The Establishment of the Han Dynasty

China’s history between the end of the Warring States Period and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty in 618 CE saw the waxing and waning of new dynasties. One problem with these new dynasties, short-lived as they were, is affixing dates to them. Although dates can be attached, there is a slight danger of being over-emphatic in using them. These included the Han and the Later Han dynasties.

The Han Dynasty is generally given dates of 206 BCE – 220 CE and rose due to the fall of the previous dynasty, the Qin. The Qin was the first imperial era, unified under the first emperor, Shi Huangdi. He died four years before his dynasty fell and 15 years after unifying China.

The origins of the establishment of the Han Dynasty can be attributed to a former hired labourer named Chen She. A year after the death of the first Emperor, Chen She was hired to transport 900 convicts to a penitentiary settlement but found that heavy rain prevented him to complete this. The Legalist penalty for this was death. He decided that it would be better to die founding a state and so initiated a rebellion that drew in Liu Bang, the later founder of the Han Dynasty.

Chen She was declared the king of Chu. Liu Bang of Pei, after the death of Chen She, had taken to brigandage. He allied himself with Xiang Yu and the Chu forces and in the year that the second Emperor committed suicide, led his men towards Qin by way of the Han valley. The passes on his way were less well defended and without consulting his allies, marched on the capital. The Qin was crushed.

After the Qin Dynasty fell, the Chinese control of the north Yellow River region collapsed into chaos. The conscripts manning the frontier abandoned it, making the Qin wall meaningless as a barrier. Confucianism replaced Legalism and the Qin dynasty soon became a byword for tyranny, a lesson for how not to rule China.

A myth regarding the rebels tells that they armed themselves with the weapons stolen from the terracotta warriors, before they vandalised the burial pit. This myth has a lot of weight behind it; when the warriors were discovered in the 1970’s, a number of them appeared to have been smashed by intruders.

The fall of the Qin dynasty and the establishment of the Han dynasty was, for Chinese scholars, the ideal expression of the ultimate misinterpretation of the absolutist ruler. The Han emperors would have their own troubles but would extend the empire over most of modern day China, showing unprecedented strength.

Bibliography:

Lovell, Julia (2006) The Great Wall – China Against the World 1000 BC – AD 2000, Atlantic Books, Great Britain.