The empire, long divided must unite – long united, must divide. Thus, it has ever been.

So opens the
famous Chinese tale, “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, or to put it another way, - China is whole
again! Then it broke again! And that’s honestly pretty accurate. The story of China is very long, often
winding and all too frequently shattered enterprise – but it is DAMN interesting. So, to find out what’s
causing this three thousand year long dance of unifying and fragmenting, let’s do some history.

To start, every civilization needs water in some form or another. Egypt has the Nile, Mesopotamia has
the Tigris and Euphrates, and China has the Yellow River. The earliest records of centralized civilization in
China point to the Yellow River Basin as the cradle of that civilization, but written records only tell part
of the story, and in China especially there’s a pretty shocking gap between what our sources tell us and
what we found archeologically in the past century all across the country. So, for instance, the Yangtze
River to the South was once regarded as a later development during the Chinese Bronze Age but nope!
There were all kinds of separate stuff going on down there before we ever see significant textual
evidence for it. So back to the Yellow River, from what we know civilization got properly going during
the reign of the five semi-divine and almost certainly legendary Emperors. The last one, Emperor Yu,
founded the – also likely mythical – Xia dynasty in the 22 nd century BC. And real quick on the subject of
names – despite two Chinese speaking friends very generously coaching my pronunciation, I am still sure
to fail so: blanket apology. Skipping ahead to sturdier footing, we have the definitely real Shang dynasty,
who ruled from the Yellow River Basin during the Chinese Bronze Age. But even here we found
boatloads of evidence for distinct cultures with regionally unique bronze work, implying fairly
independent societies across China. There’s also a decent chance that the Shang and later Zhou
dynasties overlapped. I recognize that thus is all a bit too hazy, but I hope that you can see why this
might a very contentious issue and we’re still discovering new things all the time! So even more so than
usual: general disclaimer that academics are currently spilling rivers of ink debating some of what I’ll
cover in this series. And speaking of writing things, our first glimpse of the written Chinese language
comes from the Shang Bronze Age, where oracles inscribed turtle shells and bones with predictions
before hocking them into a fire, to see how they cracked and which statements were verified. The
writing, though obviously SUPER old is still recognizably Chinese. And the quality implies that the script
had been around even before that. Plus, the hefty collection of turtle shells we’ve dug up indicates that
this was a regular, if not daily procedure, and this tells us two important things: for 1.) the Shang rulers
believed themselves to have an IN with the gods, and 2.) while artwork and bronze work weren’t unique
to the Shang, writing at this level of sophistication likely was. This sets the stage for an entire history of
power lying with those who have divine favor, and those who can most effectively employ writing to
convey that. Our written sources tell us that the last Shang emperor became tyrannical, and King Wu
overthrew him to find the Zhou dynasty. Which went on to rule for another 800 years. And this brings us
to one of the most central concepts in Chinese history: The mandate of heaven, the basic idea is that if
you rule justly, Heaven will smile upon you and grant you dominion over China. But if you behave
wickedly, as the last Shang Emperor did, you’ve forfeited your power and someone more noble than you
is going to claim it. So just watch out for that happening all the time for the next 3,000 years.
THE DYNASTIC CYCLE

 The New Dynasty: comes to power, enacts reforms and builds new infrastructure > The Aging
Dynasty: becomes weaker as its rulers grow corrupt > The Failing Dynasty: Suffers natural
disasters and conflict as its people grow rebellious > The Insurgent Dynasty: Overthrows the
Failing Dynasty and brings peace

Anyway, the Zhou dynasty starts to consolidate our mental image of classical China with unique knife
and Spade coinage, walls, bureaucratic government, and a lot of soon-to-be very famous literature.
Unfortunately for the Zhou, their strong start wouldn’t last forever and China’s longest dynasty would
spend half a millennium fending off assailants from all sides after caving in on itself in the 770s BC. So I
mean, yah, the Zhou were around for another 500 years, but come on look at it, barely even exists – it’s
tiny. The split between the strong cohesive western Zhou and that tiny Eastern Zhou as they were
known, also marks the start of a lot of wars over the next few centuries. The spring and autumn annals
(a historical text describing the 8 th to early 5th centuries {BC}) also gives us the name for the Spring and
Autumn period. And all things considered, it was not too bad. What started with about 150 independent
kingdoms, dukedoms and city states, gradually glamped each other to narrow that number down to 30
or so. And then to 7 by the end. The Spring and Autumn period was a pretty slow burn, but things
definitely heated up as the remaining territories became bigger and wealthier. Still, you couldn’t just
death ball your way into an empire. So, strategy became a crucial weapon. And that is where the art of
war comes in. Sun Tzu’s famous work of military philosophy makes clear that the first weapon in any
generals arsenal is stratagem. All the better to break your opponent without even lifting a spear if you
can avoid it. Sun Tsu knew that lengthy campaigns were a disaster waiting to happen – so clever politics
and tricky tactics often won the day. Machiavelli would be very proud. So, with all this high-level
political, military, strategery going on, these states would sure do well to have a smart person or two on
hand. And a latter portion of the Spring and Autumn period saw rise in the power and influence of
educated aristocracy.

One such scholarly gentleman was a guy who saw no greater purpose in life than serving as a
government bureaucrat. Career prospects were way different back then. So, anyway, this guy travelled
around China for 13 years accomplishing not much of anything. The career of this Kong Qiu looks like a
complete failure at face value because it kind of was. But fast forward a few hundred years, and his
assorted teachings come to us through arguably the most foundational work of Chinese philosophy - the
Analects of Confucius.

In a world dominated by conflict and political duplicity between competing States, Confucius taught the
value of gentlemanly virtue and adherence to cultural norms of conduct and respect yet a very
particular view of the past is holding valuable instruction for his largely wayward times and you can
argue the subtext here is, “hey guys, if any of you want the Mandate of Heaven, you better get your
damns act together.” But he was also simply teaching everyday people how to cope with stuff being all
crazy and invaded all the time keep a routine, be a good person those ideas come up a lot throughout
world history. Confucius was far from the only active philosopher as the famed hundred schools of
thought were writing philosophy like there was no tomorrow. Because sometimes there wasn’t. Some
other thinkers to note are Mencius, who elaborated on Confucian thought half a century later and
codified much of Confucian philosophy for later use and also very much counter to all of this, was
Lao Tzu who was cited as the philosopher behinds Taoism and the author of the Dao de Jing,
though there is some debate on that one too. I could easily keep going on, Confucianism and
Daoism for another 30 minutes but suffice to say, the hardest times can produce the wisest
works, and oh boy where time starting to get hard. The Spring and Autumn period gave way to
the proverbial winter that was the Warring States period when things got much grimmer on the
combat front as the remaining powers in China became fiercer in their bid to be the last one
standing. Perhaps no surprise considering the few remaining kingdoms gained considerable
wealth and power along with their territory, the dwindling number of states also coincided with
much stronger centralized governments as only the states that could recruit, equip, and
mobilize large armies could survive in the first place. And speaking of states that were good at
Warring. The Qin Kingdom became fiercely legalistic and ruthlessly expansionist in the late 4th
and 3rd centuries BC. For one, those guys loved their crossbows and I honestly can't blame
them because crossbows are dope, but more alarmingly they had a clear take-no-prisoners
policy and that applied to civilians as well. So their armies pushed east and conquered the
remaining kingdoms, unifying China, under the Qin banner in 221, and granting their king the
title of Shi Huang Di, first emperor. Given the brutality of their methods you may wonder if they
deserve the Mandate of Heaven after all and heaven seems to have wondered the same, as the
Qin Dynasty collapsed a few short years after the death of Shi Huang Di. Still, the Qin are a
landmark moment for the birth of a true Chinese Empire and the name China itself comes from
the Qin Dynasty. Kind of. The etymology actually goes through about five other languages
before we get China, but point stands. Short as his dynasty was, Shi Huang Di made some
important innovations to literally pave the way for centuries of future Chinese empires. In
addition to editing and standardizing the Chinese written language, the Qin engaged in
fantastically huge building and infrastructure projects from walls and roads to insane royal
structures. Some descriptions of Qin architecture have been mocked as overly fanciful, but after
we discovered the Terracotta Army in the 1970s, everybody stopped laughing real fast. A
couple of years after the emperor died from what the doctor promised was an elixir of
immortality but in all likelihood was a one-way ticket to mercury poisoning, the Empire was up
in full revolt against the Qin. Out of a fierce but mercifully brief civil war, arose the Han Dynasty
under Liu Bang, ruling over most of China by 202 BC. During the 400 year long and largely
peaceful reign of the Han Confucianism emerged as a state philosophy after the Qin won on a
book-burning spree. The Han retained a firmly legalistic framework but they weren't draconian
about it. Instead, they focused on actually being a good Empire, by expanding the bureaucracy.
This period also saw the introduction of circular coinage, paper and silk production, early
hydraulics and cool astronomy. Plus, more Taoism You can never have enough Taoism. The Han
also had to with trouble in the form of an invasion by the Huns .Yep, those are the ones. In the
process of dealing with the Xiong Nu, as they were also called, the Han armies pushed west into
Central Asia and found a number of other civilizations. Among them were the Bactrian, said to
have a talent for horse riding, a sophisticated culture and splendid cities these Bactrian were in
fact the farthest East successors to the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great. The King and
Generals Channel has a fantastic two-part series on this, so I'll actually just point you to him.
But the short of it is that the Han wanted some of these heavenly horses from the Bactrians to
help fight the Xiong Nu and after an unproductive round of haggling, they sent a giant army to
the City of Dayan aka Alexandria Eschate sacked it, took the heavenly horses and yoinked a
large share of the territory in the Terran basin on their way back. It's after pushing this far west
and establishing contact with the various states of Central Asia, that the Han began trade
relations that would carry goods all the way to the Mediterranean. Most famously, silk. This Silk
Road became a backbone of the Han economy for the next few centuries and helped kick the
Han Golden Age into high gear. And also, the Han defeated the Xiong Nu with the help of those
heavenly horses though the historian Sima Qian noted presciently that this was likely only the
first round of a much much larger conflict. And on that subject Sima Qian, the Han's court
historian produced one of the greatest works of history period . his ShiJi, aka records of the
grand historian, compiled at the turn of the 1st century BC is a really big deal for China and for
history. Basically, he wrote a 12 chapter narrative history from as far back as he could find up
until his present day. He also included 30 histories about individual states and a further 70
standalone biographies. It is exceptionally thorough while remaining fairly flexible to read.
Though in the process of writing his history Sima Qian may have committed some light treason
by speaking a little too openly to the emperor about his opinions. As a result he was cast out
and castrated but he did get to finish his life's work and history is all the richer for it. The
following decade saw the Han rise to its greatest extent, stretching down along the eastern
coast eastward towards Korea and westward into Xinjiang. The bureaucracy also grew during
this period becoming more efficient at acquiring and spending tax revenues broadly and locally,
as well as employing mandatory conscription labor to build public works. Life was peaceful,
culture was booming resources were plentiful. It was a good time for everyone involved Of
course, it's usually after a long run of things going well, that politics tend to sour and the heads
of state turned away from Confucianism to reprise the harsher tactics and expansionary world
view of their Qin predecessors You've seen this before and you'll see it again, someone's
Empire is about to get dunked on and a steady parade of terrible omens for half a century made
it very clear that Heaven's Mandate was about to scram-date. So, one enterprising Confucian
scholar named Wang Mang carried out a very peaceful usurpation of the throne with every
intent to set things right, and start a new dynasty. Unfortunately, things didn't work out great
for him. He had some interesting reforms but he was paying too much attention to whether or
not his bureaucrats had the right titles and ignoring how the Yellow River was constantly
flooding. No surprise that he too, got the boot. After that it was a bit of a power scramble and
against several odds, a member of the Han family reclaimed China moving the capital eastward
from Chang An to Luo Yang to establish or re-establish the latter eastern Han Dynasty. The early
decades of this Empire were spent recovering from the mess of the past century and with a lot
of effort things were pretty solid for a while. Though the official histories pushed the final end
of the Han as far forward as 220 AD, their empire kind of went back to a steady decline in the
mid second century as the throne passed through a line of young or otherwise incompetent
emperors whose regents did all of the governing for them. And honestly calling the Han an
empire after the 180s AD is just an exercise in self-delusion. Along those lines there's a comical
amount of succession crises and political intrigue shenanigans throughout the 100's ad that go-
a-ways to explain why no one was in a position to do anything when the Empire shattered apart
of the turn of the century. However, it's from this complete mess that we get the setting for the
famous Chinese epic, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

I would initiate to demise of the Gojoseon