Chinese Empires

1. Chinese Empires Qin and Han Dynasties

2. Chronology

3. Qin Dynasty (221- 206 B.C.E)

4. Important Figures Li Si: Prime Minister • Legalist • Argued that those who used the past to oppose the present (Confucians) had to be exterminated. • Chief Deputy to Shi Huangdi (first emperor of China) Shi Huangdi: First Emperor of China • Son of a Qin prince and his concubine. • Quite young (not yet 40) when he became emperor. • Lived in guarded privacy. • Superstitious and searched for an elixir of immortality. • Believed in military extension. • Fostered general hatred. • Died in 210 B.C.E. • Buried with life-sized terracotta horses and warriors with bronze armour. • Death caused revolt and the beginning of the Han dynasty.

5. Economy • State monopolies over state commodities. • High taxes and forced labor on government projects.

6. Government • Legalist Government • Population was regimented and militarized. • Military expansion, monolithic state • Most terrible period in Chinese history because of strict laws and hard labor. • High taxes • Construction of the Great Wall was a tax obligation.

7. Ideology • Legalism- Legalists believed that morality was meaningless and obedience to the state was the supreme good. The state had the right to enforce laws under threat of the harshest penalties.

8. Legacy • Standardized weights and measurements. • Unified economic and agricultural  practices and codified rules. • Construction of roads, bridges, dams, and canals to aid communication. • Made sure wheel axles to be the same length for universal use. • Standardized the written language. • Express "postal service" was created that conveyed documents written on strips of bamboo around the country. • Had harsh laws that ended crime. • Construction of the Great Wall of China • Established territorial boundaries and protected the Qin territory from Central Asian warriors like the Huns. 

9. Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E-220 C.E.)

10. Important Figures Han Wudi • -Emperor of Han China • -Ruled for more than 50 years • -Restored Confucianism as the State Philosophy • -Ordered military campaigns as a defense against invaders (Xiongnu) Wei Qing • -Chinese general • -Led many successful campaigns against the Xiongnu • -Convinced some of them to join the Chinese army • -His campaigns led to a temporary halt the Xiongnu attacks Han Zhao (General) • -Chinese general • -Led campaigns against the Xiongnu after Wei Qing • -Turned nomads against each other to save Chinese lives • -Led other rising states to fight the Xiongnu Han Zhao (Writer) • -One of the first few Chinese female writers

11. Economy • Landowning and farming-basis for main economy • Upper class owned land and made loans; peasants farmed the land • Traded goods using the Silk Road

12. Government/Politics • Legalism and Confucianism (less harsh than Qin) • Confucianism: • - moral men make good rulers and virtue is one of the most important properties that an official can have.  • - Virtue can be attained by following the proper way of behaving.  • Central government: law, order, and border defense • Bureaucrats: collected taxes, administered legal system, and officiated military

13. Geography • Empire grows a little between the Qin and Han Dynasties • Closeness to the Xiongnu affect military • Silk Road allows connections to other empires through trade

14. Rise of Qin a. State-Level gov’t • The Qin had a highly authoritarian central government due to their legalist ruling and the state controlled the economy, establishing government monopolies over many trade goods, helping unify China for the first time. This centralized government replaced the old multistate Zhou system, setting a pattern for the centuries to follow. b. High Agricultural Potential in the Area • The Qin had great agricultural potential but the environment mosaic of China left lacking resources. It was located along the northwest borders, close to the tianmts, therefore rich soil, the taklamakan desert, and the Mongolian steppe. Their ever-normal granary system caused them not to worry too much about agricultural success. c. An Environmental Mosaic • Even though China’s environment mosaic left lacking resources, it took advantage of its control of various zones in the environmental mosaic with an ever-normal granary system, a system where the gov’t collected grain from all over the empire into warehouses and redistributed it to the people, creating a more or less constant total supply, not depending on the agricultural success of any zone in the mosaic. d. Several Small States with no clearly Dominant State (Power Vacuum) • There were several Zhou states conquered by the Qin over time and no real dominant state because there were mutually competitive powers with no really strong power. They did have a monolithic state, having a central government that could be considered to have dominant power but didn’t particularly have a dominant state. e. Mutual antagonisms among those states • They used a legalist system, which is antagonistic. Also, the warring states period established a series of mutually antagonistic states, with some having considerable military power and none of them were clearly dominant. f. Adequate military resources • Qin emperors forced military involvement and strict labor. The population was regimented and militarized, making the men serve as citizen-warriors, providing military help. One of the Qin’s new dramatic policies was military expansion, sending armies to incorporate much of southern China and Vietnam into the empire. The Great Wall served as a barrier to the encroachment of Central Asian warriors into China, and when properly manned it was an effective defense.

15. Fall of Qin a. The Ideology of Expansion and Conquest fuels attempts at conquest beyond practical limits • At first they slowly conquered states, but when Shi Huangdi started ruling, his high prestige and ego caused him to implement dramatic policies, since the dynasty wasn’t content with conquering just the Chinese heartland. They started conquering southern China and Vietnam, them all of China was reordered along Legalist lines, controlling all aspects of Chinese life. Shi Huangdi’s expansionist policies provoked conflict w/ neighboring peoples. When he died, revolts broke, with those rebel armies defeating the Qin forces, creating the Han Empire. b. Failure to continue conquest indefinitely and to continue to bring home its economic fruits erodes faith in the ideology that supports the empire • Because of their military, conquest, and unification ideologies influenced by the Legalism, Shi  Huangdi’s and others who followed the Qin orders went overboard with defeating other empires, creating strict orders and laws which everyone had to live under. These laws and orders caused rebels who lost faith in the ideology because it was too harsh. c. revolutions topple the empire • Death of Shi Huangdi caused an immediate fall because of all the people who rebelled.

16. Rise of Han a. State-level Government • They built a strong state but modified the Qin’s harsh Legalist structure and mixed it with Confucianism, because Confucianism could maintain stability in the wake of momentous change, therefore learning from their Mistakes. Wu Di introduced imperialism, and the Han combined many elements of Qin authoritarianism but used less repression and coercion and retained a strong central government while also respecting local political power. b. High Agricultural Potential in the Area • they were along the yellow river, which had rich soil and a good place for crops, like rice, to grow c. Environmental Mosaic • the silk road linked China with India, the Middle East, and southern Europe, and was a lively caravan route. Many goods, like bamboo and silk, were carried by each caravan, therefore improving the Chinese’s supply of goods and resources. The Silk Road affected populations because people would mix together and sparked a rapid growth of commerce. d. Several Small States with no clearly Dominant State • There was no clearly dominant state, and the civil service only allowed the imperial administration to have a restricted role, so no dominant state could really exist. e. Mutual antagonisms among those states • The rise of the scholar-gentry, or Chinese social class of learned officeholders and landowners in the Han dynasty, frequently met together in teahouses to discuss local affairs and forge common positions on government policies, so there wouldn’t be any tension and riots wouldn’t occur between states. f. Adequate Military Resources • They used military strategies in search of allies against threatening nomads, including the Huns, which the Great Wall in part was meant to deflect them, and they used diplomacy, conducting negotiations with empires to get support in war.

17. Fall of Han a. With economic prosperity, China was better able to wage war. Wudi believed that he was strong enough to stop payments to the Xiongnu begun by Liu Bang. Wudi's wars of expansion and his maintenance of large armies of occupation were a burden on China's economy.  They more than offset the benefits from the increase in trade that followed his conquests. b. Han emperors were successful at the wars, however, the economic decline caused the emperors to levy more taxes. Confucian scholars, who believe that leaders should rule for the people, claimed that the Han Dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven. c. During the reign of Shundi (125-144), rumor spread among China's peasants that the Han emperors had again lost the Mandate of Heaven. Peasant rebellions reappeared.