The Rise of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 - 106)

In 9 AD, the throne of the Han Dynasty was usurped by Wang Mang, who founded the Xin Dynasty. Wang Mang's rule was a huge disaster, leading to rebellions that culminated in the reestablishment of the Han Dynasty, which historians refer to as the Eastern Han Dynasty. The Eastern Han Dynasty ruled China for another 200 years until it crumbled in the civil wars that led to the Three Kingdoms period. This video will focus on the first half of the Eastern Han Dynasty, when it rose from the ashes of civil war to oversee one of the golden ages in Chinese history. The next video will focus on the second half of the dynasty, when it cataclysmically fell apart. In 17 AD, peasant rebellions broke out in China in response to worsening corruption, famines, and flooding of the Yellow River, with two groups being the most prominent. The first came from south-central China and were called the Luling rebels because they hid out in the Luling, or Green Forest, mountains. The second group came from far-eastern China. Early on during the rebellion, they painted their eyebrows red to avoid confusion in battle, and so became known as the Red Eyebrows, or Chi Mei in Chinese. Initially, the rebels were mostly illiterate peasants, but as they grew, people from more privileged upbringings began to join. This included two brothers who were the sixth-generation descendants of Emperor Jin of the Han Dynasty. Although their father was so far removed from the direct imperial line that he was no more than a local magistrate, the older brother Liu Yan was charismatic but brash, whereas the younger brother Liu Xiu was wiser and more prudent. When the Luling army approached their hometown in Nanyang Commandery, the two brothers gathered a militia and joined the rebellion. They held important commands but were treated with suspicion by other members of the Luling leadership, who had nominated another distant member of the Liu family as their puppet emperor. In 23 AD, the Luling army continued to march north, and an infuriated, panicking Wang Mang sent an army supposedly 420,000 strong southward against the Luling. The imperial army besieged Kunyang, a small city held by the rebels, with an initial 100,000 strong army. Liu Xiu was stuck in Kunyang, where he, leading 13 other riders, slipped through enemy defenses to gather a relief force. As the imperial army was assaulting the walls of Kunyang with wave after wave of attack, Liu Xiu returned at the head of a 7,000 strong relief force, breaking the siege and routing the imperial army in the process. After this shock defeat, the political legitimacy of Wang Mang was over, and large areas of northern China soon defected to the Luling army. Before the year ended, the Luling army had captured the capital at Chang'an, Wang Mang was killed in the fighting, and his dynasty was overthrown. Meanwhile, tensions had worsened between the Luling leadership and the Liu brothers, and Liu Yan was arrested on trumped-up charges and executed. Liu Xiu was also under suspicion, but he very wisely kept a low profile until he regained the trust of the Luling leadership and was given the command to bring the areas north of the Yellow River under Luling rule. Once there, he quickly captured Handan, one of the largest, wealthiest cities in China and the ancient capital of the state of Zhao. But after he left Handan and marched further north, the city was betrayed to a pretender who declared himself emperor, and Liu Xiu's return route was cut off. Again making lemons out of lemonade, he quickly won the support of a small number of local elites, rebuilt his army, and marched back onto Handan. The city was captured after a month-long siege, sacked, and burned to the ground. Although it was rebuilt, it would never again regain its former glory. After capturing Handan, Liu Xiu confiscated thousands of secret correspondences, many of which presumably came from those in his own camp who were playing both sides. But instead of reading the letters to find out their identities, he simply had the letters burned. This conclusively won him the support of the local elites. With their help, he defeated the major peasant rebels in the area, the Copper Horse rebels, and incorporated their troops into his army. He soon became the dominant power in the north. Meanwhile, the Luling elites now ruling from Chang'an were being corrupted by the luxury they were encountering in the capital. The Red Eyebrows marched onto Chang'an and easily took over. They were extremely brutal to the local population, and even looted the mausoleums of the Han dynasty emperors. In the year 25, Liu Xiu declared himself emperor of a re-established Han dynasty and then marched against the Red Eyebrows, defeating them in 27. These fightings left the area around Chang'an in ruins, and the city itself was burned to the ground by the retreating Red Eyebrows. As such, Liu Xiu established his capital at Luoyang, to the east of Chang'an. For this reason, the re-established Han dynasty is referred to as the Eastern Han dynasty by historians. Liu Xiu was posthumously named Emperor Guangwu of the Han dynasty. Early in his reign, large parts of China were still controlled by warlords, and fighting lasted on and off for another 10 years until China was unified in 37 AD. Also around this time, rebellions broke out against Han rule in northern Vietnam led by the Chuang sisters. The rebellion lasted several years but was eventually defeated by an army led by Ma Yuan, one of Emperor Guangwu's most trusted generals. Under Emperor Guangwu, the Han dynasty returned to the height it enjoyed prior to the Wang-Wang interregnum. He lowered taxes on the peasants, streamlined the bureaucracy, and cracked down on corruption. He tried his best to redistribute land to the peasants, despite opposition from the local elites, with moderate success. Even though he himself was a military genius, he largely focused on diplomacy rather than war. When a civil war broke out within the Xiongnu, one branch defected to the Han dynasty. Their members were resettled in the northern commanderies and collectively became known Now, if you love Roman history, then any time you hear the phrase, resettle barbarian tribes within the empire's borders, alarm bells should start going off in your head. What if these barbarian tribes could no longer be controlled and start to rebel? This did indeed happen, 250 years later, as an unintended consequence of Emperor Guangwu's policies and one of the main faults he's criticized for by later historians. But at the time, it was still a very wise policy. Settling the south Xiongnu within Han borders gave the Han a valuable vassal against the Xiongnu, and in the process also prompted even more infighting within the Xiongnu. They were also encouraged to adopt Han culture, and the hope was that with time they would assimilate into Han identity. Another major criticism of Emperor Guangwu was that he failed to limit the power of the local elites, whose powers grew to consume the Han dynasty in later generations. But given the size of the empire and the limited reach of the central bureaucracy, the local elites were always going to fill the power vacuum between the magistrates and the peasants. Besides, Emperor Guangwu was able to take power only with the strong support of these local elites, and he simply could not afford to anger his power base, so was often overly lenient towards them. Instead of simply repressing the local elites, as the emperors of the western Han dynasty Emperor Guangwu actively encouraged them to join the imperial bureaucracy and share in the responsibility of government. He did this by first re-emphasizing Confucianism as the orthodox state-governing philosophy, and then ensured that only educated young men who demonstrated the traditional Confucian virtues could be nominated for political office by their local governors. Since the local elites controlled access to books and education anyway, this system allowed them to monopolize access to power. However, families that successfully produced many officials over generations were able to amass huge amounts of wealth and influence. Nowadays, Emperor Guangwu rarely shows up in the list of most significant emperors in Chinese history, since his honor is usually reserved for emperors whose groundbreaking actions drastically altered the course of Chinese history, whereas Emperor Guangwu is usually regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a restorer rather than a creator, and a ruler whose actions largely kept the empire going rather than instituting big changes. But in terms of pure ability both militarily and government-wise, knowing how to balance the needs of different interest groups, and even just being an outright nice, kind, and respectful person, many historians consider him to be one of the best, if not the best, emperor in Chinese history. After Emperor Guangwu died in 57 AD, the next two emperors, Ming and Zhang, ruled until 88 AD. Both were diligent and hardworking, and under their reigns, the Han dynasty continued to prosper. The wars against the North Xiongnu were restarted, with the Han winning several key victories. As part of these wars, the Han also sent various expeditions into Central Asia, especially ones led by a general named Ban Chao. These expeditions eventually led to the reestablishment of the Western Protectorate, which had previously been abandoned during the civil wars under Wang Mang. The Silk Road reopened, and along it came, among other things, Buddhism. The first Buddhist temple in China, the White Horse Temple, was established in the capital city of Luoyang during this time. A major water project led by an engineer named Wang Jing was instituted to control flooding along the lower Yellow River, which had been ongoing over the previous half-century. Instead of simply building dikes and dams, Wang Jing directed the creation of a whole new river channel and then rerouted the Yellow River to the straighter, less silty segment. This project was so successful that the lower Yellow River, which is famously prone to flooding, did not undergo another major flood for eight centuries. The stability that this water project brought forth allowed the region of the North China Plain along the Yellow River to become the main breadbasket of China. The city of Ye, now at the intersection of key roads and river traffic, replaced Handan as the major city in the region and will play a prominent role in Chinese politics for the upcoming 500 years. Emperor Zhang died young and was succeeded by the 10-year-old Emperor He. Power was now held by the consort kings, especially the Dowager Empress, who appointed her brother Douxian to lead the final Great Han Offensive against the North Xiongnu. The Han army rode deep into Xiongnu territory and decisively defeated the North Xiongnu in 91 AD. Over the ensuing decades, remnants of the North Xiongnu migrated deeper into Central Asia and disappeared from recorded history. The Hans that invaded the Roman Empire in the 400s had been theorized to descend from the North Xiongnu. Although this link is still far from conclusive. As Emperor He grew older, he became disgruntled with the consort kings and plotted with the eunuchs to remove them from power. A coup took place. Douxian was forced to commit suicide and his supporters were purged from government. Under the reign of Emperor He, the Eastern Han Dynasty reached the peak of its power and prosperity. Paper was invented. A more primitive version had already been in production for decades, but an eunuch named Cai Lun improved the technique and made it more practical to use. In 97 AD, the Emperor heard news about another powerful empire to the west, the Roman Empire, and sent envoys to make contact. Unfortunately, as the envoys were traveling through Parthia, their guides lied to them, saying that Rome was too far away to reach, and so they returned empty-handed. For me, as a fan of both Chinese history and Roman history, this was a major misconnection in history. Imagine the conversations and exchanges that could have taken place had these two cultures, both at the height of their prosperity, been able to interact directly with one another. Although Roman envoys did eventually reach China in 166, both empires were already in decline by then. Emperor He died young in 106. The new emperor was only three months old when he took over the throne and then died before his first birthday. This power vacuum allowed the consular kings to again control the government, and the Han dynasty went into a rapid death spiral over the next 80 years as political infighting consumed the empire, leading to one of the most catastrophic societal collapses in not just Chinese history, but probably in all of human history. That story, though, will be for the next video. If you've enjoyed this video, please help me grow this channel by hitting like and subscribe below. And since this video is just meant to be a brief overview of the time period, please feel free to write in the comment section any topics you would like me to discuss in greater detail.