire
former cap] in Guanzhong was in flight. An attempt was made between 12
to restore the abandoned commanderies and establish militaf) but when Qiang
uprisings resumed in 137, no significant ref had taken place.
Throughout
the Eastern Han, particularly in the second cen the population of Guanzhong
and the old capital region dras dined under the continuous pressure of
Qiang onslaughts . Even in the early decades of the first century, the
northwe regions had been seriously depopulated. The policies of resettj.ing
barbarians inside China and sending convicts to the frontier may have been
in part an attempt to repopulate these regions. However, these measures
did little to check the demographic decline of the frontier. Census evidence
shows that, with one exception, all commanderies in the west and northwest
suffered significant losses, many of them more than 80 or 90 percent. While
the figures are unreliable, a change of this magnitude, especially when
contrasted with the relative stability and even some increases in inner
provinces, probably indicates an actual decline in the Han population in
the border regions.
Contemporary
observations support these statistics. Wang Fu (ca. 90-165 A.D.) noted:
"Now in the border commanderies for every thousand li there are two districts,
and these have only a few hundred households. The Grand Administrator travels
about for ten thousand li, and it is empty. Fine soil is abandoned and
not cultivated. In the central provinces and inner commanderies cultivated
land fills the borders to bursting and one cannot be alone. The population
is in the millions and the land is completely used. People are numerous
and land scarce, and there is not even room to set down one's foot." Writing
several decades later, Cui Shi described a situation that was virtually
identical.
The Eastern
Han government made futile attempts to prevent people from leaving the
frontier regions and to encourage those who had left to return. The Book
of the Later Han (Hou Han shu) states, "Under the old system [under the
Han] frontier people were not allowed to move inward." In 62 A.D. Emperor
Ming offered a payment of twenty thousand cash to any refugee from the
frontier who returned to his old home. As clear evidence for this ban on
inward movement, Zhang Huan, who came from Dunhuang in the far northwest,
was allowed to move to an inner commandery in r67 A.D. only as a special
reward for meritorious service.
But these attempts
to stabilize the frontier population failed. Between 92 and 94 A.D., Emperor
He proclaimed geographic quotas to correlate the number of people recommended
as "filially pious and incorrupt" (the primary route to office) with the
population of a region. For every twenty thousand registered people, a
commandery would be allowed to recommend one man per year. For a population
between ten thousand and twenty thousand, a commandery was granted one
recommendation every three years. But in ror A.D. frontier commanderies
with a population of between ten thousand and twenty thousand were allowed
to recommend one man every year. Those with a population of between five
thousand and ten thousand could recommend one every other year. Aad those
with fewer than five thousand were granted one every three years. This
change shows that the populations of frontier districts were low and declining.
Even the reduced limits were too high for many commanderies. Wang Fu observed
that because of low population, the commanderies in his region had been
unable to recommend even a single man for more than a decade. An examination
of the geographic origins of the "filially pious and incorrupt" recorded
in the Book of the Later Han and on stone inscriptions bears out his complaint.
The conduct
of the Eastern Han government in the Qiang wars demonstrates a fundamental
weakness of the regime: its single-minded focus on the Guandong region.
The scale of the Qiang disasters and the collapse of Han civilization in
the west and northwest were direct consequences of the eastern government's
ultimate decision to leave the frontier commanderies defenseless and to
remove population from the region. This lack of interest in the security
of the west and northwest, which can be observed throughout the Eastern
Han, stems from the shift of power to the new capital in the east.
When the Western
Han capital was based in Guanzhong, the government pursued a policy of
forcibly resettling population into new towns for the maintenance of imperial
tombs. Through resettlement, powerful provincial families lost their local
basis of influence and fell under the sway of the imperial court. Grain
and other foodstuffs were eventually imported from the more productive
Guandong region to maintain the demographic and economic well-being of
Guanzhong.
The Western
court regarded the area "east of the passes" with a mixture of suspicion
and contempt. Jia Yi (201-169 B.C.) observed to the emperor: "The reason
for which you have established the Wu, Hangu, and Jin passes is largely
to guard against the enfeoffed nobles east of the mountains." In the Discourses
on Salt and Iron (Yan tie lun) Sang Hongyang (executed 80 B.C.) remarked:
"People have a saying, 'A provincial pedant is not as good as a capital
official.' These literati all come from east of the mountains and seldom
participate in the great discussions of state affairs." Although men from
Guandong played a larger role in Western Han government after Emperor Wu's
death, only when the capital moved to Luoyang did the situation truly change.
The Eastern
Han founder Guangwu and most of his followers came from just south of Luoyang,
and the rest of his closest adherents came from the great families of Guandong.
Moving the capital from Guanzhong to Guandong transferred political power
to their region.~ This break with the past was made self-consciously and
deliberately, without regard to strategic considerations, particularly
the fact that the newly reunited Xiongnu were drawing near Luoyang. Throughout
the Eastern Han the court entertained many proposals to abandon territory
in the north or west, leaving the old capital region vulnerable. In 35
A.D. officials urged that everything to the west of the Gansu corridor
be abandoned, but this was blocked by Ma Yuan, a man from the northwest.
In 11O A.D., in the wake of the Qiang uprisings, a proposal called for
the abandonment of all of Liang province (from the western end of the Gansu
corridor at Dunhuang east to the borders of the capital region around Chang'ang
and even some of the old imperial tombs. Opponents of this idea argued
that the warrior traditions of the western people were essential to the
security of the empire, and that moving them toward the interior would
incite rebellion. By the end of the Western Han the office of provincial
governor ha grown from a mere inspector into the chief local administrator.
As the governors'
power increased under the Eastern Han, they were able to appoint and dismiss
officials within their provinces without the approval of the court. Holders
of the office thus became autonomous regional lords who, though subject
to dismissal, held sway within their own jurisdiction. Their powers included
military duties, and in the second century A.D., when barbarian incursions
and banditry led to constant combat, the governor replaced the grand administrator
as the person in command of the state's emergency levies . As civil order
decayed and provincial forces spent more time in the field, they took on
the characteristics of semiprivate standing armies.
This development
was a major change in Han local administration and an important step in
the fall of the Eastern Han. The Han dynasty had based its administration
on the commandery and the district-a two-tier structure that fragmented
local power into small units to avoid threats to the central government.
The provincial governor, however, became a third tier, with command of
large populations, great wealth, and significant armed forces-resources
that could challenge the authority of the imperial government. In the second
half of the second century A.D., governors became semi-independent warlords.
When Liu Yan took office as governor of Yi province, he massacred important
local families, gave his own sons major positions, recruited personal followers
from among refugees, and defied imperial commands. In similar fashion,
Liu Yu established his own little kingdom as governor of You province.
He pacified local barbarians, sheltered refugees, encouraged crafts, and
gathered armies. Liu Biao pursued an identical course of action in Jing
province.
By the late
Eastern Han, governors had obtained the power to recruit troops on their
own initiative. This in effect recognized their right to command private
armies. In 178 A.D. when the provinces of Jiaozhi and Nanhai (in southern
Guangdong and Vietnam) rebelled, Zhu Jun was sent out as governor and empowered
to recruit "household troops" (one of the earliest uses of the term) to
form an army. The commentary identifies these troops as his servants and
slaves. In 189 A.D. He Jin sent Bao Xin to his home near Mount Tai to recruit
troops for the purge of the eunuchs. By the time Bao Xin returned, He Jin
had been slain. Bao Xin went back to Mount Tai, recruited twenty thousand
men, and joined forces with Cao Cao, the warlord who ultimately conquered
the Yellow River Valley and whose son formally brought the Han dynasty
to an end. The delegation to individuals of the power to recruit private
armies in their home regions shows that the central government had lost
its ability to rule the population. Only through the personal networks
of eminent families in their home regions could the state mobilize a military
force.
Recruits in
the provinces developed strong ties to those who recruited them. In 88
A.D. a certain Deng Xun had recruited Xiongnu soldiers to act as guards
against the Qiang. Contrary to normal practice, he allowed these tribesmen
and their families to live in his fortress, and he even let them into his
own garden. They swore personal loyalty to Deng Xun and allowed him to
raise several hundred of their children as his personal fol1owers. This
was an exceptional case at the time, but by the end of the dynasty such
ties between recruits and their commanders were common.
In r89 A.D.,
when Dong Zhuo declined to leave his army at the northwestern frontier
and take up an appointment at court, he wrote: "The righteous followers
from Huangzhong and the Han and barbarian troops under my command all came
to me and said, 'Our rations and wages have not yet been completely paid,
and now our provisions will be cut off, and our wives and children will
die of hunger and cold.' Pulling back my carriage, they would not let me
go." When the court attempted to have him yield his command to Huangfu
Song, he replied: "Though I have no skill in planning and no great strength,
I have without cause received your divine favor and for ten years have
commanded the army. My soldiers both great and small have grown familiar
with me over a long time, and cherishing my sustaining bounty they will
lay down their lives for me. I ask to lead them to Beizhou, that I may
render servi~e at the frontier."
This second
passage points out another feature of the Eastern Han's collapse: the proliferation
of long-term commands in the field. In the Western Han, generals had been
appointed to command an expedition, after which the army was disbanded
and the general returned to his regular post. The "Monograph on Officials"
of the Book of the Later Han states, "Generals are not permanently established."20
However, the Eastern Han created permanent armies stationed at fixed camps.
Although in the first century A.D. the size of armies was kept small and
commanders were regularly rotated, prolonged crises on the frontier required
generals to remain with their armies in the field for years. These armies-which
now were composed of barbarians, convicts, and long-term recruits-became
the loyal creatures of their commanders. Such men had no place in Han society
and no home or family to which they could return. Instead, they formed
families at the frontier, and their lives centered on the person who was,
as Dong Zhuo observed, the source of their livelihood. TheHan court never
acknowledged this shift. In Dong Zhuo's biography his title changed frequently
in the ten years prior to r89 A.D., but his own testimony shows that he
and his army stayed together for the entire period.
Another path
leading to private armies was the development of a dependent tenantry.
The absorption of the old category of "clients" into this new servile group
meant that labor and military service were largely transferred from the
state to great families. In the early Eastern Han, Ma Yuan commanded the
services of several hundred families attached to him as clients.Military
service was probably included in these obligations. Drawing from these
service-providing dependents, the great families were able to assemble
armies of hundreds or thousands of men. Such armies of tenants had overthrown
Wang Mang at the end of the Western Han, and the military capacity of dependent
populations existed, as a latent possibility, right up to the Eastern Han
dynasty's collapse. Like the government's commandery troops, they could
be raised in times of emergency. With the decay of internal order and the
outbreak of civil war, these dependents began to form full-time private
armies recruited from what was becoming a hereditary soldiery. At the same
time the dwellings of the great families became fortified compounds with
walls and watchtowers.
The Eastern
Han government gave up all attempts to restrict the rise of a dependent
tenantry, and in so doing abandoned direct administration of the countryside.
Furthermore, as power shifted to the inner court of affines and eunuchs,
the imperial house became separated from the great families who controlled
the outer court. This steady implosion" of imperial power ruptured the
ties that bound the court to the countryside. As social order steadily
deteriorated in the second century A.D., the court discovered that it had
lost the ability to mobilize armies and enforce its own rule.
To counter the threat of rebellious "inner barbarians" and ultimately the millenarian rebel movements, the imperial government required military resources that only those who had developed personal ties to the soldiery could muster: provincial governors, generals on the frontier, resettled tribal chieftains, great landlords, and, in a few cases, leaders of religious rebels. While each type of commander had secured support in a different way, all of them had one thing in common: in an age of general social breakdown, they could call upon their own armed followers for security. These various warlords were key political actors in the long centuries of disunion that would follow the demise of the Han.
