Hist Notes 5 13 China Intro and Qin and Han Sui and Tang or Suit Tang i don t know yet pd in Chinese history in which we will witness the culmination just as the Guptas represent the culmination or high point this pd in China will be an imp time of transformation and here we will come to the high point of the greatest Chinese Dynasties under the Han Dynasty that we see the greatest Chinese civilizations The Roman empire of Chinese civilizations the followers of the Han tlike the Tang they build upon precedence of earlier dysnaties and rulers and there is a re expansion of the long standing tradition by the Tang dynasty China is one of the longest lasting civs in wolrd history in China up until 3rd C BCE China was involved in its warring states pd and the warring states period was tumultuous it was a period of internal conflict and struggle and an attempt to reconstitute China under a sole central authority but since every prince in China thought they were the ones who would re unite China and be tHE ONE it was a bad moment in 3rd C BCE however one of these local leaders Huangdi did in fact manage to put an end to the civil war end to violence and struggle and began to reunite China on of the local powers form Qin state came to control surrounding kingdoms and called himself emperor of Qin in 221 Huangdi did this he sought to revive and renew China to its old greatness toward that end Huang reformed beaurocray in China and institutred standardized form of writing style and reorganized gov promoted farming built roads good infrastructure and these roads stimulate commerce and eased travel way of easing communications and easing transportations and tying empeire together though econ and social regions it is also easy to move armies through this road and a good way of estab political authority through these roads hUang managed to revive centralized absoloutist traditions that had existed thoughout earlier successful pds throughout Chinese history Huangdi was a legalist lots of taxes maybe differ form of phiospphy form confucuius this philosophy led to alienating an imp component of Chinese population as he built up beaurocracy and roads and military all of this stuff needed money money came from taxes he forced laborers this aspect of his reconstruction of Chines gov alienated some of the population he has alientated schoalrs by his shift in form of education alienated nobility and peasents Huang became increasingly paranoid bc he suffered assasinations attemtps bc ppl did not like him this made him more tyrannical and so he built up a great army taracotta Army in order to protect him in life and in death each of these soliders look diff highly individualized and these soldiers provide great nature of Chinese military and the great diversity of the military archers foot solider s officers cavalry Huangdi died in 210 this is for certain and he laid the foundation for next civilization with the good came the bad and on his death civil war broke out again Chinese history is char by chaos and pds of order stability like this pd and lik e warring states pd but this pd lasted a short time it lasted till 206 and a new dynasty was now established by Gaozu head of Han dynasty and he managed to restor centralized authority and org resotre order that was char of early Chinese dynasties he built a new capitol and restored a political military organization he was a great authority and like the Qin he built up a beaurocracy he built roads he promoted econ growth he turned back to Confuciun directions and strayed away form Huangdi s and he used confuciun texts and phil in order to restore moral and ethical foundation of China government resp to heaven and keep ppl happy was a cornerstone of the environment this dynasty will last till 220 AD BUT the greatest of the Han rulers was Wudi ruled from 141 to 87 BCE NOT AD Wudi means martial emperor and a martial rules through the military and he uses military to conquer he conqers everything this is one of the best ways of demonstrating your military ability in China the role of the evil enemy was played by Xiongnu they lived in the northern frontier and attacked china from the N frontier Xiongnu are a k a the Huns they were also a threadt to Romans Guptas Wudi successfully conquers the Huns and he is able to conquer Manturia too he ruled through his army and this success made him appear as a better ruler gained him support he moved westward sent Chinese armies into the Gobi deseart and as far west as Uzbekistan and there were horses there and Wudi liked horses he imported these horses back to his Kingdom merchants followed the armies and this leads to expa of Chinese culture and power and econ abilities led to boost in Chinese trade and Chinese merchants imported all kinds of stuff in addition to horse they imported iron ivory and gold they sent perfumes and spices and porceline and along the silk route which gets developed they traded silk very sought after product we see a dramatic expansion of Chinese power under Wudi money comes form inc taxation this is how he paid the soldiers and maintained imp cornerstone road building projects but Wudi was clever clearly the gorwing burden of taxation served as tension in society to balance this burden he created government controlled monopolies on imp commodities on salt he maintained price of salt so peasents could still benefit from a relatively stable price in salt in a similar fashion Wudi like to buy rice rice was the staple of the Chinese history most imp component of the diet in China many Chinese farmers grew rice if you have lots of ppl growing rice this drops the price of ricel but somestimes everyone is growing rice and the weather is bad which makes the rice bad which drives the price up and this si good for farmers but bad for consumers to eliminate fluctuations in prices of Rice Wudi bought rice himself so that he could establish a good living wage for the farmers in China in times of surplus he simply bought the rice he is going to store a lot of it and in times of bad harvests he has rice that he can put in market so the price does not go sky high for consumers policy maintained to est a stable price which was good for consumers and then profitable for farmers very important doing he promoted Confuciun traditions in order to have trained professionals he built Universities and this was really imp promoted learning and education and left an imp legacy on China great ruler and great legacy but