China - 5000 years of civil war?

[blahblahblah]

I thought I bring this up. Was China going through 5000 years of civil war, or were there legit kingdoms or countries like the way they have it in Europe grinding it out?

[Csargo]

Yes there were legitimate kingdoms. There were also Emperors of China it wasn't just thousands of years of civil war. But I let someone else give you links cause I don't feel like it.

[Csargo]

Here's a link for your pleasure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

[Avicenna]

If it was, hats off to the earlier dynasties which lasted many centuries long.

Of course, it wasn't. Like the Roman Empire, it had periods of civil strife and periods of peace.

[Vladimir]

From my Chinese history Class, a summary: After China was unified one dynasty ruled until it became so corrupt, decadent, inbred, etc that there was a massive civil war and a new dynasty took over, and repeated the cycle. Long periods of stability followed by massive uphevals.

[blahblahblah]

From my Chinese history Class, a summary: After China was unified one dynasty ruled until it became so corrupt, decadent, inbred, etc that there was a massive civil war and a new dynasty took over, and repeated the cycle. Long periods of stability followed by massive uphevals.

So it basically means from the Qin dynasty and on, it was all civil wars.

[AntiochusIII]

From my Chinese history Class, a summary: After China was unified one dynasty ruled until it became so corrupt, decadent, inbred, etc that there was a massive civil war and a new dynasty took over, and repeated the cycle. Long periods of stability followed by massive uphevals.Probably not inbred, but the Chinese Empire(s) seems to depend on good Emperors (much like Rome) and every frickin' dynasties in the world tend to have a mighty founder and the rest are good to pathetic in terms of skills anyway.

So when Gaodi formed the Han Empire it was all optimistic and all upheaval, and when Wu Di reigned the Empire was the mightiest thing on Earth, and when Emperor Xian was crowned the Empire basically sucked and was falling apart all over.

So it basically means from the Qin dynasty and on, it was all civil wars.While China was certainly something of a one-culture region, it wasn't that easy to call all the struggles Civil Wars.

Firstly, one could take the view that each dynasty is a different empire, which is quite appropriate if one would use the "Indian" model; the Guptas, the Magadhas, the Mauryans; all were different empires.

That and usually there's quite some time between each "unifying" dynasties would rise. The transition from Qin to Han was relatively short (if bloody), but Han to Jin* took half a century -- famously known as the period of the Three Kingdoms; Jin fell from power quite quickly and it would be centuries of chaos and weakness before the rise of the Sui, whose rise and fall mirrors that of Qin: spectacular in might and determination, but falls hard and falls very fast. The Sui were predecessors of the famed Tang Empire, widely recognized as China's zenith.

(*There are more than one "Jin" dynasties in Chinese history. This one is of the Sima family, not of, say, the "barbarians" who took over Northern Song prior to the Mongols, and whose capital Genghis sacked.)

However, the nature of these empires are radically different, whereas the Chinese dynasties have something of a continuous culture.

Even one would take the view that all the Chinese dynasties rose and fall in one empire, however, China was occasionally conquered, and often fragmented. What is the Yuan Empire? Is it China, since it encompasses China as a whole; or is it a foreign state imposed on China, since its rulers were descendants to the conqueror Genghis? What of the Manchus?

In fact, the Tang themselves were Turkic (right?) foreigners! Is that empire China?

I personally don't feel like Civil War is an appropriate word for it. :bow:

Unfortunately, however, I will not be able to provide an alternative definition.

[lars573]

No. The dynastic cycle in China was such that when one dynasty fell so did it's empire. The new dynasties empire was then built out of the olds ruble.

For example when the Qin (you pronunce it Ch'in) empire fell apart un Shihwangdi's, which is his temple name/memorial title meaning first emperor, heir the empire ceased to be in real terms. Because the founder of the Han, the Wang-Han (King of Han, yes Wang is Chinese for King) was a peasant named Liu Pang. Now the legalist society that Shihwangti created would mena that unless his nation was gone a peasant could never have risen so far. He was big time proponent of everyone in their place. Now you might say that after the fall of the later Han (Han history is divided into two parts, former or western and later or eastern which is all based on the capital being moved in 25 CE) the following 3 kingdoms and the southern dynasties eras is 400 years of civil war.

But then the T'ang reunite all that ever was China under one nation again.
http://www.friesian.com/images/maps/china-6a.gif
http://www.friesian.com/images/maps/china-8.gif
As you can see.

Then the T'ang empire falls apart into the 5 dynasties. Which is united into the Sung empire. Neither of course are all of T'ang/Han China, but they are most.
http://www.friesian.com/images/maps/china-8a.gif
http://www.friesian.com/images/maps/china-9.gif
The green areas on the Sung map are "barbarian" (barbarian in the not Han peoples sense) states.

Then the Sung lose ground to the "barbarian"
http://www.friesian.com/images/maps/china-10.gif

Then the northern barbarian states are raken by Genghis Khan. While the Sung hang on in the south until Kublai's regin.

Then the Mongol Yuan are ousted by the Ming. Who are tred setters for not naming their dynasty after a warring states era kingdom as all other dynasties had. Ming means bright BTW.
http://www.friesian.com/images/maps/china-11.gif

Then the Manchus rebel (a non Han people), take the capital. Made easier by the mass suicide of most Ming family members. Name their dynasty Qnig (clear).
http://www.friesian.com/images/maps/china-12.gif

This cycle of birth death and rebirth doesn't end until 1911.

[blahblahblah]

Lol, dam confusing to me on how China were totally different countries for each dynasty.

Is China the Europe of the Far East?

[Csargo]

Very nice lars. You did a very good job explaining it.

[Tamur]

Is China the Europe of the Far East?

I don't know if you meant it partly in jest, but that's an interesting question.

I just recently had a series of discussions with a colleague about the work of an economic historian/theorist named Bin Wong. This fellow makes some long-winded and sometimes *really* difficult-to-follow arguments. But in essence, he says that, although Europe had competing states and China had a unified government, they were remarkably similar socially and economically in many ways until the start of the 19th century.

The difference in the 19th and 20th centuries, he says, is that Europe's competing states had leaders who had the power to determine big-picture issues. Some of these leaders were very aggressive in their adaption of industrial technology. On the other hand, both national and regional leaders in China made sure that the status quo stayed firmly in place because this was a good tactic to keep the social order in place; a good thing to do if one wants to be free of the endless cycle of stability and upheavals.

Certainly not a full anwer to that question, but something to consider I guess.

And Lars, really nicely done, thanks very much for the great view of the big picture!

[blahblahblah]

Yup Lars basically put the nails in the coffins for this topic, I'd love to thank him for making me understand China better and Tamur for actually making a nice analogy (from some other sources) about Europe and China, which again gives me a far better picture to what China really was pre 1911.

[lars573]

I read the Frisan.com Sangoku section three times. After that Chinese history is simple. :laugh4:
Emperors of the Sangoku,
the "Three Kingdoms,"
of India, China, & Japan (http://www.friesian.com/sangoku.htm)

The really confusing thing for me about east Asian history is the rulers names. Before the Ming one emperor could have half a dozen names. They have the name they are born with. Era names which are usually attached to them. Then you have the memorial title or temple name they are given after their death. For example Liu Pang, founder of the Han, is known as Kao Tsu. I know Tsu means founder but Kao I'm not sure of. Now the 4th Han emperor was named Wu Ti (birth name Liu Ch'e). He had eleven eras in his regin, and eleven names to go with them. Then the Mings decide to clean this up a little, one era per regin. So the founder of the Ming's temple name is Tai Tsu (great founder), born Chu Yüan-chang. But he is usually known by his era name Hung-wu Huangti. Litterally vast military power emperor.

[Shadow]

Liu Pang, founder of the Han, is known as Kao Tsu. I know Tsu means founder but Kao I'm not sure of.

Kao mean high so i believe the meaning here should be high founder or mentor founder or something of that sort

[Watchman]

Europe is really something of a subcontinent, so in that sense the only good Asian parallel would be India (which also has a similarly messy and complicated jumble of different peoples and languages).

Anyway, I've read the particular repeated chaos-ascendancycy-chaos cycle China used to go through in fact came partly from the high degree of organisation and capable adminstration long prevalent in the culture. Basically, when the thing was unified under competent rulership things went a bit too well as the break point of population levels the ecology and economy could support would be reached relatively quickly (ie. in a couple of centuries). The more people the more difficult it was to feed them all, and the further stretched the economy and ecology the worse impact the unavoidable droughts, floods, climatological oddities and other such natural problems becomes. The hungrier and more anxious the populace, the more restless and rebellious they become and the easier time ambitious local troublemakers and foreign invaders have cornering a support base. Add in the normal dynamics of internal and economic decay and disturbances all states have to deal with, nevermind ones as vast as China often was, and it no longer really seems that odd it almost regularly broke down into smaller, easier-to-manage territorial entities one of which (or an invader) would eventually grow powerful enough to subjugate the others and re-establish the unified empire.

And run more or less into the exact same basic problems as the previous one did.

[lars573]

On the Europe=China front, the author of Frisian theory is that the Mediteranian kept the Roman empire from ever effectively rebuilt like the Han empire was by the T'angs.

[AntiochusIII]

On the Europe=China front, the author of Frisian theory is that the Mediteranian kept the Roman empire from ever effectively rebuilt like the Han empire was by the T'angs.Ha?

That doesn't seem to be that valid of a theory. As long as a state maintains a formidable fleet, the ease of travel of the sea would in fact aid in the movement of goods and troops around that certain state. After all, quite a few city-states like Venice maintained quite far-flung empires in the Middle Ages. We could essentially assume that a united Italy would do even better.

[lars573]

That's the point though. To rebuild the Han empire all Li Yuan needed was a an army. To half rebuild the western empire Justinian needed an army and a navy. Or someone with a size able fleet could raid his sea ring empire at will. That is Rome couldn't be permanently rebuilt without first having naval superiority. Justinian never had that. Anyway I found the paragraph I was looking for


For a while, Imperial China looked like it would suffer the same fate as the Roman Empire. After the Fall of the Han, the brief interlude of the Three Kingdoms, and the even briefer reunification under the Western Tsin [Jìn], the country split into North and South, with the North overrun by Barbarians. However, the major difference was that no geographical barriers, like the Mediterranean Sea, would obstruct reunification, as it did for Rome, and no massive external invasion, like the advent of Islâm, would inhibit the process.

[AntiochusIII]

That's the point though. To rebuild the Han empire all Li Yuan needed was a an army. To half rebuild the western empire Justinian needed an army and a navy. Or someone with a size able fleet could raid his sea ring empire at will. That is Rome couldn't be permanently rebuilt without first having naval superiority. Justinian never had that. Anyway I found the paragraph I was looking forEh, I thought the Byzantine fleet was quite famous for its time, with the Arabs being the only powers truly capable of challenging them on the sea for a while. How else did Justinian got so far as to take over a few Iberian coastal citadels and held on to them? (I know, the Arabs would come later, but that's something of a point.)

I'd rather think the greatest obstacles to the restoration of a unified Roman Empire were the great migrations of the "barbarians" and the rise of the Islamic Empire itself.

In China, though the barbarians overran its Northern part for centuries, roughly between the Han and the Sui, they never were a significant presence enough to truly displace the original population like what happened in Europe. The Roman Empire never had the luxury of having its core population being the vast majority of people in its empire; the migrations further the discrepancy, and the Germanic tribes would have no commonality with any average Roman, especially an average Eastern Roman ("Greek"). The Chinese might have their regional cultural characteristics, but the age in which places like Sichuan could be considered a separate culture ended since the rise of the Qin anyway. One of the major effects of the Qin Empire, in my opinion, is the relative unification of separate cultures within what we now recognize as China, making re-unification much easier than what they could've been.

And there rarely was a rival empire near China with the energy and expansionism of early Islam, or even simply the strength of Sassanid Persia. One could indeed hypothesize that Emperor Heraclius might turn his energy towards restoring and maintaining the Italian holdings that Justinian acquired (and quickly lost) had there been no Sassanids and later Arabs to contend his empire's very existence. Or at least some other Roman emperors of the time.

These are the reasons that, I think, are far more important than whether or not the sea geographically separates one part of the empire from another on why the Roman Empire was never restored. It was a phenomenon not inevitable due to geographic and cultural tendencies, but a state created by sword and stone. The Romans could easily afford a fleet to make the Mediterranean their "Mare Nostrum," but there are enough challengers around that the process of "reconquest" would never last.

[King of Atlantis]

In China, though the barbarians overran its Northern part for centuries, roughly between the Han and the Sui, they never were a significant presence enough to truly displace the original population like what happened in Europe.
It did not happen in Europe. The Celts were a culture group that through migrations spread across a vast amount of Europe, however the original populations were hardly displaced by the Celts. The Romans were similiar. While ethnically the Roman Empire did not change much, the peoples they conquered became very Roman. Other than perhaps complexion their would be little difference between Roman, Iberian, or Gael. So, while ethnic Romans were not a majority in their own Empire, culturally the Empire was very united. The Barbarian migrations of the 5th century were never signifigant to change much ethnicity among the populace. France is far more Gallo-Roman than actually Frank. The Barbarians simply became the militaristic overlords of the native populace. In the Visigothic Kingdom for example it was around 200,000 Goths ruling over something around 5 million Hispano-Romans. This is true across the board except with the Slavs. They actually were a population change, however I dont know enough of them to expand on that.

Therefore the difference is not in ethnicity, but in culture. For some reason in Europe when barbarian conquerors carved out new kingdoms, the kingdoms in turn changed their culture to that of the barbarian overlords. In china the converse was true. Barbarian invaders such as the machus or mongols may carve out a kingdom, however in the end, it would be chinese culture that would change the conquerors. That is the key difference between the two regions.

[Watchman]

Eh, a good portion of the barbarians who carved themselves a new residence out of the disintegrating West Rome ended up speaking languages derived from vulgar Latin... The fact that they usually also appropriated what was left of Roman adminstrative systems wholesale, and drew on remaining Latin-speaking intelligentsia for advice whenever practical, also meant the empire they'd themselves torn to shreds came to be regarded as something of an ideal to aspire towards.

In China the barbarian conquerors were practically invariably steppe nomads. Now, most of the geographical region of what tends to be regarded as "China" is *not* suited for pastoralism - the exact reason the 'natives' were farmers and the 'barbarian conquerors' nomads - so by default any nomad wishing to set up shop and tax the farmers there had to by and large give up his old lifestyle. Pastoralists have also always been notoriously bad at building lasting empires by themselves; their ecology and the culture and mindset it births are probably fundamentally unsuited for it. Whenever nomads conquered lands outside the steppe they invariably either had to come up with new systems of organizing the society and governement, or appropriated existing ones - and as China had some very good systems indeed already in place, from the ground up geared towards managing the specific ecology and economy of the region, taking over the extant structures was both convenient and sensible.

Which in short meant the nomads invariably Sinicized. Oh, they might try to maintain a separate quasi-ethnic identity and traces of their abandoned pastoral culture all right (I know both the Mongols and Manchus tried to), not unlike the way the Iberian Goths tried to enforce a proto-Apartheid (which duly helped the eventual Arab-Berber invasion to be hailed as liberators by their subjects), but that really just ensconed them into an insular and often hidebound partasitical elite strata rebellious rabble-rousers found very rhetorically useful.

Incidentally, I've read the Mediterranean is one weird sea, ecologically and geographically very peculiar if not downright unique. It really does seem like there's a sort of fault-line running roughly along Italy to Tunisia along which it splits to two main basins, and would-be empires have always found it difficult to maintain control over any colonies or other branches they may have thrust across that divisor. Think about it. Both Carthage and the assorted Greek colonies in Sicily and beyond shortly essentially separated themselves from their eastern-basin roots in short order. When Rome split in two the cleave went roughly across the Adriatic, the mountainous northern Balkans becoming a contested borderland (the Byzantines were never able to regain a permanent foothold of genuine importance in either Italy or the Maghreb after being evicted during the Migrations). The Caliphate very soon lost all but very nominal grip over the Muslim princedoms west of the Libyan desert (later on the Ottomans were able to extert some influence in the Maghreb, but really only through allying with largely autonomous local powers). The Italian mercantile cities in turn were divided by the Apennines to clear, if by no means absolute (Genua had outposts as far as the Crimean peninsula for example), spheres of influence - those on the western coastline such as Genua to the western sub-sea, those along the Adriatic coast to the eastern. The Crusader Kingdoms, virtually European military colonies on the Levant, were only rather tenuously connected to the subcontinent of their origin and in any case politically independent from the get go. Neither Spain (or rather Castile-Aragon) nor the Ottomans, fiercely competing powerful empires, were ever able to maintain strong influence across the Tunis-Italy divide, and so on.

Rome was really almost unique in being able to turn the Med into a mare nostrum for as long as it did - this probably came from its early dominance of the whole Italy-Sicily-Tunis (where Carthage once lay) divisory line from early on, as well as being able to gain control of several other strategic base areas like the Iberian coast, the Greek peninsula and Egypt relatively easily. The fact that the previous owners of the eastern basin, the Hellenic Diadochi, helpfully weakened each other with endemic mutual warfare and internal disturbances (and in the case of the Seleucids also had serious nomad troubles in the form of the Parthians), can't have hurt.

[King of Atlantis]

Eh, a good portion of the barbarians who carved themselves a new residence out of the disintegrating West Rome ended up speaking languages derived from vulgar Latin... The fact that they usually also appropriated what was left of Roman adminstrative systems wholesale, and drew on remaining Latin-speaking intelligentsia for advice whenever practical, also meant the empire they'd themselves torn to shreds came to be regarded as something of an ideal to aspire towards.

Yes, but the point remains that France(for example) under the Franks was far different culutrally than the Romans that had preceded them. While certain aspects of Roman tradition would remain alive and other aspects idolized, the culture of France would be changed forever by the barbarian invaders.

[Avicenna]

Lars: there's also the fact that the Jin dynasty was founded by the Manchus. The Manchus didn't rebel as well, I think. It was merely an invasion. Only a tiny strip of Manchuria belonged to the Ming dynasty according to your map, and I've never heard of the Manchus being a rebellious faction taking over. They had their own army and all.

By the way, simple 'Tang' should do. The 'First Emperor' is also usually known as Qin Shi Huang. Same meaning, sounds better though.

Also, on the first Han Emperor. Checking wiki, I don't think he was called Wang Han. Anyway, by this time, Qin Shi Huang had made 'Huang' (皇) the word for emperor, as opposed to the old 'Wang' (王). So, Liu Bang was known as 'Gao Huang Di' or simply 'Gao Huang'. Gao (高) means tall, or high as shadow said. It also has connotations with being high and mighty and all that: many phrases containing the word 高 mean things such as upper class, exalted, lofty. His commonly known name was 高祖. 祖父 means grandfather, and 祖母 means grandmother. You can probably guess therefore that 祖 means something along the lines of 'founder' or 'ancestor'. Basically, the name means that he is some kind of important founder of the Han Dynasty.

[lars573]

The Frisian section on the Han stated that Liu Pang took over Han first. And ruled it as the Han Wang, no period is given on for how long. Probably not very, 1 year (2 max) probably. It's under the Ming section on their break with tradition in era names, I almost didn't find it.

The Founder of the Han had originally been of low station also, a peasant, but he had already styled himself "King of Han" (Han Wang) before definitively claiming the Ch'in Emperorship.

Also I'm trying to present the information on Frisian with as little interpretation on my part in terms of dates and names. Frisian give it as T'ang, so I did too.

So Kao Tsu means great founder. Coolz. :2thumbsup:

Also I've heard the Manchu take over described as a rebellion and conquest. As parts of it were within and without Ming China it could have been both.

[Watchman]

AFAIK the Ming were in serious decline and suffering from endemic civil disturbances, uprisings and all the merry rest that now tended to accompany the death throes of Chinese dynasties. The Manchus, who'd been getting awfully well organized and sophisticated as of late, were only too happy to make use of the opportunity in the fine tradition of opportunistic neighbours.

They had to spend a while putting down all the little warlords, local wannabe lordlings and suchlike that spawned like so many mushrooms after rain when the Ming went critical though, but that comes with the territory.

[Avicenna]

The internal problems were quite interesting really, like some kind of drama. The triads besieged some cities IIRC (in the south, obviously, eg guangdong and guangxi) and they supported some rebellion from that Hakka guy who said he was Jesus' brother. There were a few rebellions earlier on before that, but not as serious as the Tai Ping Tian Guo one, which had absolutely nothing to do with the Manchus AFAIK: Manchus live above Korea, the Hakka guy lived in SE China, near Taiwan and HK.