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| 105 |
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| Paper was invented by this date, if not earlier. | 1 |
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| 105–121 |
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| Empress Deng ruled as dowager for her infant son and his boy successor until her death, when her most prominent relatives chose suicide. | 2 |
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| 144–150 |
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| Empress Liang ruled for three young emperors until her death, with a younger empress of the same family ruling until 159. | 3 |
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| 159 |
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| A eunuch group under Huandi (b. 133, r. 146–167) wiped out the family of Empress Liang and took its land and powers for themselves. | 4 |
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| 166 |
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| Anti-eunuch protests led to a repression of over 200 officials and scholars. When the same opposition erupted in 169, there was another suppression, leading to prison deaths of over 100 critics of state, known as the suppression of cliques. | 5 |
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| Early 180s |
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| Two major rebel bands influenced by religious Daoism with large numbers of followers arose: the Yellow Turbans in the east and the Five Pecks of Rice in Sichuan. Less state control in society and the economy eventually caused peasant emiseration and allowed great families to amass huge fortunes and retinues of laborers and private armies. In addition, natural disasters—for example, floods and locusts in 175, epidemics in 173 and 179—caused further rural deprivation and fueled the growth of religious Daoist groups. | 6 |
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| 184 |
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| The Yellow Turbans rose in rebellion. Among the factors to be counted as background to the rebellion were a weakened center with no major, charismatic figures; a self-indulgent elite; excessive powers fallen into the extra-bureaucratic hands of eunuchs who worked as a group as well as inner-court relatives; and large-scale student demonstrations (said to number as many as 30,000 students) at the National University against the decline in government morality. | 7 |
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| 190 |
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| General Dong Zhuo, after putting down the Yellow Turbans, took the capital of Luoyang, deposed the emperor, placed a puppet on the throne (Xiandi), and massacred a large number of eunuchs. In the face of growing opposition, Dong fled to the west where he was killed in 192. The emperor came under the control of CAO CAO (155–220), who finally crushed the last of the Yellow Turbans. | 8 |
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| 200 |
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| With Cao Cao's death, his son Cao Pi (187–226) received the abdication of the last Han emperor and installed the Wei dynasty, ending four centuries of Han rule. | 9 |
| Han government basically carried on the Qin administrative structure with the imperial institution at the top of a pyramidal organization. The highest official was a prime minister or chief counselor who ran the bureaucracy and presided over the council of state, with ministers in charge of various high-level functions (for example, the military, courts, taxation). While the emperor retained final decision-making powers, Gaozu instituted a policy of placing trust in the prime minister. With time, the bureaucracy was outflanked by the inner court (palace ladies, their families, servants, and eunuchs). In the Later Han era, governmental administration was divided into three bodies: department of state affairs, secretariat, and chancellory. The declining authority of the top bureaucrats led to factional strife and demonstrations. Cao Cao, as the effective ruler in the Han's last years, tried to rebuild the institution of the prime ministership. | 10 |
| The Han retained the Qin's system of districts and prefectures with a considerable delegation of authority to local magistrates. Wudi went further and regularized this by eliminating many fiefs; he divided the realm into 13 circuits, each with a circuit inspector sent by the censorate to report to the center, and these inspectors became more powerful over time. | 11 |
| The ideal of bureaucratic recruitment based more on merit than birth was curtailed after the Qin collapse, and there was a return to a measure of hereditary principles. Han did begin the effort to lay out objective, meritocratic criteria for bureaucratic recruitment and evaluation. 195 B.C.E. is the first known date of a call to local officials to offer recommendations of “worthy and talented” men for bureaucratic positions. In 165 B.C.E. all officials were called upon to recommend able men, who were then examined by the emperor. Two distinct Han systems thus emerged: recommendations and confirming examinations. In 125 B.C.E. local officials were called on to recommend brilliant talents to study one of the Five Classics with a famed teacher, which became the basis for the National University. There were initially 50 such students; by the end of the 1st century B.C.E., the number reached 3000; by the height of the Later Han, there were some 30,000. Thus, all officials were literate and well respected locally. | 12 |
| Local village headmen in the Han reported regularly to the county magistrate on population and landownership. Because these were the bases of taxation, the claimed population figures tended to be intrinsically inaccurate. The first national census in China of 1 C.E. gave a population of just under 60 million; the 140 census registered just under 50 million; the 156 census came in at over 56 million. With the fall of the Han, there was a great population decline. In addition, there were large population shifts east and south through the Han dynasty, and people moved into the Sichuan and Beijing–southern Manchuria areas. | 13 |
| The biggest city of the Former Han was Chang'an, with a population of 246,200. It had walls 16 miles in circumference with a grid pattern of large streets within. Luoyang in the Later Han was roughly the same size, probably larger in the 2nd century. | 14 |
| Great families or clans remained extremely prominent in Han society. They differed from the Zhou elite who owed their position to noble birth; the Han elite acquired status only partly via heredity, as many commoners rose through individual merit (especially in the military) which they then transformed into hereditary privilege for their descendants; and it worked in reverse for downward social mobility as well. Whereas the Zhou elite was a hereditary nobility, the Han elite was an aristocracy of wealth (through land) and sociopolitical power (through military control). The Han elite had immense estates, and laborers and tenants who worked the land were under their control; while the latter could in theory work their way to freedom, the great wealth in private hands led to frequent impoverishment. People who hit hard times often went into tenancy to wealthier holders, a further tendency toward class polarization. Wang Mang attempted to nationalize all lands and divide up the great estates among the poor, and that plan proved a dismal failure. The Later Han just continued the trend. | 15 |
| Commerce, distrusted in both Confucian and Legalist theory, came under close state scrutiny in the Han. Merchants were taxed heavily, sometimes arbitrarily as Wudi did to support his military campaigns. Wudi ended private profiteering in salt, iron, and grain, and he set up a fiscal administration to keep check on the markets: the ever-normal granary system, designed to keep the supply and price of grains stable and to eliminate speculation; and state monopolies, whereby the state licensed the producers and the distributors of salt and iron. Both systems were completed under Sang Hongyang (143–80 B.C.E.) and led to big profits for the state. In 81 B.C.E., some 60 scholars discussed the government's commercial role in the Discourses on Salt and Iron: the Confucians opposed the state's competing with the people in the marketplace; Sang and the Legalists supported such policies to enrich and strengthen the state, especially in its border defenses. | 16 |
| Intellectual and religious currents were tolerated and blossomed from the beginning of the Han, unlike the repressive Qin. Wudi officially merged Confucian moral precepts with the Legalist state structure. He used Confucians as officials, and Confucianism became the basis for education at the National University. Daoism also became prevalent in various mystical strains. All three traditions often mixed together as well as with belief in the Five Elements (wood, metal, fire, water, earth) theory concerning the makeup of the cosmos and correspondences with nature, the seasons, and the life cycle. Dong Zhongshu, who exerted an influence over Wudi, is alleged to have provided a synthesis of these strains of thought in his Chunqiu fanlu (The Radiant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals), although his authorship of this text is now questioned. He merged Confucianism and Legalism to argue that human nature was innately good but must continually be nourished through practice, and the ruler was heaven's terrestrial mandated agent who guided men in this direction. | 17 |
| Although many books were destroyed under the Qin, some manuscripts survived; others were reconstructed from memory; and yet others were discovered hidden. There emerged contending versions of the “same” classical works. Texts in Qin script were dubbed “new text” (jinwen); the discovered ones from earlier, “old text” (quwen). Major debates ensued over their relative authenticity, lasting into the early 20th century. China's first major dictionary was compiled in 100 C.E. by Xu Shen, the Shuowen jiezi (Analysis of Characters as an Explanation of Writing); it was both a distinguished scholarly achievement and served a standardizing role for the Chinese language. The 1st century witnessed the first use of “footnotes”—interlineal commentaries on all Five Classics. Ma Rong (79–166) invented the device of double-column commentary (138–140) and wrote commentaries on all Five Classics, the first scholar to do so. Another famous commentator was Zheng Xuan (127–200) who worked hard to explicate the difficulties of ancient works. Another classic, the Xiaojing (The Classic of Filial Piety), joined the list of revered texts from the early Han, becoming very influential especially in the education of youngsters. Wang Chong (27–c. 100) mixed Daoism with Xunzi's fierce rationalism to produce a kind of philosophical fatalism that the world was governed by chance. Religious Daoism or Neo-Daoism began in the Later Han but took off in the subsequent Six Dynasties period; it mixed Daoist proclivities about the cosmos and the self with Confucian beliefs in social duties, but later it became associated with escapism. | 18 |
| There was a strong Daoist influence in the rise of alchemy from Qin into Han times. There is a record from 133 B.C.E. of an effort to turn cinnabar into gold. Many elixirs were produced and became important in Chinese religion and science. Other Daoist strains stressed body exercises, breathing techniques, and the like as ways to achieve immortality. Protest movements like the Yellow Turbans owed much to Daoist beliefs. Gunpowder also emerged from the work of Daoist alchemists in the Han period, though it was then only used for elixirs; not until the 10th century was it mixed with carbon to make explosives. Closely related to the rise of Daoist alchemy were technological developments, such as the invention of the compass; traditionally attributed to the Yellow Emperor of mythology, it first appeared in records the 3rd century B.C.E. It was initially used to determine propitious burial of the dead, and the earliest mention of a compass being used in navigation dates to 1119. | 19 |
| Buddhism first came to China in the Later Han. By the 2nd century, there were both Daoist and Buddhist altars in the imperial palace, with Buddhist communities around China by the end of the Han. From the Later Han, the translation of Buddhist texts into China became a major enterprise; the first of the famous translators was a Parthian with the Chinese name An Shigao who came to Luoyang in 148 and stayed for two decades. Both Theravada and Mahayana texts were in China. | 20 |
| In the area of literature and the arts, the standardization of the Chinese script led to the emergence of a national intellectual class for government and scholarship, for even if there were many spoken dialects, there was only one written language after Qin. Paper was invented in the 1st century C.E. and soon became a more frequently used medium for writing than silk or wood strips. In the writing of historical works, the great work of the Former Han, Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), which was begun by Sima Tan (d. 110 B.C.E.) and was primarily the work of his son, SIMA QIAN (145–87 B.C.E.), set standards for literary as well as historical writing. In the Later Han, another family of historians was famed for composing the Han Shu (History of the Former Han): begun by Ban Biao (3–54), primarily the work of his son BAN GU (32–92) and completed by his daughter, Ban Zhao (45–114?). Ban Zhao, one of the great women intellectuals and scholars of Han times, also authored Admonitions for Women which was read for many centuries thereafter. It became both a primer on correct behavior for women in subsequent centuries and a target for attack in the 20th century for perpetuating a perceived repression position for women. There were new poetic and prose styles in the Han, among them: fu (a kind of prose poem), shi (a poem with lines of 5 or 7 characters), and yuefu (a free-flowing shi). Sima Xiangru (179–113 B.C.E.), a famous poet, was brought to the capital by Wudi and there composed court poems. | 21 |
| In the field of art, the Han produced glazed stoneware pottery. Early Buddhist influences can be seen in sculpture as well as in painting. Han painting also dealt realistically with everyday themes of life and work. Figure painting emerged as a fine art. From the late Han, calligraphy as an art form developed from cursive script. | 22 |
| In mathematics, a treatise from 120 B.C.E. dealt with number theory (concepts of negative numbers, fractions, and rules for measurement). In astronomy, the sundial was introduced during Han, and the first observations of sunspots were made (28 B.C.E.). The first Chinese maps also date from this era. | 23 |
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| 220–589 |
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| SIX DYNASTIES OR PERIOD OF DISUNION, named for the succession of six dynasties, made their capital at Nanjing. After the Yellow Turbans were quelled, Cao Cao tried to reunify China but failed; his major defeat came at the Battle of Red Cliff (208) in Hubei. He succeeded in regaining control over the north, but his enemies got control over the south. | 24 |
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| 220–264 |
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| The THREE KINGDOMS PERIOD began when Cao Cao's son, Cao Pi, founded the Wei dynasty (220) at Luoyang, and the realm was divided into three states, each claiming imperial status. Eunuchs were excluded from government, and the families of empresses were excluded from the future exercise of regency (222); thus, the inner court was cut off from state affairs. | 25 |
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| 221–263 |
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| The Shu-Han dynasty was founded by Liu Bei (161–223), a major rival of Cao Cao ever since 194, with its capital in Chengdu and control over Sichuan and the southwest. Liu was supported by Zhang Fei (d. 221) and Guan Yu (d. 219, subsequently deified as the God of War), both of whom rebelled against Cao, their former ally. Zhuge Liang (181–234), a brilliant military tactician, served as chief minister under Liu. Sichuan underwent rapid development. | 26 |
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