Why the Han Dynasty Is Referred as the Golden Age in the History of China - Research Paper Example

Lecturer Asian Drama- How do plays following the Han Dynasty in China reflect back to Confucianism? TheHan dynasty It was referred to as the golden age in the history of china. Han was one of the greatest historical dynasties in china. The dynasty of Han ruled over a great territory that was unified. The dynasty was able to sustain its rule despite facing interruption over its four-century f ruling. The Han stands as the longest era in the history of china where a single hereditary line of rulers took control of the government. In present time, the majority of the china people are known as “the people of the Han”. The name used to refer to the dominant ethnic group of the Chinese people (Hardy, pg. 137). When the Han dynasty replaced the Qin dynasty what came alive was the fundamental question of governmental and social philosophy: is the new dynasty going to resemble the Qin, a legalist dynasty that was purely dedicated to the principle of bureaucracy and moral governance in the state interest and wealth? On the other hand, was it to return to the feudal times experienced in the past, adopting, perhaps, the values of Confucian governance by tradition and virtue? Alternatively, the new dynasty would have offered a more fundamental reaction against the previous dynasty of Qin. The answers that answered these questions were to shape the future of china. Usually, the early Han is referred to the western Han. This is because its capital city, which was the chang’na city, was located in the western part almost in the same location as Qin capital and the western Zhou. The dynasty of Han that was revived ruled from the eastern Zhou capital site of the river Luo, in the Luoyang city. The founder of this Dynasty, the Han dynasty, was born a peasant. The emperor of Qin was thrown into chaos when people started rebelling against it. Despite the fact that the initial rebel, Chen She, was killed just after the rebellion began, his success inspired men who had leadership abilities or local renown to forming their own armies to fight against the Qin dynasty. Among these men who were rebelling, there was the acknowledgement of a young man who was well bred and ruthless who came from a society of aristocracy in the state of Chu. He was called Xiang Yu. He was acknowledged the leading figure in the entire china for a very short time after the Qin dynasty fell. Liu bang, a fellow rebel, competed for primacy during the rebellion against Xiang Yu. It was Liu’s army that fought and led a rebellion against the Qin into its homeland and received the Ziying, who was the heir of Qin, surrender. Since Xiang Yu had superior powers, Liu was forced to surrender the powers to him soon as he arrived with his army and settled for a new appointment as the new king of the Han region. After a brief time, Liu noticed that there was dissatisfaction from other Xiang Yu’s subordinates with the new leadership that was in place. Before Yu led for several months, Liu decided to lead his armies against the Xiang Yu in a civil war that was brief leading to the death of Xiang Yu. Finally, the elevation of Liu as the successor to Qin dynasty was successful (Goldschmidt, N. p). Political policies of Liu Bang When Liu Bang took control of power in the Qin dynasty, his choice was clear on whether to reverse the abolition of feudalism and the ranking that was hereditary, which was used during the Qin dynasty. This resulted to Zhou model of dispersion power that was high personality among group of men who had a common background. Whether he was to continue propagating the centralized system that was used by the dynasty of Qin, which used to combine features of a bureaucracy that was impersonal and the power of a single autocratic single hereditary leadership. Liu decided to maintain the model that was in use during the Qin dynasty, but had to make some changes in the model. The Daoistic experiment of the early Han Liu Bang, the new Qin leader, was a ready and rough man. He was a peasant who had turned into a general. His sole powers were on military triumph and his personality that was full of charisma and did little to establish for the imperial house of the Han as a clear basis that he based his legitimacy. It was clear that the structure of the Han state was to remain an essential legalist; the Qin tyrannical era had created its memories making it hard for advertising the legalist basis of a new dynasty. Instead, the leaders in the government started looking out for options among the several philosophies that flourished at the time of the final times of the Zhou. They looked for one that was to fit perfectly to the politics of the Han (Wu et al., pg. 23). Despite the fact that the program of the legalist was involving a law-bound state that was exercising extreme and tight social control, the premise of the state was considered as almost mechanical operation of the law. This was to the extent that the people behaved like robots. This acted as an inspiration that led to the growth of Daoist ideas in the early Han dynasty. Six decades after the Han dynasty was formed, the state was prosperous and unified. It was well secured within its borders that were established and rules using a mixture of laissez-faire and bureaucratic legalism. The Han government sponsored the study of the Confucian texts mainly for the purposes of historical values because there was a celebration of social obedience within one defined hierarchy like in legalism. All these had to change with the new leadership that was the most dynamic and powerful of the emperors of Han. The Han Dynasty and Confucianism The basic structure of the dynasty of Qin was retained as the time when Liu Bang founded the successor dynasty. The state ideologies at the beginning drifted deeper into a Daoist synthesis in 135 B.C. All this changed when Emperor Wu declared Confucianism to be a state ideology and required that it was mandatory for all officers of the Han dynasty in future to be trained in the teachings of Confucian. From that time, the legalist structures of autocracy became partners with Confucianism rather than an adversary. The changes of status led to the main changes that were seen to taking place in the Confucianism. Therefore, it is vital to know emperor’s Wu’s act of nature and the critical co promises in the ideas of Confucian and the goals that were entailed in it (Trentelman et al., pg. 170). The background that led to the acts of Wu’s emperor mostly concerned his ambitions and the great strategies of politics of a Confucian scholar by the name Dong Zhongshu. He was considered to have been the most influential Confucian scholar at that time after the Confucius himself. Dong decided to reform Confucianism through adapting systematically to its ideas. The ideas were popular about the structures of the universe and the relation of man to nature. This was through tailoring the idea carefully to exalt the roles that the emperors had in the structure of the Qin-Han state (Chia, pg. 40). Wu’s characters and predicament had great influence in the commercialization of his empire. Dong Zhongshu had not gone high in the government, but was a leader was respected among the Confucian community of scholars. They were stuck in the highest positions in the early period of Han dynasty. In the early days of Han dynasty, the early rulers were not friendly towards the Confucians compared to the Qin leaders. Liu, who was the founder of the Han dynasty, had once urinated publicly in a Confucian ritual hat. Dong Zhou’s proposals that were concrete towards the reforms by the government that were on new models of cosmos that developed because of Confucians. Classical Confucianism was seen to be free of speculation about the cosmos, natural forces and the spiritual world. The early ideas of Huang-Lao and the thoughts of Han courts were in such interests. Dong Zhongshu’s main goal was to graft the popular beliefs to the ethics of Confucianism and the values of politics and create a brand of Confucianism that was acceptable to the Han. Dong viewed the universe as an organically connected composite that has three separate realms of existence: the real of heaven, earth and man. Once it was established, a state Confucianism in the legalist state grew gradually into a mass movement. Young men started having interests and hoped to advance as needed to be a well acquainted with the ideas of Confucian and Confucian texts. During that time, any person who wished to rise to the governments top-level hence had to serve some time as Confucians text scholars. The government officials who were trained in Confucian and came to office under the emperor of Wu served him well, but the emperor’s goals were far more from the Confucian. The Later Han and Confucian After the period that was led by emperor Wu, more policies of economy and military allowed reinvigoration of finance in the government. However, the dynasty aim of recapturing its strength that it had in the middle years of Wu’s reign was not successful. There was the emergence of tension between the Confucian academy leaders that Wu had established and the officials of the government who were more committed to the goals of the legalist state that animated Wu’s emperor. It was increasingly becoming obvious of the contradiction of the moralistic ideology of Confucian adoption by legalists who were pragmatic. During the late period of the first century B.C, the ruling house was weakened by the series of emperors who either young or incompetent. In 1 B.C, Wang Mang, who was appointed to lead on behalf of a young child who came to rule apparently brought down the dynasty of Han by engineering his elevation to the imperial throne. Mang was not hungry for any power; he was a renowned reformer in Confucianism. He instituted a wide variety of policies that were designed specifically to restore the pre-legalist institutions of the dynasty of Zhou. Some of his policies were forward looking including the outlawing of slavery. The approach of Wang had limited success to government, and his dynasty was in looming trouble when a natural disaster, yellow fever hit china. Gwangwu, a collateral Branch of the clan of Liu, emerged from this period that was experiencing chaos. Guangwu decided to revive the Han dynastic name and be the torchbearer of the traditions of his fathers. He decided to move the base of his dynasty from the western chang’na to central china to be his power base where he established a renewed Han government. More forces were joining so that they could weaken the central government. The Gwangwu suffered immediate damage that occurred between the elites of the Confucian and the new groups of eunuchs who were hungry for power (Zhao, pg. N. p). Throughout the Han dynasty, here was an increasing role that was being played by the eunuchs in the politics of the courts. In the beginning, the eunuchs were being cultivated solely by the emperors because it was thought that they were good keepers of the imperial harem since they were castrated men. The magnitude and scale of the fighting that was taking place between these two sides were great and resulted to a notable instability to the capital of the dynasty. I the period of successive purges in the late decades of the 2nd century witness persecution of the eunuchs as the Confucians exerted their revenge. A series of uprising was taking place across the provinces of the Han dynasty as chaos-taking place in Luoyang was weakening the central government. These movements were inspired by what they believed to be an unequal distribution of wealth. As more wealth was accumulating in the hands of the families that were more privileged and disillusionment taking place with the amorality of Confucian governance. The leading groups and generals put down the rebellion of the Han. The rebellion was stationed in the provinces, as the central government became weak because of the war that was taking place between the eunuchs and the Confucians In the capital of the Han dynasty, the leaders put it down. As the 2nd century ended and the new century begun, the power of the imperial throne was becoming outweighed by the power that these men had. With the end of the most powerful dynasty in offing, they competed to succeed as founders of a new dynasty that was to be formed. Ultimately, nobody won the war leading to the fall of Han dynasty. A disunity that led to the split of the state after he fall of the Han dynasty ushered a new era that lasted for a period of almost three hundred years (Lian, Ding, and Zhou, pg. 1). Throughout he long history of the hand dynasty of china, the Confucians and their ideologies of Confucianism helped the Han dynasty survive for the longest period. Despite this, because of their power struggle and the persecution that they declared towards the eunuchs led to the fall of the longest-serving dynasty. Their power struggle led to civil war on who was to lead the new dynasty after the fall of Han. Greed, power struggle and unequal distribution of wealth led to dissatisfaction and ultimately the fall of the Han dynasty. Work cited Chia, Ning. “Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928 (review).” China Review International 2003 : 40–58. Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song dynasty,960–1200. Vol. 7. N. p., 2009. Print. Hardy, Grant. “The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han - By Mark Edward Lewis.” Historian 71 (2009): 137–139. Lian, Hai-ping, Zhong-ming Ding, and Xiang Zhou. “Study on the Bronze-Molds for Casting Coins of Han Dynasty.” Wen wu bao hu yu kao gu ke xue = Sciences of conservation and archaeology 20 (2008): 1–9. Print. Trentelman, Karen et al. “A Comparative Study of the Composition and Corrosion of Branches from Eastern Han Dynasty Money Trees.” Studies in conservation 44 (1999): 170–183. Print. Wu, Li et al. “Ancient Culture Decline after the Han Dynasty in the Chaohu Lake Basin, East China: A Geoarchaeological Perspective.” Quaternary International 275 (2012): 23–29. Zhao, Lu. “In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture.” N. p., 2013. Print.  Read More