History of the Silk Road: Envoy Zhang Qian’s Journey to the Central Steppes

Episode 15: The Silk Roads – The Envoy Zhang Xian

Foundations of East Civilization

Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)

Film Review

Early in the second century BC, the Han emperor Wudi dispatched Zhang Xian as an envoy to the Yeuzhi Federation on the Central Steppes. Wudi’s goal was to seek an alliance with the Yeuzhi against the repeated raids of the Xiongu nomads to China’s north. Long time rivals of the Yeuzhi, the Xiongu had launched a series of brutal attacks that had forced them to migrate thousands of miles and eventually resettle (in 130 BC)in the Oxus River valley (presently northern border of Afghanistan).

Leaving China in 138 BC, it took Zhang Xian ten years to reach the Yuezhi in Bactria with his coterie of 100 men.* The first Chinese in history to cross the Himalayas, he was captured by the Xiongu as he headed through the Gonzu Corridor (controlled by the Xiongu) in the Gobi Desert.

After the Xiongu killed most of his men, Zhang Qian himself was transported to their headquarters on the northern steppes. After ten years of captivity, he  escaped, along with his Xiongu wife and their children. When he finally arrived in Bactria in 120 BC, the Yuezhi refused to ally with the Han Dynasty to confront the Xongnu.

The Xongnu rearrested Zhang Qian on his return trip in 125 BC. After being held for a year, he was released on the death of the Xiongu leader.

The reports he brought back to Wudi gave Chinese the first glimpse of settled regions to the west of China. With a population of a million people, Bactria had a well-developed agricultural economy (based on wheat, rice and grapes) with 100 cities and a well-developed trading economy. A subsequent envoy was very surprised to find goods from southern China (outside of Han control) that had found their way to Bactria via India.

In 124 BC, Zhang Qian set out again to seek a new route to India that didn’t traverse Xiongnu territory. This time Kunming tribes he encountered in the Himalayas murdered most of his men.

Zhang Qian’s initial trip rip to the Central Steppes would lead to hundreds of Chinese expeditions per year to Central Asia.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

 

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5808638

Confucianism in the Early Han Empire

Episode 11: Contact with the West – the Early Han

Foundations of Eastern Civilization

Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)

Film Review

The first Han emperor Gaozu moved the capitol to Changon after a popular uprising destroyed the Qin capitol Xianyang. Later Han emperors would move it east to Lyoyang.

Ruling a vast empire stretching from Vietnam in the north to Korea in the south and west into Central Asia, Gaozu employed a bureaucracy of highly educated Confucian and Daoist scholars. In the year 2 AD census, the Han empire registered 80 commanderies,* 10 kingdoms and 1,587 prefectures (which were further subdivided into wards).

Immensely popular for reducing taxes on the peasants, the first Han emperor adopted Confucianism as official government policy in 140 BC. The last Han emperor Wudi would found a Confucian academy to educate government officials and initiate the world’s first civil service exam.

The Han Dynasty continued the harsh criminal penalties enacted under the Qin Dynasty and forced all subjects to register locally for conscription for military service and imperial construction crews. To finance his numerous military campaigns, Wudi began minting coins, confiscating lands he had gifted to his nobles and increasing taxes on business activity. This income supplemented growing revenues from the government monopoly on the highly lucrative salt and iron industries.

Wudi is also remembered for dispatching the famous Han envoy Zhang Qian to Central Asia to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi nomads against the aggressive Xiongu nomads to the north of China. The international contacts Zhang Qian initiated would lead to the development of the first Silk Road.

Eventually the fiscal stress caused by Wudi’s military expansionism led to marked peasant unrest and the downfall of the East Han Dynasty in 9 AD. Daoist scholars particularly expressed harsh criticism of corrupt government policies (eg government monopolies in critical industries, incessant wars of conquest and the growing power of palace eunuchs).

One of Wudi’s court officials Wang Mang seized power in 9 AD, declaring the short-lived Xin Dynasty. Wang was immensely popular with Chinese peasants for apportioning land to them under the communal “well field system”** and for establishing grain reserves to stabilize widely fluctuating grain prices.

Wang was overthrown in 23 AD by a group of nobles who resented his favoritism towards the peasants.

The Xin Dynasty was replaced by the East Han Dynasty, which ruled for nearly two centuries. Eunuchs were incredibly powerful under the East Han Dynasty and frequently arrested Confucian scholars for protesting government corruption.

Meanwhile Daoist principles of equal rights and land distribution spread throughout the peasantry, leading to the Yellow Turban Rebellion (184 – 204 AD). As the Han Dynasty collapsed, power eventually fell into the hands of local governments and warlords.

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*Provincial regions with decentralized administrative structures

**In the well–field system, one unit of land was divided among eight peasant families. A shared field was surrounded by eight fields, each worked by an individual family. The field in the center was worked jointly by the families for their noble lord.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5808608/5808632

Ancient China at War with the Xiongu Nomads and Collapse of the Han Dynasty

Episode 10: The Han Dynasty and the Xiongu at War

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

This lecture provides excellent background on early Chinese history they never teach in school.

Harl describes how Wudi, the first Han emperor (141 – 87 BC), weary of sending tribute to the Xiongu steppes nomads,* undertook military action against them. A strong advocate of Confucian imperial expansion, Wudi also aspired to gain control of the Gansu Corridor between the steppes and the Tibetan plateau and the Tarim Basin with its rich caravan cities.**

As the Chinese infantry with their chariots and crossbows was no match for Xiongu mounted archers with composite bows, he hired Xiongu mercenaries from rebel tribes.

in 127 BC, Wudi launched the first of seven years of campaigns. He attacked the Xiongnu settlements (tent cities) centered around the trade routes to the north of China, driving the Xiongnu north into Mongolia. He then launched one campaign into the Gansu corridor and the Tarim Basin (which ultimately became the present Uighur Autonomous Area). Harl maintains the outcome fell short of true military occupation. Although the caravan cities submitted to the presence of a few Chinese garrisons and paid tribute, there was no real Chinese presence in the region for many centuries.

Wudi also made two expeditions to Ferghana (modern day Tajikistan) on the other side of the Tarim Basin, as well as exploiting a civil war between two Xiongnu brothers. This resulted in a formal Chinese alliance with the southern Xiongu tribes.

These final campaigns bankrupted the Han Empire, resulting in its collapse in 9 AD.

Wudi’s successor, an interloper named Wang Mang (9 – 25 AD), lost control of the Tarim Basin and Gansu Corridor. Han descendant Gurangwu overthrew him in 25 AD restoring the Han dynasty until 220 AD. The latter launched military campaigns into Korea, Vietnam; resumed military control of the Gansu Corridor and Tarim Basin and decimated the northern Xiongnu confederacy.

In 250 AD, Han military adventurism would cause a final collapse of the dynasty into three warring states: Wei, Shu and Wu. Wei, a strong military state owing to their regular confrontation with Xiongu nomads, would eventually reunite China. Shu was the main, seat of silk, Confucianism and power.

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*Unable to conquer them militarily, previous Han emperors had prevented Xiongu raids by sending them tribute and royal brides. See How Steppes Nomads Influenced Early Chinese Civilization

**A caravan city is a city located on and deriving its prosperity from its location on a major trans-desert trade route.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5694984/5694992