7. The Han period

(206 BC – 220 AD)

After the death of the first emperor, a series of large uprisings broke out, which overthrew the Qin dynasty but did not abolish its accomplishments. The new leader, Liu Bang, coming from a peasant family, founded the Han dynasty and kept the reforms of his predecessor, which his successors carried forward, creating perhaps the most glorious time of ancient China, the Han period. Not only did China expand its territory over the next 400 years or so, but the whole Chinese civilisation – literacy, literature, agriculture, industry, foreign relations and trade – reached a new level during this period. The new emperor made Chang’an his capital, marking the beginning of the early or Western Han dynasty.

The early (Western) Han period

– Meanwhile:

Middle East: the death of Cleopatra

The Mediterranean region: The crisis of the Roman Republic, the reign of Augustus

Carpathian Basin: the appearance of the Romans in the Transdanubian region

The early Han dynasty flourished under Liu Bang’s great-grandson Wu of Han (141-87 BC). He succeeded in reasserting central power, partly by making Confucianism the state ideology.  He reformed the administration and introduced competitive exams for civil servants, which determined the future of the Chinese administration for two millennia. Along the Great Wall, he successfully fought the nomadic barbarians of the north, the Xiongnu, also known as the Asian Huns, and through his outstanding generals expanded the territory of the Chinese Empire towards Inner Asia to a great extent. After his death, his successors proved to be weak rulers and their failed politics inevitably led to a great uprising that ended the Western Han period in 9 AD.

The Later (Eastern) Han period, the end of Chinese antiquity

(25 BC – 220 BC)

– Meanwhile:

Middle East: the rise of the Persian Sassanid dynasty

Mediterranean region: the peak of the Roman Empire

Carpathian Basin: the heyday of the province of Pannonia

Wang Mang, who led the uprising in 9 AD, was only able to establish a short-lived dynasty called Xin, which fell after his death. The peasant uprising that swept away the House of Xin was led by Liu Xiu of the Han dynasty, who essentially restored the Han Empire to power, except that he moved his capital to Luoyang in the east. The once again strengthening Han successfully defeated the Xiongnu, who were no longer a serious threat to China. (Of course, new nomadic groups would emerge in their wake, meaning problems for later Chinese emperors.)

At the two ends of the fully functional Silk Road, linking the Mediterranean with China, were two empires at the height of their powers, the Roman and the Chinese, and this created a unique situation in terms of trade, diplomacy, and cultural relations.

However, the steady increase in the burden on the peasants and the bad politics of successive weak emperors gradually undermined the power of the Han. Growing discontent culminated in the Taoist Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184. This eventually led to the end of the Han dynasty in 220 AD, which also marked the end of the unity of the Chinese empire. Then began the Three Kingdoms, which lies beyond the period of Chinese antiquity…