Society in China during the Han Dynasty 206 BC – AD 220

Society in China during the Han Dynasty is one of the Ancient Societies options in Section II (25 marks). You answer one question with three or four parts; one part is worth 10–15 marks and the others are short answers, often based on a source. The syllabus asks you to study the society through its evidence:

• Historical and geographical context: the land and its resources; sites such as Chang'an, Luoyang, Mawangdui, Mancheng and Xuzhou.
• Social structure and political organisation: the emperor and the Mandate of Heaven, the bureaucracy (scholars, officials, eunuchs), the commanderies and kingdoms, imperial Confucianism, women, the army.
• The economy: agriculture and its innovations, taxation, trade, government monopolies, coinage, transport and occupations.
• Religion, death and burial: the Cult of Heaven, the cult of ancestors, Daoism, the emperor's religious role, rituals and divination, funerary customs (Lady Dai's tomb).
• Cultural and everyday life: bronze work, silk painting, figurines and pottery, lacquer, writing (the Shiji), leisure.

The framework of the dynasty

• Western (Former) Han, 206 BC – AD 9: founded by Liu Bang (Emperor Gaozu) after the fall of the Qin; capital Chang'an.
• Emperor Wu (141–87 BC): expansion, wars against the Xiongnu nomads, Confucian learning, state monopolies.
• Wang Mang's Xin dynasty, AD 9–23: a usurper whose reforms failed.
• Eastern (Later) Han, AD 25–220: restored by Emperor Guangwu; capital Luoyang. Struggles between consort families, eunuchs and officials; the Yellow Turban rebellion (AD 184); collapse in 220.

Geography

The Han heartland lay in the Yellow River valley in the north (millet and wheat) and spread south to the Yangzi (rice). Loess soils were fertile but the Yellow River flooded often. Mountains, deserts and steppe bordered the empire; the Xiongnu threatened the north. The Hexi Corridor led west to Central Asia, the route of the later Silk Roads.

Key sites

• Chang'an and Luoyang: walled capitals with palaces, markets and the Imperial Academy.
• Mawangdui (near Changsha): tombs of the Marquis of Dai's family, including Lady Dai (Xin Zhui).
• Mancheng: tombs of Prince Liu Sheng and his wife Dou Wan, buried in jade suits.
• Xuzhou: rock-cut tombs of the kings of Chu, with jade suits and small terracotta armies.
• Frontier sites (Juyan, Dunhuang): wooden slips recording garrison life.

The emperor

The emperor was the Son of Heaven, ruling by the Mandate of Heaven, which a virtuous dynasty kept and a corrupt one lost. Disasters and omens were read as Heaven's warnings. The emperor was the head of government, the army and the state rituals.

Officials and the bureaucracy

• At the top: the Three Excellencies (chancellor, imperial counsellor, grand commander) and the Nine Ministers.
• The empire was divided into commanderies and, in the early Han, semi-independent kingdoms for imperial relatives, gradually brought under central control after the Revolt of the Seven Kingdoms (154 BC).
• Recruitment by recommendation: commanderies put forward men who were ‘filial and incorrupt’ (xiaolian); students of the Imperial Academy (founded 124 BC) studied the Five Classics.

Imperial Confucianism

Under Emperor Wu, Confucian learning became the official ideology, promoted by the scholar Dong Zhongshu. It stressed moral government, filial piety, ritual and hierarchy. In practice, Han government also kept Legalist methods from the Qin: strict laws, central control and state economic policies.

Eunuchs and consort families

In the Eastern Han many emperors came to the throne young. The families of empresses (such as the Dou and Liang) ruled as regents; emperors used palace eunuchs to overthrow them, and the eunuchs became powerful. Scholar-officials opposed them and were purged in the Partisan Prohibitions (from AD 166). These struggles weakened government.

Women

Confucian ideals placed women under their fathers, husbands and sons, as Ban Zhao's Lessons for Women teaches; yet Ban Zhao herself was a court scholar who helped complete the Hanshu, and empress dowagers such as Empress Lü and Empress Deng held real power. Ordinary women farmed and wove silk and hemp.

The army

Men were liable to conscription for training and a period of service at the capital or the frontier. Emperor Wu's generals Wei Qing and Huo Qubing fought the Xiongnu; earlier and later emperors also used heqin (marriage alliances and gifts). The Great Wall and its watchtowers were extended west to Dunhuang.

Agriculture and technology

Most people were farmers. Innovations included cast-iron ploughs (some with mouldboards), ox-drawn ploughing, the multi-tube seed drill, irrigation with chain pumps (Eastern Han), and water-powered trip-hammers. The wheelbarrow and improved paper (presented by Cai Lun, AD 105) also date from the Han.

Taxation and labour

Households were registered. They paid a land tax (often one-thirtieth of the harvest), poll taxes in coin and owed labour and military service.

Monopolies and the state

To pay for his wars, Emperor Wu's government created monopolies on salt and iron (about 119–117 BC; books differ on the year), run by officials such as Dong Guo Xianyang and Kong Jin. Sang Hongyang added equable transport (junshu), moving and selling tax goods, and the balanced standard (pingzhun), buying when prices were low and selling when high. A liquor monopoly ran from 98 to 81 BC. Confucian scholars attacked these in the debate of 81 BC recorded in the Discourses on Salt and Iron. The wuzhu coin (118 BC) became the standard currency, minted by the state.

Trade and transport

Roads, canals and river transport linked the empire. Zhang Qian's missions to Central Asia (from 139 BC) led to contacts and trade in horses, silk and other goods along the routes later called the Silk Roads. Merchants could become rich but were looked down on in Confucian thought.

The Cult of Heaven and the emperor

The emperor offered sacrifices to Heaven, Earth and other powers. Emperor Wu performed the feng and shan sacrifices at Mount Tai (110 BC). In the late Western Han the main state sacrifices to Heaven were moved to the suburbs of the capital.

Ancestors and the Cult of the Dead

Families made offerings to their ancestors, whose spirits could help or harm the living. Many believed in two souls: the hun (which could rise to heaven) and the po (which stayed with the body), so the body and tomb were carefully provided for.

Daoism, Five Phases and divination

Huang-Lao Daoist ideas were influential at the early Han court. Belief in immortality and the Queen Mother of the West spread. Yin-yang and the Five Phases theory explained the cosmos. Divination, omens and the Book of Changes guided decisions. Organised religious Daoism emerged in the late 2nd century AD, and Buddhism reached China in the 1st century AD.

Funerary customs

Elite tombs were furnished as homes for the afterlife. Lady Dai's tomb at Mawangdui held her well-preserved body in four nested coffins, a T-shaped silk banner showing heaven, earth and the underworld, food, silk clothes, lacquerware and figurines. Princes were buried in jade suits at Mancheng and Xuzhou, as jade was believed to protect the body. Clay models of houses, granaries, watchtowers and farmyards were placed in tombs.

Art

Bronze work such as the Changxin Palace lamp from Dou Wan's tomb and the bronze ‘flying horse’ from Wuwei (Eastern Han); painted silk; lacquer bowls and boxes; pottery figurines of servants, musicians and dancers; stone reliefs on tomb shrines showing history, myth and daily life.

Writing

Sima Qian's Shiji (completed about 90 BC) is the first great comprehensive history of China; Ban Gu's Hanshu covers the Western Han. Texts were written on bamboo and wooden slips, on silk and, increasingly, on paper.

Leisure and daily life

Banquets with music and dance, acrobats and jugglers, the board game liubo, the ball game cuju, hunting and archery. Houses were timber and rammed earth; pottery models show multi-storey houses with courtyards.

• Confusing the Han with the Qin: the terracotta army of the First Emperor is Qin, not Han.
• Saying officials were chosen by examination. Han recruitment was mainly by recommendation.
• Treating Confucianism as the only influence on government. Legalist methods and Daoist ideas mattered too.
• Mixing up Sima Qian (Shiji) and Ban Gu (Hanshu).
• Forgetting the change between the Western Han (Chang'an) and the Eastern Han (Luoyang).

• Use specific evidence: Mawangdui, the Discourses on Salt and Iron, the Shiji, Ban Zhao, jade suits.
• For a source, use its words, add own knowledge and comment on its purpose and perspective (a court historian, a Confucian moralist, an official debate).
• In the 10–15 mark answer, begin with a clear judgement and structure paragraphs around the question.
• Historians' views are credited if used accurately, but they are not required.

• Personalities in their Times — Qin Shihuangdi: the Qin background to the Han.
• ANC-PER (Persia): compare how two great empires governed vast territories.