by Li Feng
Fig. 12.2 Bronze objects from the Ordos region, 400–200 BC.
The earliest record in the Chinese sources points to 318 BC when the five eastern states, Hann, Zhao, Wei, Yan, and Qi, enlisted the Xiongnu in their forces and jointly attacked Qin. Whether this event had prompted the Qin to attack the Xiongnu is unknown; in the years that followed the Qin repeatedly attacked the Yiqu located to the north, and the eventual annexation of Yiqu territory would have inevitably brought the Qin into direct confrontation with the Xiongnu in the Ordos region. In fact, recent scholarship considers the formation of the Xiongnu Confederacy to have owed its origin to a precondition created by the continuous expansion of the Qin Empire onto the northern steppe, relevant particularly to a massive campaign led by Meng Tian in 214 BC.6 Through this campaign the Qin captured the Ordos region from the Xiongnu, throwing the latter into a sudden social and political chaos that gave rise to a strong nomadic leadership. The person who represented this historical trend was Maodun who had come to unite the various Xiongnu tribes and assumed the title of Shanyu in 208 BC. In the following years, Maodun further conquered tribes in western Manchuria, and tribes in northern Mongolia and southern Russia.
The newly founded Han Empire was apparently incapable of contesting the rising power of the Shanyu. As Han was internally weakened by the struggle between the central power and the regional kingdoms, this created a dangerous situation in which mishandling of the relationships with the regional kings could lead to serious intervention by the Shanyu from the north. Such was the case of the King of Zhao who under pressure from the Han court defected to the Xiongnu Confederacy in 201 BC. In order to punish him, Liu Bang personally brought his army north, only to fall hopelessly into the trap laid by the Xiongnu cavalrymen at Pingcheng in northern Shanxi. Losing most of his troops, Liu Bang narrowly escaped death by dressing up as a woman. In the next fifty years, knowing its own weakness, the Han court adopted a policy of appeasement in the name of “Peace and Affinity” (heqin) by sending a Han princess to marry the Shanyu along with a large quantity of gifts starting in 189 BC. The arrangement was made in the hope, at least in the words of those officials who defended this policy, that the Han princess would bear for the Xiongnu future leaders who might be sympathetic towards the Han Empire, but in reality the Han Empire had reduced itself to the status of a tributary state of the Xiongnu Confederacy.
However, the peace agreement did not ensure long-lasting peace. In 166 BC, under Shanyu Laoshang, the Xiongnu overran the Han pass in southern Ningxia and reached as deep into Han territory as 150 km from the capital. There were countless smaller attacks by the various Xiongnu tribal leaders on the long border which the Han simply could not defend. The rise of new leadership among the Xiongnu timely provided chances for war because the new Shanyu needed it to push the Han to enter new treaties with an increased amount of tribute with which he could purchase the loyalty of his supporters. But on a more general level, the problem was in the nature of the Xiongnu society which was simply not as centralized as the Han and could not be bound by a commitment to the whole.7 The numerous Xiongnu kings decided the policies of their own tribes while remaining ceremonially loyal to the Shanyu, and war for booty was a part of the lifestyle on the northern steppe. In fact, they not only attacked Han; more often they waged war on each other for such purposes. From the perspective of global history, China as an agricultural society suffered as a result of the social transformation to nomadism on the northern steppe, a process that affected not only China but also agricultural societies located in Mesopotamia and Eastern Europe.
War with the Xiongnu and Han Expansion
The “Peace and Affinity” policy was criticized by some influential scholars as early as the reign of Emperor Wen, but the opposition was not able to really turn the table until the arrival of Emperor Wu (r. 140–87 BC). By then, the Han Empire was both politically and economically well consolidated, and it was in the hands of a young and ambitious emperor, assisted by a group of pro-war officials. More importantly, decades of overall peace had given the Han Empire time to develop a new style of army based on cavalry and the use of crossbows that could successfully engage the Xiongnu on the northern steppe.8 But perhaps most important, the decades had also given the Han leadership enough time to conceive an overall strategy not to fight the Xiongnu on the Great Wall, but deep inside the Xiongnu territory.
The Han carefully planned the advances by first sending Zhang Qian on a diplomatic mission to Central Asia in the hope of finding allies among the Central Asian statelets (in particular the Rouzhi, forerunner of the Kushan Empire in India) in a common cause of war against the Xiongnu Empire. However, Zhang Qian was captured by the Xiongnu as soon as he left the Han border and spent the next ten years among the Xiongnu people, a period that actually prepared him well both in terms of language and of knowledge about the geography of Central Asia and about the customs of its people. Eventually Zhang Qian managed to escape from the Xiongnu Empire, but he did not return to Han immediately. Instead he went on a long journey to fulfill his mission to what turned out to be the most important geographical discovery in Early China. He visited most Central Asian states including Wusun in present-day Kyrgyzstan, Dayuan (Ferghana) and Da Rouzhi (Kushan) in Uzbekistan, Bactriana (Greek state) in Afghanistan, and Sogdiana in modern Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan (Map 12.4), and returned to Chang’an in 126 BC. Although he failed to convince any Central Asian state to pursue war against the Xiongnu, Zhang Qian brought back to China precious information about the Western Region which was a new world suddenly opened to the Han Empire with opportunities and endless wonders. More importantly, the Han Empire was convinced of the interest among these foreign people in Chinese goods, especially silk, which later became the main item traded along the road paved by Zhang Qian in the second century BC.
Map 12.4 The Central Asian city–states.
Convinced that Zhang Qian must have been dead, the Han Empire set out to trap the Shanyu with a force of 300,000 soldiers near the frontier town called Mayi in 133 BC. However, the Shanyu discovered the plan and withdrew his horsemen before Han attacks. Although the operation failed before it ever began, it marked a complete shift of policy towards full-scale war with the Xiongnu. In 129 BC, five Han generals were sent out to attack the Xiongnu from five directions and each commanded an army of 10,000 cavalrymen. Two armies were completely defeated and the other two simply failed to engage the enemy. However, the young general Wei Qing made a sudden long-distance assault and captured Longcheng, the spiritual center of the Xiongnu. Two years later, Wei Qing led a large army unit going out from northern Shanxi and crossed the Yellow River from the north, suddenly falling on the Xiongnu. The Han forces totally crushed the Xiongnu, capturing two kings along with thousands of men and women, and retaking the Ordos region from the Xiongnu for the first time since the collapse of the Qin Empire. The victory not only eliminated the immediate threat to Chang’an, but served to decisively overturn the balance of power between Han and Xiongnu (Fig. 12.3). In order to consolidate the Han holdings on Ordos, 100,000 Han farmers were moved to populate the area, which was built up as a firm base for further Han operations on the northern steppe.
Fig. 12.3 The Han–Xiongnu war depicted in a Han pictorial carving, Xiaotangshan, Shandong Province.
In the following years, the Han armies continued to search for chances to engage the Xiongnu who were essentially mobile. The Han generals had learned to use light cavalry that once characterized the Xiongnu forces and adopted the strategy of long-distance sudden attack, which had previously given the Xiongnu full advantage over the Han. From the standpoint of grand strategy, because the Han were holding a frontier stretching over 2,000 km against unexpected attacks, the sudden attacks launched by the Han forces could effectively offset the advantages enjoyed by the nomadic Xiongnu forces. In order to do so, the Han horsemen had to be better trained and better equipped, and they were indeed able to outmaneuver the Xiongnu even in cases where the Xiongnu outnumbered the Han
soldiers. This was typical in the campaign of 121 BC when the light-cavalry general Huo Qubing led an army of 10,000 cavalrymen going west, traversing the territories of five Xiongnu tribes in six days and forcing King Hunye to surrender with 40,000 soldiers. Through a series of battles between 127 and 121 BC, the Han had gained complete control over the area to the south of the Yinshan Mountains and forced the Xiongnu to retreat to the north of the Gobi Desert.
However, Emperor Wu was not satisfied with the victory; on the contrary, he planned an even more decisive and difficult engagement to completely destroy the Xiongnu Empire. In 119 BC, Wei Qing and Huo Qubing each commanded a force of 50,000 cavalrymen and 100,000 infantry troops marching north on two routes. In order to effectively support the war, the Han Empire further mobilized another 100,000 men who brought with them an additional 4,000 horses as reinforcement. The huge Han legions and various supply units crossed the Gobi Desert in a move of some 1,400 km in more than twenty days to meet the Shanyu’s forces for a decisive engagement near Mount Kuyan near today’s Ulan Bator in northern Mongolia (Map 12.5). Given the logistic problems involved in supplying such a huge number of people over such a long distance through the desert, the Han were actually doing something nearly impossible. The Han troops demonstrated superior fighting skills and coordination, backed up by men and horses that continuously came out from the desert and arrived on the scene to join the battle. After a day of fighting, the Shanyu gave up hope and fled the field in darkness, leaving his troops in desperation. The campaign ended in complete victory for the Han, but it came only after the Han themselves also suffered a great number of casualties and the loss of some 100,000 horses. However, it is nevertheless true that the “North Desert Campaign” of 119 BC inflicted decisive damage on the Xiongnu Empire.
Map 12.5 Han campaigns against the Xiongnu Empire.
The war with the Xiongnu, measured both by the vast geographical space in which it took place and by the intensity of the campaigns and the level of human and material resources both sides threw into the confrontation, was unprecedented in world history.9 After the “North Desert Campaign” in 119 BC, although the Han still had to fight the Xiongnu resurgences and lost some of the battles, this was never on a very large scale and most of the subsequent battles were fought far from the Han border. In the decades that followed, the Xiongnu Confederacy was further weakened by internal struggles between different factions, each having its own Shanyu. In 54 BC, Huhanye the Left Shanyu decided to accept the Han offer of tributary status and led his followers south to the Han border. On request of the Han court, Huhanye first sent his son as hostage to Chang’an, and was himself permitted to pay homage to Emperor Wu two years later. Zhizhi the Right Shanyu also sent a son to Chang’an, but he then continued fighting against the Han Empire in the west. In 36 BC he was killed in a battle by troops sent out from the “Protector General of the Western Regions” – the Han governor in Central Asia.
Dynastic Transition and the Founding of the Eastern Han Empire
Emperor Wu had left the empire behind him in an extraordinary way. By the end of his long reign, which lasted for fifty-three years, he had purged the crown prince and his faction, and had secured the succession of Emperor Zhao (r. 86–74 BC), an eight-year-old son by one of the last lovers in the emperor’s life. In order to prevent the mother from interfering in the power of the future young emperor, Emperor Wu simply ordered her execution. On the other hand, he appointed two of his most trusted men as regents to safeguard the throne: Huo Guang, a brother of the victorious general Huo Qubing, and Jin Midi, a former Xiongnu prince who had come to Han as a war prisoner but had subsequently established himself as a model of virtue and discipline. Huo Guang married his daughter to Jin’s son, and later another daughter to Emperor Xuan (r. 73–49 BC).10
In many ways, the reigns of Emperors Zhao and Xuan were clearly a transition in Han imperial history. During the next half century, three emperors ruled the Han Empire and all died very young. Because the emperors were young, real power fell almost constantly into the hands of their maternal uncles through the dowagers’ personal influence, a situation that Emperor Wu was able to foresee but was unable to prevent. In contrast, the highest office in the empire, “Commander-in-Chief,” was almost constantly occupied by the maternal uncles of the young emperors.11 However, for decades, the maternal uncles operated in the existing system that was established in the early centuries of the Han Empire and under the fundamental legitimacy promised by the Han institution until the arrival of a new uncle, Wang Mang, who changed the rule.12
Wang Mang’s aunt became a consort of Emperor Yuan in 54 BC and gave birth to Emperor Cheng. This lady enjoyed tremendous longevity, not only living through the reign of her son, but also through a part of that of her grandson, Emperor Ai. Her long life gave the Wang family enough time to accumulate political resources needed to overthrow the Han Empire. Wang Mang came to the office in 8 BC as the younger generation of the Wang family after his uncle and elder brothers had all served terms as Commander-in-Chief. Wang Mang apparently had a different approach to power and knew much better than his uncles and brothers about how to create favorable public opinion which could be used as an important political base. He sponsored public works and conferences on Confucian classics and established himself not only as the patron of the Han Empire, but also as the superior embodiment of Confucian values.13 With continuing propaganda after the death of Emperor Ping, Wang Mang eventually declared the founding of the New Dynasty and himself emperor in AD 9. During the fifteen years of the New Dynasty, Wang Mang implemented a series of reforms to systematically change Han institutions, drawing up his plans largely based on illusions about the “Zhou institution” supposedly transmitted in the Confucian ritual texts.
As soon as the New Dynasty (AD 9–23) was inaugurated, he pushed forward the nationalization of land, setting limits on the area an individual family could own and prohibiting its sale. The policy apparently had its purpose to save the poor peasantry from the encroachment by the large land-owners. For the same purpose, the sale of slaves and retainers was also prohibited. He also created a mechanism to stabilize market prices, and installed a completely new currency system, while the state stepping in to monopolize the salt and iron industries as it did at the time of Emperor Wu. Some of Wang Mang’s reforms were clearly designed to reduce the power of the nobility and the great official families who had by this time already been eating the lion’s share of the social and economic resources needed to support the empire which he took over from the Liu family. As a way to further exploit the nobility, Wang Mang ordered the nobles of the rank of marquis and lower to exchange their gold for the new copper coins, and this caused widespread resentment of the New Dynasty. On the borders, to further secure imperial control, he reduced the kings of the various subjugated groups including the Xiongnu and Koguryǒ in eastern Manchuria and many others in Central Asia and southwestern China to the rank of “duke.” The material manifestation of Wang Mang’s reform is a group of distinctive religious ritual architecture found in the district of Chang’an, including the Nine Temples, the place where he worshipped the ancient sage kings (not the Liu kings), and the Bright Hall where the emperor (Wang Mang) observed the changes of seasons according to Confucian texts (Fig. 12.4).
Fig. 12.4 Wang Mang’s architectural structures in Chang’an.
Wang Mang’s socialist and imperialist combined reform policies are subjects of controversy among modern scholars. Whether good or evil intentions might have been behind his decisions, there can be no doubt that their ultimate goal was to strengthen the roots of the New Dynasty regime which, if it had survived the destruction soon to come, would have made Wang Mang the greatest reformer in Chinese history. But his new regime faced the problem of legitimacy from the beginning, and even the credit that Wang Mang might have won from the farmers was soon offset by the hardship they had to endure caused by the natural disasters that spread over North China, which contributed to the downfall of th
e New Dynasty.14
In the chaos that brought Wang Mang’s regime down, the Han Dynasty was restored by the local elites in southern Henan, led by Liu Xiu, a descendant of the Han imperial house. After a series of fierce battles, the new Han army broke into the Wei River valley in late September, AD 23. Wang Mang was forced to retreat and was killed by the local rebels before the Han army entered the capital. The following years saw the contest for power between the new Han Dynasty and the rebel army called the “Red Eyebrows,” but in March, AD 26, when the “Red Eyebrows” moved out from the Wei River valley to the east, they were completely crushed by the Han army. In AD 37, Liu Xiu established his capital in Luoyang and therefore the restored Han Empire was referred to in history as the Eastern Han (AD 25–220). Liu Xiu was himself posthumously titled Guangwu, or the “Bright Marshal Emperor.”
