The Qin and Han Empires (East Asia) [individual assignment]
The Qin and Han Empires (East Asia)
From the 200s B.C.E. to about 600 C.E., a united and steadily growing China was ruled by several major dynasties. The most notable were the Qin (221–206 B.C.E.) and the Han (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.).
Although short-lived, the Qin dynasty was important because of its founder, Shi Huangdi, who ended the feudal decentralization of the “Warring States” period and, for the first time in the country’s history, united northern China with the Yangzi valley in the south.
A stern ruler who favored the ideology of Legalism (which advocated harsh laws as a way to keep inherently wicked people in order), Shi Huangdi turned the Qin state into a centralized dictatorship, administered by a large and effective bureaucracy. As Emperor Qin did not approve of Confucianism, he had Confucian books burnt. Many books of history, poetry, and philosophy were also burned to stifle dissent and to unify political thought. He also had 460 scholars buried alive.
He standardized weights and measures and modernized the Chinese army by introducing iron weapons, crossbows, and cavalry warfare. He used forced labor to build thousands of roads and canals, as well as the first of the defensive structures that collectively came to be known as the Great Wall of China. The so-called Great Wall was actually a network of many walls. Construction began as early as the 200s B.C.E., under the emperor Shi Huangdi, and took centuries. Thousands of the workers, many of them prisoners, died.
The Qin state ended slavery and serfdom, not out of kindness but because free peasants had to pay taxes and serve in the army. The Qin taxed so heavily that, shortly after Shi Huangdi’s death, rebellions destroyed the dynasty.
The strong and durable Han dynasty, brought to power by these uprisings, built on the Qin state’s foundations to create a centralized, efficient empire. Under warrior-emperors like Wudi (156–87 B.C.E, also called Wu-ti or simply Wu), Han armies expanded hundreds of miles in all directions, absorbing most of China and parts of Vietnam, Korea, Manchuria, and Mongolia. Where they did not take over directly, the Han rulers established a tributary system, exacting payment from neighboring states. Cavalry warfare and the crossbow gave them military advantages and allowed them to repel steppe nomads— nomads—especially the worst threat, the Turkic Xiongnu.
From their capital at Chang’an, the Han rulers, like the Qin before them, put into place an efficient postal system, tax-collection system, and bureaucracy, staffed by civil servants who had to pass a rigorous examination system. They built defensive fortifications (enlarging the Great Wall), canals to link the nation’s rivers, and roads.
The Han governed less ruthlessly than the Qin, reviving the Zhou ideal of the Mandate of Heaven, which proposed that only virtuous rulers deserved to rule. In contrast to the Legalism of the Qin years, the Han, starting with Wudi, turned to Confucianism, with its argument that superiors owed kind treatment to their inferiors. Han rulers also expanded China’s law code.
During most of the Han period, China’s economy was strong, spurred by improved agricultural techniques (including better irrigation and the invention of the horse collar, which allowed heavier loads to be pulled) and the country’s monopoly on silk production, which made it a dominant player in Silk Road trade.
By 200 C.E., though, the Han state was in decline. Agricultural downturn and an overall economic slump sapped its strength, as did governmental corruption and ineffectual leadership. Bandits, rebels, and nomadic invaders, particularly the Xiongnu, made it difficult for the Han to protect their borders. What appears to have been a smallpox epidemic, arriving from the west in the late 100s C.E., also weakened the country.
In 220 C.E., Han rule collapsed. Over the next three and a half centuries, China remained mired in anarchy. Not until 589 C.E. did a strong dynasty, the Sui, reestablish order.
China, like the other classical civilizations, had a patriarchal society with a set social structure. A womans most important role was to make a proper marriage that would strengthen the familys alliances. Widowed women were, however, permitted to remarry. Upper-class women were often tutored in writing, arts, and music, but overall, women were legally subordinate to their fathers and husbands.
Socially, the highest class was that of the scholar-gentry. These landlord families were often the only ones able to take the civil service exam, because preparation was very expensive.
In addition to the building of the Great Wall and the massive terra cotta army of the Qin, the Daoist scholars of the Han Dynasty developed windmills and wheelbarrows, worked on some early forms of gunpowder, figured out how to distill alcohol, and produced paper from a variety of accessible materials, including tree bark.
Questions for experts
1. What were the main points of the civilization?
2. What factors influenced the civilization?
Questions for the mixed groups
1. What was similar between the civilizations?
2. What was different between the civilizations?
3. What factors brought civilizations to contact each other?