READING HALL . THE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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A HISTORY OF CHINACHAPTER VII.THE EPOCH OF THE FIRST DIVISION OF CHINA(A.D.220-580)(A)
The three
kingdoms
(220-265)
1.
Social,
intellectual, and economic problems during the first division
The end of the Han period was followed by the three and a half centuries
of the first division of China into several kingdoms, each with its own
dynasty. In fact, once before during the period of the Contending States, China
had been divided into a number of states, but at least in theory they had been
subject to the Chou dynasty, and none of the contending states had made the
claim to be the legitimate ruler of all China. In this period of the
"first division" several states claimed to be legitimate rulers, and
later Chinese historians tried to decide which of these had "more
right" to this claim. At the outset (220-280) there were three kingdoms
(Wei, Wu, Shu Han); then came an unstable reunion during twenty-seven years
(280-307) under the rule of the Western Chin. This was followed by a still
sharper division between north and south: while a wave of non-Chinese nomad
dynasties poured over the north, in the south one Chinese clique after another
seized power, so that dynasty followed dynasty until finally, in 580, a united
China came again into existence, adopting the culture of the north and the
traditions of the gentry.
In some ways, the period from 220 to 580 can be compared with the period
of the coincidentally synchronous breakdown of the Roman Empire: in both cases
there was no great increase in population, although in China perhaps no
over-all decrease in population as in the Roman Empire; decrease occurred,
however, in the population of the great Chinese cities, especially of the
capital; furthermore we witness, in both empires, a disorganization of the
monetary system, i.e. in China the reversal to a predominance of natural
economy after some 400 years of money economy. Yet, this period cannot be
simply dismissed as a transition period, as was usually done by the older
European works on China. The social order of the gentry, whose birth and
development inside China we followed, had for the first time to defend itself
against views and systems entirely opposed to it; for the Turkish and Mongol
peoples who ruled northern China brought with them their traditions of a feudal
nobility with privileges of birth and all that they implied. Thus this period,
socially regarded, is especially that of the struggle between the Chinese
gentry and the northern nobility, the gentry being excluded at first as a
direct political factor in the northern and more important part of China. In
the south the gentry continued in the old style with a constant struggle
between cliques, the only difference being that the class assumed a sort of
"colonial" character through the formation of gigantic estates and
through association with the merchant class.
To throw light on the scale of events, we need to have figures of
population. There are no figures for the years around AD 220, and we must make
do with those of 140; but in order to show the relative strength of the three
states it is the ratio between the figures that matters. In 140 the regions
which later belonged to Wei had roughly 29,000,000 inhabitants; those later
belonging to Wu had 11,700,000; those which belonged later to Shu Han had a
bare 7,500,000. (The figures take no account of the primitive native
population, which was not yet included in the taxation lists.) The Hsiung-nu
formed only a small part of the population, as there were only the nineteen
tribes which had abandoned one of the parts, already reduced, of the Hsiung-nu
empire. The whole Hsiung-nu empire may never have counted more than some
3,000,000. At the time when the population of what became the Wei territory
totalled 29,000,000 the capital with its immediate environment had over a
million inhabitants. The figure is exclusive of most of the officials and
soldiers, as these were taxable in their homes and so were counted there. It is
clear that this was a disproportionate concentration round the capital.
It was at this time that both South and North China felt the influence
of Buddhism, which until AD 220 had no more real effect on China than had, for
instance, the penetration of European civilization between 1580 and 1842.
Buddhism offered new notions, new ideals, foreign science, and many other
elements of culture, with which the old Chinese philosophy and science had to
contend. At the same time there came with Buddhism the first direct knowledge
of the great civilized countries west of China. Until then China had regarded
herself as the only existing civilized country, and all other countries had
been regarded as barbaric, for a civilized country was then taken to mean a
country with urban industrial crafts and agriculture. In our present period,
however, China's relations with the Middle East and with southern Asia were so
close that the existence of civilized countries outside China had to be
admitted. Consequently, when alien dynasties ruled in northern China and a new
high civilization came into existence there, it was impossible to speak of its
rulers as barbarians any longer. Even the theory that the Chinese emperor was
the Son of Heaven and enthroned at the centre of the world was no longer tenable.
Thus a vast widening of China's intellectual horizon took place.
Economically, our present period witnessed an adjustment in South China
between the Chinese way of life, which had penetrated from the north, and that
of the natives of the south. Large groups of Chinese had to turn over from
wheat culture in dry fields to rice culture in wet fields, and from field
culture to market gardening. In North China the conflict went on between
Chinese agriculture and the cattle breeding of Central Asia. Was the will of
the ruler to prevail and North China to become a country of pasturage, or was
the country to keep to the agrarian tradition of the people under this rule?
The Turkish and Mongol conquerors had recently given up their old supplementary
agriculture and had turned into pure nomads, obtaining the agricultural produce
they needed by raiding or trade. The conquerors of North China were now faced
with a different question: if they were to remain nomads, they must either
drive the peasants into the south, or make them into slave herdsmen, or
exterminate them. There was one more possibility: they might install themselves
as a ruling upper class, as nobles over the subjugated native peasants. The
same question was faced much later by the Mongols, and at first they answered
it differently from the peoples of our present period. Only by attention to
this problem shall we be in a position to explain why the rule of the Turkish
peoples did not last, why these peoples were gradually absorbed and
disappeared.
2.
Status of
the two southern Kingdoms
When the last emperor of the Han period had to abdicate in favor of
Ts'ao P'ei and the Wei dynasty began, China was in no way a unified realm.
Almost immediately, in 221, two other army commanders, who had long been independent,
declared themselves emperors. In the south-west of China, in the present
province of Szechwan, the Shu Han dynasty was founded in this way, and in the
south-east, in the region of the present Nanking, the Wu dynasty.
Economically, Shu Han was not in a bad position. The country had long
been part of the Chinese wheat lands, and had a fairly large Chinese peasant
population in the well irrigated plain of Ch'engtu. There was also a wealthy
merchant class, supplying grain to the surrounding mountain peoples and buying
medicaments and other profitable Tibetan products. And there were trade routes
from here through the present province of Yünnan to India.
Shu Han's difficulty was that its population was not large enough to be
able to stand against the northern State of Wei; moreover, it was difficult to
carry out an offensive from Shu Han, though the country could defend itself
well. The first attempt to find a remedy was a campaign against the native
tribes of the present Yünnan. The purpose of this was to secure man-power for
the army and also slaves for sale; for the south-west had for centuries been a
main source for traffic in slaves. Finally it was hoped to gain control over
the trade to India. All these things were intended to strengthen Shu Han
internally, but in spite of certain military successes they produced no
practical result, as the Chinese were unable in the long run to endure the
climate or to hold out against the guerrilla tactics of the natives. Shu Han
tried to buy the assistance of the Tibetans and with their aid to carry out a
decisive attack on Wei, whose dynastic legitimacy was not recognized by Shu
Han. The ruler of Shu Han claimed to be a member of the [imperial family of the
deposed Han dynasty, and therefore to be the rightful, legitimate ruler over
China. His descent, however, was a little doubtful, and in any case it depended
on a link far back in the past. Against this the Wei of the north declared that
the last ruler of the Han dynasty had handed over to them with all due form the
seals of the state and therewith the imperial prerogative. The controversy was
of no great practical importance, but it played a big part in the Chinese
Confucianist school until the twelfth century, and contributed largely to a
revision of the old conceptions of legitimacy.
The political plans of Shu Han were well considered and far-seeing. They
were evolved by the premier, a man from Shantung named Chu-ko Liang; for the
ruler died in 226 and his successor was still a child. But Chu-ko Liang lived
only for a further eight years, and after his death in 234 the decline of Shu
Han began. Its political leaders no longer had a sense of what was possible.
Thus Wei inflicted several defeats on Shu Han, and finally subjugated it in
263.
The situation of the state of Wu was much less favorable than that of
Shu Han, though this second southern kingdom lasted from 221 to 280. Its
country consisted of marshy, water-logged plains, or mountains with narrow
valleys. Here Tai peoples had long cultivated their rice, while in the
mountains Yao tribes lived by hunting and by simple agriculture. Peasants
immigrating from the north found that their wheat and pulse did not thrive
here, and slowly they had to gain familiarity with rice cultivation. They were
also compelled to give up their sheep and cattle and in their place to breed
pigs and water buffaloes, as was done by the former inhabitants of the country.
The lower class of the population was mainly non-Chinese; above it was an upper
class of Chinese, at first relatively small, consisting of officials, soldiers,
and merchants in a few towns and administrative centres. The country was poor,
and its only important economic asset was the trade in metals, timber, and
other southern products; soon there came also a growing overseas trade with
India and the Middle East, bringing revenues to the state in so far as the
goods were re-exported from Wu to the north.
Wu never attempted to conquer the whole of China, but endeavored to
consolidate its own difficult territory with a view to building up a state on a
firm foundation. In general, Wu played mainly a passive part in the incessant
struggles between the three kingdoms, though it was active in diplomacy. The Wu
kingdom entered into relations with a man who in 232 had gained control of the
present South Manchuria and shortly afterwards assumed the title of king. This
new ruler of "Yen", as he called his kingdom, had determined to
attack the Wei dynasty, and hoped, by putting pressure on it in association
with Wu, to overrun Wei from north and south. Wei answered this plan very
effectively by recourse to diplomacy and it began by making Wu believe that Wu
had reason to fear an attack from its western neighbor Shu Han. A mission was
also dispatched from Wei to negotiate with Japan. Japan was then emerging from
its stone age and introducing metals; there were countless small principalities
and states, of which the state of Yamato, then ruled by a queen, was the most
powerful. Yamato had certain interests in Korea, where it already ruled a small
coastal strip in the east. Wei offered Yamato the prospect of gaining the whole
of Korea if it would turn against the state of Yen in South Manchuria. Wu, too,
had turned to Japan, but the negotiations came to nothing, since Wu, as an ally
of Yen, had nothing to offer. The queen of Yamato accordingly sent a mission to
Wei; she had already decided in favor of that state. Thus Wei was able to
embark on war against Yen, which it annihilated in 237. This wrecked Wu's
diplomatic projects, and no more was heard of any ambitious plans of the
kingdom of Wu.
The two southern states had a common characteristic: both were
condottiere states, not built up from their own population but conquered by
generals from the north and ruled for a time by those generals and their
northern troops. Natives gradually entered these northern armies and reduced
their percentage of northerners, but a gulf remained between the native
population, including its gentry, and the alien military rulers. This reduced
the striking power of the southern states.
On the other hand, this period had its positive element. For the first
time there was an emperor in south China, with all the organization that
implied. A capital full of officials, eunuchs, and all the satellites of an
imperial court provided incentives to economic advance, because it represented
a huge market. The peasants around it were able to increase their sales and
grew prosperous. The increased demand resulted in an increase of tillage and a
thriving trade. Soon the transport problem had to be faced, as had happened
long ago in the north, and new means of transport, especially ships, were
provided, and new trade routes opened which were to last far longer than the
three kingdoms; on the other hand, the costs of transport involved fresh
taxation burdens for the population. The skilled staff needed for the business
of administration came into the new capital from the surrounding districts, for
the conquerors and new rulers of the territory of the two southern dynasties
had brought with them from the north only uneducated soldiers and almost
equally uneducated officers. The influx of scholars and administrators into the
chief cities produced cultural and economic centres in the south, a
circumstance of great importance to China's later development.
3.
The
northern State of Wei
The situation in the north, in the state of Wei (220-265) was anything
but rosy. Wei ruled what at that time were the most important and richest
regions of China, the plain of Shensi in the west and the great plain east of
Loyang, the two most thickly populated areas of China. But the events at the
end of the Han period had inflicted great economic injury on the country. The
southern and south-western parts of the Han empire had been lost, and though
parts of Central Asia still gave allegiance to Wei, these, as in the past, were
economically more of a burden than an asset, because they called for incessant
expenditure. At least the trade caravans were able to travel undisturbed from
and to China through Turkestan. Moreover, the Wei kingdom, although much smaller
than the empire of the Han, maintained a completely staffed court at great
expense, because the rulers, claiming to rule the whole of China, felt bound to
display more magnificence than the rulers of the southern dynasties. They had
also to reward the nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu in the north for their
military aid, not only with cessions of land but with payments of money.
Finally, they would not disarm but maintained great armies for the continual
fighting against the southern states. The Wei dynasty did not succeed, however,
in closely subordinating the various army commanders to the central government.
Thus the commanders, in collusion with groups of the gentry, were able to
enrich themselves and to secure regional power. The inadequate strength of the
central government of Wei was further undermined by the rivalries among the
dominant gentry. The imperial family (Ts'ao Pei, who reigned from 220 to 226,
had taken as emperor the name of Wen Ti) was descended from one of the groups
of great landowners that had formed in the later Han period. The nucleus of
that group was a family named Ts'ui, of which there is mention from the Han
period onward and which maintained its power down to the tenth century; but it
remained in the background and at first held entirely aloof from direct
intervention in high policy. Another family belonging to this group was the
Hsia-hou family which was closely united to the family of Wen Ti by adoption;
and very soon there was also the Ssŭ-ma family. Quite naturally Wen Ti, as
soon as he came into power, made provision for the members of these powerful
families, for only thanks to their support had he been able to ascend the
throne and to maintain his hold on the throne. Thus we find many members of the
Hsia-hou and Ssŭ-ma families in government positions. The Ssŭ-ma
family especially showed great activity, and at the end of Wen Ti's reign their
power had so grown that a certain Ssŭ-ma I was in control of the
government, while the new emperor Ming Ti (227-233) was completely powerless.
This virtually sealed the fate of the Wei dynasty, so far as the dynastic
family was concerned. The next emperor was installed and deposed by the
Ssŭ-ma family; dissensions arose within the ruling family, leading to
members of the family assassinating one another. In 264 a member of the
Ssŭ-ma family declared himself king; when he died and was succeeded by his
son Ssŭ-ma Yen, the latter, in 265, staged a formal act of renunciation of
the throne of the Wei dynasty and made himself the first ruler of the new Chin
dynasty. There is nothing to gain by detailing all the intrigues that led up to
this event: they all took place in the immediate environment of the court and
in no way affected the people, except that every item of expenditure, including all the bribery, had to come out of the taxes paid by the people.
With such a situation at court, with the bad economic situation in the
country, and with the continual fighting against the two southern states, there
could be no question of any far-reaching foreign policy. Parts of eastern
Turkestan still showed some measure of allegiance to Wei, but only because at
the time it had no stronger opponent. The Hsiung-nu beyond the frontier were
suffering from a period of depression which was at the same time a period of
reconstruction. They were beginning slowly to form together with Mongol
elements a new unit, the Juan-juan, but at this time were still politically
inactive. The nineteen tribes within north China held more and more closely
together as militarily organized nomads, but did not yet represent a military
power and remained loyal to the Wei. The only important element of trouble
seems to have been furnished by the Hsien-pi tribes, who had joined with
Wu-huan tribes and apparently also with vestiges of the Hsiung-nu in eastern
Mongolia, and who made numerous raids over the frontier into the Wei empire.
The state of Yen, in southern Manchuria, had already been destroyed by Wei in
238 thanks to Wei's good relations with Japan. Loose diplomatic relations were
maintained with Japan in the period that followed; in that period many elements
of Chinese civilization found their way into Japan and there, together with
settlers from many parts of China, helped to transform the culture of ancient
Japan.
CHAPTER VIII.THE EMPIRES OF THE SUI AND THE T'ANG
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