READING HALL . THE DOORS OF WISDOM |
 |
 |
A HISTORY OF CHINACHAPTER VIII.THE EMPIRES OF THE SUI AND THE T'ANG
The Sui dynasty
(AD 580-618)
Internal situation in the
newly unified empire
The last of the northern
dynasties, the Northern Chou, had been brought to an end by Yang Chien: rapid campaigns had made an end of the remaining
petty states, and thus the Sui dynasty had come into power. China, reunited
after 360 years, was again under Chinese rule. This event brought about a new
epoch in the history of the Far East. But the happenings of 360 years could not
be wiped out by a change of dynasty. The short Sui period can only be described
as a period of transition to unified forms.
In the last resort the union
of the various parts of China proceeded from the north. The north had always, beyond
question, been militarily superior, because its ruling class had consisted of
warlike peoples. Yet it was not a northerner who had united China but a Chinese
though, owing to mixed marriages, he was certainly not entirely unrelated to
the northern peoples. The rule, however, of the actual northern peoples was at
an end. The start of the Sui dynasty, while the Chou still held the north, was
evidence, just like the emergence in the north-east some thirty years earlier
of the Northern Ch'i dynasty, that the Chinese gentry
with their landowning basis had gained the upper hand over the warrior nomads.
The Chinese gentry had not
come unchanged out of that struggle. Culturally they had taken over many things
from the foreigners, beginning with music and the style of their clothing, in
which they had entirely adopted the northern pattern, and including other
elements of daily life. Among the gentry were now many formerly alien families
who had gradually become entirely Chinese. On the other hand, the foreigners'
feudal outlook had influenced the gentry, so that a sense of distinctions of
rank had developed among them. There were Chinese families who regarded
themselves as superior to the rest, just as had been the case among the
northern peoples, and who married only among themselves or with the ruling
house and not with ordinary families of the gentry. They paid great attention
to their genealogies, had the state keep records of them and insisted that the
dynastic histories mentioned their families and their main family members.
Lists of prominent gentry families were set up which mentioned the home of each
clan, so that pretenders could easily be detected. The rules of giving personal
names were changed so that it became possible to identify a person's genealogical
position within the family. At the same time the contempt of the military
underwent modification; the gentry were even ready to take over high military
posts, and also to profit by them.
The new Sui empire found
itself faced with many difficulties. During the three and a half centuries of
division, north and south had developed in different ways. They no longer spoke
the same language in everyday life (we distinguish to this day between a
Nanking and Peking "High Chinese", to say nothing of dialects). The
social and economic structures were very different in the two parts of the
country. How could unity be restored in these things?
Then there was the problem of
population. The north-eastern plain had always been thickly populated; it had
early come under Toba rule and had been able to develop further. The region
round the old northern capital Ch'ang-an, on the
other hand, had suffered greatly from the struggles before the Toba period and
had never entirely recovered. Meanwhile, in the south the population had
greatly increased in the region north of Nanking, while the regions south of
the Yangtze and the upper Yangtze valley were more thinly peopled. The real
South, i.e. the modern provinces of Fukien, Kwangtung and Kwangsi, was still
underdeveloped, mainly because of the malaria there. In the matter of
population the north unquestionably remained prominent.
The founder of the Sui
dynasty, known by his reign name of Wen Ti (589-604),
came from the west, close to Ch'ang-an. There he and
his following had their extensive domains. Owing to the scanty population there
and the resulting shortage of agricultural laborers, these properties were very
much less productive than the small properties in the north-east. This state of
things was well known in the south, and it was expected, with good reason, that
the government would try to transfer parts of the population to the north-west,
in order to settle a peasantry round the capital for the support of its greatly
increasing staff of officials, and to satisfy [Pg 168]the gentry of the region.
This produced several revolts in the south.
As an old soldier who had long
been a subject of the Toba, Wen Ti had no great
understanding of theory: he was a practical man. He was anti-intellectual and
emotionally attached to Buddhism; he opposed Confucianism for emotional reasons
and believed that it could give him no serviceable officials of the sort he
wanted. He demanded from his officials the same obedience and sense of duty as
from his soldiers; and he was above all thrifty, almost miserly, because he
realized that the finances of his state could only be brought into order by the
greatest exertions. The budget had to be drawn up for the vast territory of the
empire without any possibility of saying in advance whether the revenues would
come in and whether the transport of dues to the capital would function.
This cautious calculation was
entirely justified, but it aroused great opposition. Both east and south were
used to a much better style of living; yet the gentry of both regions were now
required to cut down their consumption. On top of this they were excluded from
the conduct of political affairs. In the past, under the Northern Ch'i empire in the north-east and under the Ch'en empire in the south, there had been thousands of
positions at court in which the whole of the gentry could find accommodation of
some kind. Now the central government was far in the west, and other people
were its administrators. In the past the gentry had had a profitable and easily
accessible market for their produce in the neighboring capital; now the capital
was far away, entailing long-distance transport at heavy risk with little
profit.
The dissatisfied circles of
the gentry in the north-east and in the south incited Prince Kuang to rebellion. The prince and his followers murdered
the emperor and set aside the heir-apparent; and Kuang came to the throne, assuming the name of Yang Ti. His first act was to transfer
the capital back to the east, to Loyang, close to the grain-producing regions.
His second achievement was to order the construction of great canals, to
facilitate the transport of grain to the capital and to provide a valuable new
market for the producers in the north-east and the south. It was at this time
that the first forerunner of the famous "Imperial Canal" was
constructed, the canal that connects the Yangtze with the Yellow River. Small
canals, connecting various streams, had long been in existence, so that it was
possible to travel from north to south by water, but these canals were not deep
enough or broad enough to take large freight barges. There are records of
lighters of 500 and even 800 tons capacity! These are dimensions unheard of in
the West in those times. In addition to a serviceable canal to the south, Yang
Ti made another that went north almost to the present Peking.
Hand in hand with these
successes of the north-eastern and southern gentry went strong support for
Confucianism, and a reorganization of the Confucian examination system. As a
rule, however, the examinations were circumvented as an unimportant formality;
the various governors were ordered each to send annually to the capital three
men with the required education, for whose quality they were held personally
responsible; merchants and artisans were expressly excluded.
2.
Relations with Turks and
with Korea
In foreign affairs an
extraordinarily fortunate situation for the Sui dynasty had come into
existence. The T'u-chüeh, the Turks, much the
strongest people of the north, had given support now to one and now to another
of the northern kingdoms, and this, together with their many armed incursions,
had made them the dominant political factor in the north. But in the first year
of the Sui period (581) they split into two sections, so that the Sui had hopes
of gaining influence over them. At first both sections of the Turks had entered
into alliance with China, but this was not a sufficient safeguard for the Sui,
for one of the Turkish khans was surrounded by Toba who had fled from the
vanished state of the Northern Chou, and who now tried to induce the Turks to
undertake a campaign for the reconquest of North
China. The leader of this agitation was a princess of the Yü-wen family, the ruling family of the Northern Chou. The Chinese fought the Turks
several times; but much more effective results were gained by their diplomatic
missions, which incited the eastern against the western Turks and vice versa,
and also incited the Turks against the Toba clique. In the end one of the
sections of Turks accepted Chinese overlordship, and
some tribes of the other section were brought over to the Chinese side; also,
fresh disunion was sown among the Turks.
Under the emperor Yang Ti, P'ei Chü carried this policy further. He induced the Tölös tribes to attack the T'u-yü-hun,
and then himself attacked the latter, so destroying their power. The T'u-yü-hun were a people living in the extreme north of
Tibet, under a ruling class apparently of Hsien-pi
origin; the people were largely Tibetan. The purpose of the conquest of the T'u-yü-hun was to safeguard access to Central Asia. An
effective Turkestan policy was, however, impossible so long as the Turks were
still a formidable power. Accordingly, the intrigues that aimed at keeping the
two sections of Turks apart were continued. In 615 came a decisive
counter-attack from the Turks. Their khan, Shih-pi, made a surprise assault on
the emperor himself, with all his following, in the Ordos region, and succeeded
in surrounding them. They were in just the same desperate situation as when,
eight centuries earlier, the Chinese emperor had been beleaguered by Mao Tun.
But the Chinese again saved themselves by a trick. The young Chinese commander,
Li Shih-min, succeeded in giving the Turks the impression that large
reinforcements were on the way; a Chinese princess who was with the Turks
spread the rumor that the Turks were to be attacked by another tribe—and
Shih-pi raised the siege, although the Chinese had been entirely defeated.
In the Sui period the Chinese
were faced with a further problem. Korea or, rather, the most important of the
three states in Korea, had generally been on friendly terms with the southern
state during the period of China's division, and for this reason had been more
or less protected from its North Chinese neighbours.
After the unification of China, Korea had reason for seeking an alliance with
the Turks, in order to secure a new counterweight against China.
A Turco-Korean
alliance would have meant for China a sort of encirclement that might have
grave consequences. The alliance might be extended to Japan, who had certain
interests in Korea. Accordingly the Chinese determined to attack Korea, though
at the same time negotiations were set on foot. The fighting, which lasted
throughout the Sui period, involved technical difficulties, as it called for
combined land and sea attacks; in general it brought little success.
3.
Reasons for collapse
The continual warfare entailed
great expense, and so did the intrigues, because they depended for their
success on bribery. Still more expensive were the great canal works. In
addition to this, the emperor Yang Ti, unlike his father, was very extravagant.
He built enormous palaces and undertook long journeys throughout the empire
with an immense following. All this wrecked the prosperity which his father had
built up and had tried to safeguard. The only productive expenditure was that
on the canals, and they could not begin to pay in so short a period. The
emperor's continual journeys were due, no doubt, in part simply to the pursuit
of pleasure, though they were probably intended at the same time to hinder
risings and to give the emperor direct control over every part of the country. But
the empire was too large and too complex for its administration to be possible
in the midst of journeying. The whole of the chancellery had to accompany the
emperor, and all the transport necessary for the feeding of the emperor and his
government had continually to be diverted to wherever he happened to be
staying. All this produced disorder and unrest. The gentry, who at first had so
strongly supported the emperor and had been able to obtain anything they wanted
from him, now began to desert him and set up pretenders. From 615 onward, after
the defeat at the hands of the Turks, risings broke out everywhere. The emperor
had to establish his government in the south, where he felt safer. There,
however, in 618, he was assassinated by conspirators led by Toba of the Yü-wen family. Everywhere now independent governments
sprang up, and for five years China was split up into countless petty states.
(B)
The T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618-906)
Reforms and
decentralization
The hero of the Turkish siege,
Li Shih-min, had allied himself with the Turks in 615-16. There were special
reasons for his ability to do this. In his family it had been a regular custom
to marry women belonging to Toba families, so that he naturally enjoyed the
confidence of the Toba party among the Turks. There are various theories as to
the origin of his family, the Li. The family itself claimed to be descended
from the ruling family of the Western Liang. It is doubtful whether that family
was purely Chinese, and in any case Li Shih-min's descent from it is a matter
of doubt. It is possible that his family was a sinified Toba family, or at least came from a Toba region. However this may be, Li
Shih-min continued the policy which had been pursued since the beginning of the
Sui dynasty by the members of the deposed Toba ruling family of the Northern
Chou—the policy of collaboration with the Turks in the effort to remove the
Sui.
The nominal leadership in the
rising that now began lay in the hands of Li Shih-min's father, Li Yüan; in practice Li Shih-min saw to everything. At the end
of 617 he was outside the first capital of the Sui, Ch'ang-an,
with a Turkish army that had come to his aid on the strength of the treaty of
alliance. After capturing Ch'ang-an he installed a puppet emperor there, a grandson of Yang Ti. In 618 the puppet
was dethroned and Li Yüan, the father, was made
emperor, in the T'ang dynasty. Internal fighting went
on until 623, and only then was the whole empire brought under the rule of the T'ang.
Great reforms then began. A
new land law aimed at equalizing ownership, so that as far as possible all
peasants should own the same amount of land and the formation of large estates
be prevented. The law aimed also at protecting the peasants from the loss of
their land. The law was, however, nothing but a modification of the Toba land
law (chün-t'ien), and it was hoped that now it would
provide a sound and solid economic foundation for the empire. From the first,
however, members of the gentry who were connected with the imperial house were
given a privileged position; then officials were excluded from the prohibition
of leasing, so that there continued to be tenant farmers in addition to the
independent peasants. Moreover, the temples enjoyed special treatment, and were
also exempted from taxation. All these exceptions brought grist to the mills of
the gentry, and so did the failure to carry into effect many of the provisions
of the law. Before long a new gentry had been formed, consisting of the old
gentry together with those who had directly aided the emperor's ascent to the
throne. From the beginning of the eighth century there were repeated complaints
that peasants were "disappearing". They were entering the service of
the gentry as tenant farmers or farm workers, and owing to the privileged
position of the gentry in regard to taxation, the revenue sank in proportion as
the number of independent peasants decreased. One of the reasons for the flight
of farmers may have been the corvée laws connected
with the "equal land" system: small families were much less affected
by the corvée obligation than larger families with
many sons. It may be, therefore, that large families or at least sons of the
sons in large families moved away in order to escape these obligations. In
order to prevent irregularities, the T'ang renewed
the old "pao-chia" system, as a part of a
general reform of the administration in 624. In this system groups of five
families were collectively responsible for the payment of taxes, the corvée, for crimes committed by individuals within one
group, and for loans from state agencies. Such a system is attested for
pre-Christian times already; it was re-activated in the eleventh century and
again from time to time, down to the present.
Yet the system of land
equalization soon broke down and was abolished officially around AD 780. But
the classification of citizens into different classes, first legalized under
the Toba, was retained and even more refined.
As early as in the Han period
there had been a dual administration—the civil and, independent of it, the
military administration. One and the same area would belong to a particular
administrative prefecture (chün) and at the same time
to a particular military prefecture (chou). This dual
organization had persisted during the Toba period and, at first, remained
unchanged in the beginning of the T'ang.
The backbone of the military
power in the seventh century was the militia, some six hundred units of an
average of a thousand men, recruited from the general farming population for
short-term service: one month in five in the areas close to the capital. These
men formed a part of the emperor's guards and were under the command of members
of the Shensi gentry. This system which had its direct parallels in the Han
time and evolved out of a Toba system, broke down when short offensive wars
were no longer fought. Other imperial guards were staffed with young sons of
the gentry who were stationed in the most delicate parts of the palaces. The
emperor T'ai-tsung had his personal bodyguard, a part
of his own army of conquest, consisting of his former bondsmen (pu-ch'ü). The ranks of the Army of conquest were later
filled by descendants of the original soldiers and by orphans.
In the provinces, the armies
of the military prefectures gradually lost their importance when wars became
longer and militiamen proved insufficient. Many of the soldiers here were
convicts and exiles. It is interesting to note that the title of the commander
of these armies, tu-tu, in the fourth century meant a
commander in the church-Taoist organization; it was used by the Toba and from
the seventh century on became widely accepted as title among the Uigurs, Tibetans, Sogdians, Turks
and Khotanese.
When the prefectural armies
and the militia forces weakened, special regional armies were created (from 678
on); this institution had existed among the Toba, but they had greatly reduced
these armies after 500. The commanders of these new T'ang armies soon became more important than the civil administrators, because they
commanded a number of districts making up a whole province. This assured a
better functioning of the military machine, but put the governors-general in a
position to pursue a policy of their own, even against the central government.
In addition to this, the financial administration of their commands was put
under them, whereas in the past it had been in the hands of the civil
administration of the various provinces. The civil administration was also reorganized
(see the table on pages 83-84).
Towards the end of the T'ang period the state secretariat was set up in two parts:
it was in possession of all information about the economic and political
affairs of the empire, and it made the actual decisions. Moreover, a number of
technical departments had been created—in all, a system that might compare favourably with European systems of the eighteenth century.
At the end of the T'ang period there was added to
this system a section for economic affairs, working quite independently of it
and directly under the emperor; it was staffed entirely with economic or
financial experts, while for the staffing of the other departments no special
qualification was demanded besides the passing of the state examinations. In
addition to these, at the end of the T'ang period a
new department was in preparation, a sort of Privy Council, a mainly military
organization, probably intended to control the generals (section 3 of the table
on page 83), just as the state secretariat controlled the civil officials. The
Privy Council became more and more important in the tenth century and
especially in the Mongol epoch. Its absence in the early T'ang period gave the military governors much too great freedom, ultimately with
baneful results.
At first, however, the reforms
of AD 624 worked well. The administration showed energy, and taxes flowed in.
In the middle of the eighth century the annual budget of the state included the
following items: over a million tons of grain for the consumption of the
capital and the palace and for salaries of civil and military officials;
twenty-seven million pieces of textiles, also for the consumption of capital
and palace and army, and for supplementary purchases of grain; two million
strings of money (a string nominally held a thousand copper coins) for salaries
and for the army. This was much more than the state budget of the Han period.
The population of the empire had also increased; it seems to have amounted to
some fifty millions. In the capital a large staff of officials had been created
to meet all administrative needs. The capital grew enormously, at times
containing two million people. Great numbers of young members of the gentry
streamed into the capital for the examinations held under the Confucian system.
The crowding of people into
the capital and the accumulation of resources there promoted a rich cultural
life. We know of many poets of that period whose poems were real masterpieces;
and artists whose works were admired centuries later. These poets and artists
were the pioneers of the flourishing culture of the later T'ang period. Hand in hand with this went luxury and refinement of manners. For those
who retired from the bustle of the capital to work on their estates and to
enjoy the society of their friends, there was time to occupy themselves with
Taoism and Buddhism, especially meditative Buddhism. Everyone, of course, was
Confucian, as was fitting for a member of the gentry, but Confucianism was so
taken for granted that it was not discussed. It was the basis of morality for
the gentry, but held no problems. It no longer contained anything of interest.
Conditions had been much the
same once before, at the court of the Han emperors, but with one great
difference: at that time everything of importance took place in the capital;
now, in addition to the actual capital, Ch'ang-an,
there was the second capital, Loyang, in no way inferior to the other in
importance; and the great towns in the south also played their part as
commercial and cultural centres that had developed in
the 360 years of division between north and south. There the local gentry
gathered to lead a cultivated life, though not quite in the grand style of the
capital. If an official was transferred to the Yangtze, it no longer amounted
to a punishment as in the past; he would not meet only uneducated people, but a
society resembling that of the capital. The institution of governors-general
further promoted this decentralization: the governor-general surrounded himself
with a little court of his own, drawn from the local gentry and the local
intelligentsia. This placed the whole edifice of the empire on a much broader
foundation, with lasting results.
2.
Turkish policy
The foreign policy of this
first period of the T'ang, lasting until about 690,
was mainly concerned with the Turks and Turkestan. There were still two Turkish
realms in the Far East, both of considerable strength but in keen rivalry with
each other. The T'ang had come into power with the
aid of the eastern Turks, but they admitted the leader of the western Turks to
their court; he had been at Ch'ang-an in the time of
the Sui. He was murdered, however, by Chinese at the instigation of the eastern
Turks. The next khan of the eastern Turks nevertheless turned against the T'ang, and gave his support to a still surviving pretender
to the throne representing the Sui dynasty; the khan contended that the old
alliance of the eastern Turks had been with the Sui and not with the T'ang. The T'ang therefore tried
to come to terms once more with the western Turks, who had been affronted by
the assassination; but the negotiations came to nothing in face of an approach
made by the eastern Turks to the western, and of the distrust of the Chinese
with which all the Turks were filled. About 624 there were strong Turkish
invasions, carried right up to the capital. Suddenly, however, for reasons not
disclosed by the Chinese sources, the Turks withdrew, and the T'ang were able to conclude a fairly honourable peace. This was the time of the maximum power of the eastern Turks. Shortly
afterwards disturbances broke out (627), under the leadership of Turkish Uighurs and their allies. The Chinese took advantage of
these disturbances, and in a great campaign in 629-30 succeeded in overthrowing
the eastern Turks; the khan was taken to the imperial court in Ch'ang-an, and the] Chinese emperor made himself
"Heavenly Khan" of the Turks. In spite of the protest of many of the
ministers, who pointed to the result of the settlement policy of the Later Han
dynasty, the eastern Turks were settled in the bend of the upper Hwang-ho and
placed more or less under the protectorate of two governors-general. Their
leaders were admitted into the Chinese army, and the sons of their nobles lived
at the imperial court. No doubt it was hoped in this way to turn the Turks into
Chinese, as had been done with the Toba, though for entirely different reasons.
More than a million Turks were settled in this way, and some of them actually
became Chinese later and gained important posts.
In general, however, this in
no way broke the power of the Turks. The great Turkish empire, which extended
as far as Byzantium, continued to exist. The Chinese success had done no more
than safeguard the frontier from a direct menace and frustrate the efforts of
the supporters of the Sui dynasty and the Toba dynasty, who had been living
among the eastern Turks and had built on them. The power of the western Turks
remained a lasting menace to China, especially if they should succeed in
co-operating with the Tibetans. After the annihilation of the T'u-yü-hun by the Sui at the very beginning of the seventh
century, a new political unit had formed in northern Tibet, the T'u-fan, who also seem to have had an upper class of Turks
and Mongols and a Tibetan lower class. Just as in the Han period, Chinese
policy was bound to be directed to preventing a union between Turks and
Tibetans. This, together with commercial interests, seems to have been the
political motive of the Chinese Turkestan policy under the T'ang.
3.
Conquest of Turkestan and Korea. Summit of power
The Turkestan wars began in
639 with an attack on the city-state of Kao-ch'ang (Khocho). This state had been on more or less friendly terms
with North China since the Toba period, and it had succeeded again and again in
preserving a certain independence from the Turks. Now, however, Kao-ch'ang had to submit to the western Turks, whose power was
constantly increasing. China made that submission a pretext for war. By 640 the
whole basin of Turkestan was brought under Chinese dominance. The whole
campaign was really directed against the western Turks, to whom Turkestan had
become subject. The western Turks had been crippled by two internal events, to
the advantage of the Chinese: there had been a tribal rising, and then came the
rebellion and the rise of the Uighurs (640-650).
These events belong to Turkish history, and we shall confine ourselves here to
their effects on Chinese history. The Chinese were able to rely on the Uighurs; above all, they were furnished by the Tölös Turks with a large army, with which they turned once
more against Turkestan in 647-48, and now definitely established their rule
there.
The active spirit at the
beginning of the T'ang rule had not been the emperor
but his son Li Shih-min, who was not, however, named as heir to the throne
because he was not the eldest son. The result of this was tension between Li
Shih-min and his father and brothers, especially the heir to the throne. When
the brothers learned that Li Shih-min was claiming the succession, they
conspired against him, and in 626, at the very moment when the western Turks
had made a rapid incursion and were once more threatening the Chinese capital,
there came an armed collision between the brothers, in which Li Shih-min was
the victor. The brothers and their families were exterminated, the father
compelled to abdicate, and Li Shih-min became emperor, assuming the name T'ai Tsung (627-649). His reign
marked the zenith of the power of China and of the T'ang dynasty. Their inner struggles and the Chinese penetration of Turkestan had
weakened the position of the Turks; the reorganization of the administration
and of the system of taxation, the improved transport resulting from the canals
constructed under the Sui, and the useful results of the creation of great
administrative areas under strong military control, had brought China inner
stability and in consequence external power and prestige. The reputation which
she then obtained as the most powerful state of the Far East endured when her
inner stability had begun to deteriorate. Thus in 638 the Sassanid ruler Jedzgerd sent a mission to China asking for her help
against the Arabs. Three further missions came at intervals of a good many
years. The Chinese declined, however, to send a military expedition to such a
distance; they merely conferred on the ruler the title of a Chinese governor;
this was of little help against the Arabs, and in 675 the last ruler, Peruz, fled to the Chinese court.
The last years of T'ai Tsung's reign were filled
with a great war against Korea, which represented a continuation of the plans
of the Sui emperor Yang Ti. This time Korea came firmly into Chinese
possession. In 661, under T'ai Tsung's son, the Korean fighting was resumed, this time against Japanese who were
defending their interests in Korea. This was the period of great Japanese
enthusiasm for China. The Chinese system of administration was copied, and
Buddhism was adopted, together with every possible element of Chinese culture.
This meant increased trade with Japan, bringing in large profits to China, and
so the Korean middleman was to be eliminated.
T'ai Tsung's son, Kao Tsung (650-683), merely carried to a conclusion what had been begun. Externally
China's prestige continued at its zenith. The caravans streamed into China from
western and central Asia, bringing great quantities of luxury goods. At this
time, however, the foreign colonies were not confined to the capital but were
installed in all the important trading ports and inland trade centres. The whole country was covered by a commercial
network; foreign merchants who had come overland to China met others who had
come by sea. The foreigners set up their own counting-houses and warehouses;
whole quarters of the capital were inhabited entirely by foreigners who lived
as if they were in their own country. They brought with them their own
religions: Manichaeism, Mazdaism, and Nestorian
Christianity. The first Jews came into China, apparently as dealers in fabrics,
and the first Arabian Mohammedans made their appearance. In China the the foreigners bought silkstuffs and collected everything of value that they could find, especially precious
metals. Culturally this influx of foreigners enriched China; economically, as
in earlier periods, it did not; its disadvantages were only compensated for a
time by the very beneficial results of the trade with Japan, and this benefit
did not last long.
4.
The reign of the empress Wu: Buddhism and
capitalism
The pressure of the western
Turks had been greatly weakened in this period, especially as their attention
had been diverted to the west, where the advance of Islam and of the Arabs was
a new menace for them. On the other hand, from 650 onward the Tibetans gained
immensely in power, and pushed from the south into the Tarim basin. In 678 they inflicted a heavy defeat on the Chinese, and it cost the T'ang decades of diplomatic effort before they attained, in
699, their aim of breaking up the Tibetans' realm and destroying their power.
In the last year of Kao Tsung's reign, 683, came the
first of the wars of liberation of the northern Turks, known until then as the
western Turks, against the Chinese. And with the end of Kao Tsung's reign began the decline of the T'ang regime. Most of
the historians attribute it to a woman, the later empress Wu. She had been a
concubine of T'ai Tsung,
and after his death had become a Buddhist nun—a frequent custom of the
time—until Kao Tsung fell in love with her and made
her a concubine of his own. In the end he actually divorced the empress and
made the concubine empress (655). She gained more and more influence, being
placed on a par with the emperor and soon entirely eliminating him in practice;
in 680 she removed the rightful heir to the throne and put her own son in his
place; after Kao Tsung's death in 683 she became
regent for her son. Soon afterward she dethroned him in favour of his twenty-two-year-old brother; in 690 she deposed him too and made herself
empress in the "Chou dynasty" (690-701). This officially ended the T'ang dynasty.
Matters, however, were not so
simple as this might suggest. For otherwise on the empress's deposition there
would not have been a mass of supporters moving heaven and earth to treat the
new empress Wei (705-712) in the same fashion. There is every reason to suppose
that behind the empress Wu there was a group opposing the ruling clique. In
spite of everything, the T'ang government clique was
very pro-Turkish, and many Turks and members of Toba families had government
posts and, above all, important military commands. No campaign of that period
was undertaken without Turkish auxiliaries. The fear seems to have been felt in
some quarters that this T'ang group might pursue a
military policy hostile to the gentry. The T'ang group had its roots mainly in western China; thus the eastern Chinese gentry
were inclined to be hostile to it. The first act of the empress Wu had been to
transfer the capital to Loyang in the east. Thus, she tried to rely upon the
co-operation of the eastern gentry which since the Northern Chou and Sui
dynasties had been out of power. While the western gentry brought their
children into government positions by claiming family privileges (a son of a
high official had the right to a certain position without having passed the
regular examinations), the sons of the eastern gentry had to pass through the
examinations. Thus, there were differences in education and outlook between
both groups which continued long after the death of the empress. In addition,
the eastern gentry, who supported the empress Wu and later the empress Wei,
were closely associated with the foreign merchants of western Asia and the
Buddhist Church to which they adhered. In gratitude for help from the
Buddhists, the empress Wu endowed them with enormous sums of money, and tried
to make Buddhism a sort of state religion. A similar development had taken
place in the Toba and also in the Sui period. Like these earlier rulers, the empress
Wu seems to have aimed at combining spiritual leadership with her position as
ruler of the empire.
In this epoch Buddhism helped
to create the first beginnings of large-scale capitalism. In connection with
the growing foreign trade, the monasteries grew in importance as repositories
of capital; the temples bought more and more land, became more and more
wealthy, and so gained increasing influence over economic affairs. They
accumulated large quantities of metal, which they stored in the form of bronze
figures of Buddha, and with these stocks they exercised controlling influence
over the money market. There is a constant succession of records of the total
weight of the bronze figures, as an indication of the money value they
represented. It is interesting to observe that temples and monasteries acquired
also shops and had rental income from them. They further operated many mills,
as did the owners of private estates (now called "chuang")
and thus controlled the price of flour, and polished rice.
The attitude of the Turks can
only be understood when we realize that the background of events during the
time of empress Wu was formed by the activities of groups of the eastern
Chinese gentry. The northern Turks, who since 630 had been under Chinese overlordship, had fought many wars of liberation against
the Chinese; and through the conquest of neighbouring Turks they had gradually become once more, in the decade-and-a-half after the
death of Kao Tsung, a great Turkish realm. In 698 the
Turkish khan, at the height of his power, demanded a Chinese prince for his daughter—not,
as had been usual in the past, a princess for his son. His intention, no doubt,
was to conquer China with the prince's aid, to remove the empress Wu, and to
restore the T'ang dynasty—but under Turkish overlordship! Thus, when the empress Wu sent a member of
her own family, the khan rejected him and demanded the restoration of the
deposed T'ang emperor. To enforce this demand, he
embarked on a great campaign against China. In this the Turks must have been
able to rely on the support of a strong group inside China, for before the
Turkish attack became dangerous the empress Wu recalled the deposed emperor, at
first as "heir to the throne"; thus she yielded to the khan's
principal demand.
In spite of this, the Turkish
attacks did not cease. After a series of imbroglios within the country in which
a group under the leadership of the powerful Ts'ui gentry family had liquidated the supporters of the empress Wu shortly before
her death, a T'ang prince finally succeeded in
killing empress Wei and her clique. At first, his father ascended the throne,
but was soon persuaded to abdicate in favour of his
son, now called emperor Hsüang Tsung (713-755), just as the first ruler of the T'ang dynasty had done. The practice of abdicating—in contradiction with the Chinese
concept of the ruler as son of Heaven and the duties of a son towards his
father—seems to have impressed Japan where similar steps later became quite
common. With Hsüan Tsung there began now a period of forty-five years, which the Chinese describe as the
second blossoming of T'ang culture, a period that
became famous especially for its painting and literature.
5.
Second blossoming of T'ang culture
The T'ang literature shows the co-operation of many favourable factors. The ancient Chinese classical style of official reports and decrees
which the Toba had already revived, now led to the clear prose style of the
essayists, of whom Han Yü (768-825) and Liu Tsung-yüan (747-796) call for special mention. But entirely
new forms of sentences make their appearance in prose writing, with new
pictures and similes brought from India through the medium of the Buddhist
translations. Poetry was also enriched by the simple songs that spread in the
north under Turkish influence, and by southern influences. The great poets of
the T'ang period adopted the rules of form laid down
by the poetic art of the south in the fifth century; but while at that time the
writing of poetry was a learned pastime, precious and formalistic, the T'ang poets brought to it genuine feeling. Widespread fame
came to Li T'ai-po (701-762) and Tu Fu (712-770); in China two poets almost equal to these two in popularity were
Po Chü-i (772-846) and Yüan Chen (779-831), who in their works kept as close as possible to the vernacular.
New forms of poetry rarely
made their appearance in the T'ang period, but the
existing forms were brought to the highest perfection. Not until the very end
of the T'ang period did there appear the form of a
"free" versification, with lines of no fixed length. This form came
from the indigenous folk-songs of south-western China, and was spread through
the agency of the filles de joie in the tea-houses.
Before long it became the custom to string such songs together in a continuous
series—the first step towards opera. For these song sequences were sung by way
of accompaniment to the theatrical productions. The Chinese theatre had
developed from two sources—from religious games, bullfights and wrestling,
among Turkish and Mongol peoples, which developed into dancing displays; and
from sacrificial games of South Chinese origin. Thus the Chinese theatre, with
its union with music, should rather be called opera, although it offers a sort
of pantomimic show. What amounted to a court conservatoire trained actors and
musicians as early as in the T'ang period for this
court opera. These actors and musicians were selected from the best-looking
"commoners", but they soon tended to become a special caste with a
legal status just below that of "burghers".
In plastic art there are fine
sculptures in stone and bronze, and we have also technically excellent fabrics,
the finest of lacquer, and remains of artistic buildings; but the principal
achievement of the T'ang period lies undoubtedly in
the field of painting. As in poetry, in painting there are strong traces of
alien influences; even before the T'ang period, the
painter Hsieh Ho laid down the six fundamental laws of painting, in all
probability drawn from Indian practice. Foreigners were continually brought
into China as decorators of Buddhist temples, since the Chinese could not know
at first how the new gods had to be presented. The Chinese regarded these
painters as craftsmen, but admired their skill and their technique and learned
from them.
The most famous Chinese
painter of the T'ang period is Wu Tao-tzŭ, who was also the painter most strongly influenced
by Central Asian works. As a pious Buddhist he painted pictures for temples
among others. Among the landscape painters, Wang Wei (721-759) ranks first; he
was also a famous poet and aimed at uniting poem and painting into an integral
whole. With him begins the great tradition of Chinese landscape painting, which
attained its zenith later, in the Sung epoch.
Porcelain had been invented in
China long ago. There was as yet none of the white porcelain that is preferred
today; the inside was a brownish-yellow; but on the whole it was already
technically and artistically of a very high quality. Since porcelain was at
first produced only for the requirements of the court and of high
dignitaries—mostly in state factories—a few centuries later the T'ang porcelain had become a great rarity. But in the
centuries that followed, porcelain became an important new article of Chinese
export. The Chinese prisoners taken by the Arabs in the great battle of
Samarkand (751), the first clash between the world of Islam and China, brought
to the West the knowledge of Chinese culture, of several Chinese crafts, of the
art of papermaking, and also of porcelain.
The emperor Hsüan Tsung gave active
encouragement to all things artistic. Poets and painters contributed to the
elegance of his magnificent court ceremonial. As time went on he showed less
and less interest in public affairs, and grew increasingly inclined to Taoism
and mysticism in general—an outcome of the fact that the conduct of matters of
state was gradually taken out of his hands. On the whole, however, Buddhism was
pushed into the background in favour of Confucianism,
as a reaction from the unusual privileges that had been accorded to the
Buddhists in the past fifteen years under the empress Wu.
6.
Revolt of a military
governor
At the beginning of Hsüan Tsung's reign the capital
had been in the east at Loyang; then it was transferred once more to Ch'ang-an in the west due to pressure of the western
gentry. The emperor soon came under the influence of the unscrupulous but
capable and energetic Li Lin-fu, a distant relative of the ruler. Li was a
virtual dictator at the court from 736 to 752, who had first advanced in power
by helping the concubine Wu, a relative of the famous empress Wu, and by
continually playing the eastern against the western gentry. After the death of
the concubine Wu, he procured for the emperor a new concubine named Yang, of a
western family. This woman, usually called "Concubine Yang" (Yang Kui-fei), became the heroine of countless stage-plays and
stories and even films; all the misfortunes that marked the end of Hsüan Tsung's reign were
attributed solely to her. This is incorrect, as she was but a link in the chain
of influences that played upon the emperor. Naturally she found important
official posts for her brothers and all her relatives; but more important than
these was a military governor named An Lu-shan (703-757). His mother was a Turkish shamaness, his
father, a foreigner probably of Sogdian origin. An
Lu-shan succeeded in gaining favour with the Li clique, which hoped to make use of him for its own ends. Chinese
sources describe him as a prodigy of evil, and it will be very difficult today
to gain a true picture of his personality. In any case, he was certainly a very
capable officer. His rise started from a victory over the Kitan in 744. He spent some time establishing relations with the court and then went
back to resume operations against the Kitan. He made
so much of the Kitan peril that he was permitted a
larger army than usual, and he had command of 150,000 troops in the neighbourhood of Peking. Meanwhile Li Lin-fu died. He had
sponsored An as a counterbalance against the western gentry. When now, within
the clique of Li Lin-fu, the Yang family tried to seize power, they turned
against An Lu-shan. But he marched against the
capital, Ch'ang-an, with 200,000 men; on his way he
conquered Loyang and made himself emperor (756: Yen dynasty). T'ang troops were sent against him under the leadership of
the Chinese Kuo Tzŭ-i,
a Kitan commander, and a Turk, Ko-shu Han.
The first two generals had
considerable success, but Ko-shu Han, whose task was
to prevent access to the western capital, was quickly defeated and taken
prisoner. The emperor fled betimes, and An Lu-shan captured Ch'ang-an. The emperor now abdicated; his
son, emperor Su Tsung (756-762), also fled, though
not with him into Szechwan, but into north-western Shensi. There he defended
himself against An Lu-shan and his capable general
Shih Ssŭ-ming (himself a Turk), and sought aid
in Central Asia. A small Arab troop came from the caliph Abu-Jafar, and also small bands from Turkestan; of more importance
was the arrival of Uighur cavalry in substantial strength. At the end of 757
there was a great battle in the neighbourhood of the
capital, in which An Lu-shan was defeated by the Uighurs; shortly afterwards he was murdered by one of his
eunuchs. His followers fled; Loyang was captured and looted by the Uighurs. The victors further received in payment from the T'ang government 10,000 rolls of silk with a promise of
20,000 rolls a year; the Uighur khan was given a daughter of the emperor as his
wife. An Lu-shan's general, the Turk Shih Ssŭ-ming, entered into An Lu-shan's heritage, and dominated so large a part of eastern China that the Chinese once
more made use of the Uighurs to bring him down. The
commanders in the fighting against Shih Ssŭ-ming this time were once more Kuo Tzŭ-i and the Kitan general, together with P'u-ku Huai-en, a member of a Tölös family that had long been living in China. At first
Shih Ssŭ-ming was victorious, and he won back
Loyang, but then he was murdered by his own son, and only by taking advantage
of the disturbances that now arose were the government troops able to quell the
dangerous rising.
In all this, two things seem
interesting and important. To begin with, An Lu-shan had been a military governor. His rising showed that while this new office,
with its great command of power, was of value in attacking external enemies, it
became dangerous, especially if the central power was weak, the moment there
were no external enemies of any importance. An Lu-shan's rising was the first of many similar ones in the later T'ang period. The gentry of eastern China had shown themselves entirely ready to
support An Lu-shan against the government, because
they had hoped to gain advantage as in the past from a realm with its centre
once more in the east. In the second place, the important part played by aliens
in events within China calls for notice: not only were the rebels An Lu-shan and Shih Ssŭ-ming non-Chinese, but so also were most of the generals opposed to them. But they
regarded themselves as Chinese, not as members of another national group. The
Turkish Uighurs brought in to help against them were
fighting actually against Turks, though they regarded those Turks as Chinese.
We must not bring to the circumstances of those times the present-day notions
with regard to national feeling.
7.
The role of the Uighurs.
Confiscation of the capital of the monasteries
This rising and its sequels
broke the power of the dynasty, and also of the empire. The extremely
sanguinary wars had brought fearful suffering upon the population. During the
years of the rising, no taxes came in from the greater part of the empire, but
great sums had to be paid to the peoples who had lent aid to the empire. And
the looting by government troops and by the auxiliaries injured the population
as much as the war itself did.
When the emperor Su Tsung died, in 762, Tengri, the
khan of the Uighurs, decided to make himself ruler
over China. The events of the preceding years had shown him that China alone was
entirely defenceless. Part of the court clique
supported him, and only by the intervention of P'u-ku Huai-en, who was related to Tengri by marriage, was his plan frustrated. Naturally there were countless intrigues
against P'u-ku Huai-en. He
entered into alliance with the Tibetan T'u-fan, and
in this way the union of Turks and Tibetans, always feared by the Chinese, had
come into existence. In 763 the Tibetans captured and burned down the western
capital, while P'u-ku Huai-en
with the Uighurs advanced from the north. Undoubtedly
this campaign would have been successful, giving an entirely different turn to
China's destiny, if P'u-ku Huai-en
had not died in 765 and the Chinese under Kuo Tzŭ-i had not succeeded in breaking up the alliance.
The Uighurs now came over into an alliance with the
Chinese, and the two allies fell upon the Tibetans and robbed them of their
booty. China was saved once more.
Friendship with the Uighurs had to be paid for this time even more dearly. They
crowded into the capital and compelled the Chinese to buy horses, in payment
for which they demanded enormous quantities of silkstuffs.
They behaved in the capital like lords, and expected to be maintained at the
expense of the government. The system of military governors was adhered to in
spite of the country's experience of them, while the difficult situation
throughout the empire, and especially along the western and northern frontiers,
facing the Tibetans and the more and more powerful Kitan,
made it necessary to keep considerable numbers of soldiers permanently with the colours. This made the military governors stronger
and stronger; ultimately they no longer remitted any taxes to the central
government, but spent them mainly on their armies. Thus from 750 onward the
empire consisted of an impotent central government and powerful military
governors, who handed on their positions to their sons as a further proof of
their independence. When in 781 the government proposed to interfere with the
inheriting of the posts, there was a great new rising, which in 783 again
extended as far as the capital; in 784 the T'ang government at last succeeded in overcoming it. A compromise was arrived at
between the government and the governors, but it in no way improved the
situation. Life became more and more difficult for the central government. In
780, the "equal land" system was finally officially given up and with
it a tax system which was based upon the idea that every citizen had the same
amount of land and, therefore, paid the same amount of taxes. The new system
tried to equalize the tax burden and the corvée obligation, but not the land. This change may indicate a step towards greater
freedom for private enterprise. Yet it did not benefit the government, as most
of the tax income was retained by the governors and was used for their armies
and their own court.
In the capital, eunuchs ruled
in the interests of various cliques. Several emperors fell victim to them or to
the drinking of "elixirs of long life".
Abroad, the Chinese lost their
dominion over Turkestan, for which Uighurs and
Tibetans competed. There is nothing to gain from any full description of events
at court. The struggle between cliques soon became a struggle between eunuchs
and literati, in much the same way as at the end of the second Han dynasty.
Trade steadily diminished, and the state became impoverished because no taxes
were coming in and great armies had to be maintained, though they did not even
obey the government.
Events that exerted on the
internal situation an influence not to be belittled were the break-up of the Uighurs (from 832 onward) the appearance of the Turkish Sha-t'o, and almost at the same time, the dissolution of
the Tibetan empire (from 842). Many other foreigners had placed themselves
under the Uighurs living in China, in order to be
able to do business under the political protection of the Uighur embassy, but
the Uighurs no longer counted, and the T'ang government decided to seize the capital sums which
these foreigners had accumulated. It was hoped in this way especially to remedy
the financial troubles of the moment, which were partly due to a shortage of
metal for minting. As the trading capital was still placed with the temples as
banks, the government attacked the religion of the Uighurs,
Manichaeism, and also the religions of the other foreigners, Mazdaism, Nestorianism, and
apparently also Islam. In 843 alien religions were prohibited; aliens were also
ordered to dress like Chinese. This gave them the status of Chinese citizens
and no longer of foreigners, so that Chinese justice had a hold over them. That
this law abolishing foreign religions was aimed solely at the foreigners'
capital is shown by the proceedings at the same time against Buddhism which had
long become a completely Chinese Church. Four thousand, six hundred Buddhist
temples, 40,000 shrines and monasteries were secularized, and all statues were
required to be melted down and delivered to the government, even those in
private possession. Two hundred and sixty thousand, five hundred monks were to
become ordinary citizens once more. Until then monks had been free of taxation,
as had millions of acres of land belonging to the temples and leased to tenants
or some 150,000 temple slaves.
Thus the edict of 843 must not
be described as concerned with religion: it was a measure of compulsion aimed
at filling the government coffers. All the property of foreigners and a large
part of the property of the Buddhist Church came into the hands of the
government. The law was not applied to Taoism, because the ruling gentry of the
time were, as so often before, Confucianist and at
the same time Taoist. As early as 846 there came a reaction: with the new
emperor, Confucians came into power who were at the same time Buddhists and who
now evicted some of the Taoists. From this time one may observe closer
co-operation between Confucianism and Buddhism; not only with meditative
Buddhism (Dhyana) as at the beginning of the T'ang epoch and earlier, but with the main branch of
Buddhism, monastery Buddhism (Vinaya). From now
onward the Buddhist doctrines of transmigration and retribution, which had been
really directed against the gentry and in favour of
the common people, were turned into an instrument serving the gentry: everyone
who was unfortunate in this life must show such amenability to the government
and the gentry that he would have a chance of a better existence at least in
the next life. Thus the revolutionary Buddhist doctrine of retribution became a
reactionary doctrine that was of great service to the gentry. One of the
Buddhist Confucians in whose works this revised version makes its appearance
most clearly was Niu Seng-yu,
who was at once summoned back to court in 846 by the new emperor. Three new
large Buddhist sects came into existence in the T'ang period. One of them, the school of the Pure Land (Ching-t'u tsung, since 641) required of its mainly lower class
adherents only the permanent invocation of the Buddha Amithabha who would secure them a place in the "Western Paradise"—a place
without social classes and economic troubles. The cult of Maitreya,
which was always more revolutionary, receded for a while.
8.
First successful peasant revolt. Collapse of the
empire
The chief sufferers from the
continual warfare of the military governors, the sanguinary struggles between
the cliques, and the universal impoverishment which all this fighting produced,
were, of course, the common people. The Chinese annals are filled with records
of popular risings, but not one of these had attained any wide extent, for want
of organization. In 860 began the first great popular rising, a revolt caused
by famine in the province of Chekiang. Government troops suppressed it with
bloodshed. Further popular risings followed. In 874 began a great rising in the
south of the present province of Hopei, the chief agrarian region.
The rising was led by a
peasant, Wang Hsien-chih, together with Huang Ch'ao, a salt merchant, who had fallen into poverty and had
joined the hungry peasants, forming a fighting group of his own. It is
important to note that Huang was well educated. It is said that he failed in
the state examination. Huang is not the first merchant who became rebel. An Lu-shan, too, had been a businessman for a while. It was pointed
out that trade had greatly developed in the T'ang period; of the lower Yangtze region people it was said that "they were so
much interested in business that they paid no attention to agriculture".
Yet merchants were subject to many humiliating conditions. They could not enter
the examinations, except by illegal means. In various periods, from the Han
time on, they had to wear special dress. Thus, a law from c. AD 300 required
them to wear a white turban on which name and type of business was written, and
to wear one white and one black shoe. They were subject to various taxes, but
were either not allowed to own land, or were allotted less land than ordinary
citizens. Thus they could not easily invest in land, the safest investment at
that time. Finally, the government occasionally resorted to the method which
was often used in the Near East: when in 782 the emperor ran out of money, he
requested the merchants of the capital to "loan" him a large sum—a
request which in fact was a special tax.
Wang and Huang both proved good organizers of the peasant masses, and in a short time they had captured the whole of eastern China, without the military governors being able to do anything against them, for the provincial troops were more inclined to show sympathy to the peasant armies than to fight them. The terrified government issued an order to arm the people of the other parts of the country against the rebels; naturally this helped the rebels more than the government, since the peasants thus armed went over to the rebels. Finally Wang was offered a high office. But Huang urged him not to betray his own people, and Wang declined the offer. In the end the government, with the aid of the troops of the Turkish Sha-t'o, defeated Wang and beheaded him (878). Huang Ch'ao now moved into the south-east and the south, where in 879 he captured and burned down Canton; according to an Arab source, over 120,000 foreign merchants lost their lives in addition to the Chinese. From Canton Huang Ch'ao returned to the north, laden with loot from that wealthy commercial city. His advance was held up again by the Sha-t'o troops; he turned away to the lower Yangtze, and from there marched north again. At the end of 880 he captured the eastern capital. The emperor fled from the western capital, Ch'ang-an, into Szechwan, and Huang Ch'ao now captured with ease the western capital as well, and removed every member of the ruling family on whom he could lay hands. He then made himself emperor, in a Ch'i dynasty. It was the first time that a peasant rising had succeeded against the gentry.
This popular rising, which had only been overcome with
the aid of foreign troops, brought the end of the T'ang dynasty. In 885 the T'ang emperor was able to return
to the capital, but the only question now was whether China should be ruled by
the Sha-t'o under Li K'o-yung or by some other military commander. In a short time Chu Ch'üan-chung,
a former follower of Huang Ch'ao, proved to be the
strongest of the commanders. In 890 open war began between the two leaders. Li K'o-yung was based on Shansi; Chu Ch'üan-chung had control of the plains in the east. Meanwhile the governors of Szechwan in
the west and Chekiang in the south-east made themselves independent. Both
declared themselves kings or emperors and set up dynasties of their own (from
895).
Within the capital, the
emperor was threatened several times by revolts, so that he had to flee and
place himself in the hands of Li K'o-yung as the only
leader on whose loyalty he could count. Soon after this, however, the emperor
fell into the hands of Chu Ch'üan-chung, who killed
the whole entourage of the emperor, particularly the eunuchs; after a time he
had the emperor himself killed, set a puppet—as had become customary—on the
throne, and at the beginning of 907 took over the rule from him, becoming
emperor in the "Later Liang dynasty".
That was the end of the T'ang
dynasty, at the beginning of which China had risen to unprecedented power. Its
downfall had been brought about by the military governors, who had built up
their power and had become independent hereditary satraps, exploiting the
people for their own purposes, and by their continual mutual struggles
undermining the economic structure of the empire. In addition to this, the
empire had been weakened first by its foreign trade and then by the dependence
on foreigners, especially Turks, into which it had fallen owing to internal
conditions. A large part of the national income had gone abroad. Such is the
explanation of the great popular risings which ultimately brought the dynasty
to its end.
CHAPTER IX.THE EPOCH OF THE SECOND DIVISION OF CHINAThe period of transition: the Five Dynasties
|
|
|