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The
Western Han Dynasty
Qin Dynasty's ruthless laws and endless expensive campaigns cut its own
life short. Rebellion broke out and a new dynasty, Han Dynasty, came into
being.
The first emperor of Han Dynasty, Liu Bang, was an uneducated man but
he wisely used talents to serve him. The Han Gaozu preserved many features
of the Qin imperial system, such as the administrative division of the
country and the central bureaucracy. But the Han rulers lifted the Qin
ban on philosophical and historical writings. Han Kao Tsu called for the
services of men of talent, not only to restore the destroyed classics
but also to serve as officials in the government. From that time, the
Chinese Empire was governed by a body of officials theoretically selected
on merit. Such a practice has few parallels elsewhere at this early date
in human history.
In 124 BC, during the reign of Wu Ti (140-87, the Martial Emperor), an
imperial university was set up for the study of Confucian classics. The
university recruited talented students, and the state supported them.
Starting with 50 when the university first opened, the number of government-supported
students reached 30,000 by the end of the Han Dynasty. Emperor Wu also
established Confucianism as the official doctrine of the state. This designation
lasted until the end of the Chinese Empire.
The Early Han faced two major difficulties: invasions by the barbarian
Huns and the influence of the imperial consort families. In the Han Dynasty,
the Huns (known as Xiongnu by the Chinese) threatened the expanding Chinese
Empire from the north. Starting in Wu Ti's reign, costly, almost century-long
campaigns had to be carried out to establish Chinese sovereignty along
the northern and northwestern borders. Wu Ti also waged aggressive campaigns
to incorporate northern Korea in 108 BC and northern Annam in 111 BC into
the Han Empire. The Early Han's other difficulty started soon after the
first emperor's death. The widowed Empress Lu dominated politics and almost
succeeded in taking the throne for her family. Thereafter, families of
the empresses exerted great political influence. In AD 9 Wang Mang, a
nephew of the empress seized the throne and founded a new dynasty of Xin.
Wang Mang's overambitious reform program alienated him from the landlords.
At the same time the peasants, disappointed with Wang's inability to push
through the reform, rose in rebellion. In AD 17 a rebel group in Shandong
painted their faces red (hence their name, Red Eyebrows) and adopted religious
symbols, a practice later repeated by peasants who rebelled in times of
extreme difficulty. Wang Mang's force was defeated, and he was killed
in AD 23.
