China

During the first two centuries of the Christian era, the Chinese Empire flourished. After a difficult period at the beginning of the 1st century, the Han dynasty managed to consolidate its power, and from 25 until 220 AD China was governed by the so-called Later Han, also known as the Eastern Han because the capital was moved from Chang’an to Luoyang. During the turbulent first two decades of the 1st century AD, the territories that had been conquered around 100 BC were lost: Vietnam in the south, Korea in the north, and also large parts of Central Asia, especially the Gobi Desert and the Tarim Basin. However, the Han immediately and with great energy set about reconquering what had been lost, and by around 100 AD everything was again more or less under control. During this period, trade with the West was thriving. The overland route was the so-called Silk Road, in fact a string of routes running from the Huanghe via a chain of oases through Sogdiana, Bactria, Iran, Mesopotamia, and Syria to the Mediterranean. Because the Roman Empire preferred direct trade, the seaway to India became more important than the overland route. India also supplied Chinese silk, as well as many other interesting products. From the start of Rome’s imperial era, sea traffic between Egypt and India was more intensive than before. But China not only exported its silk, and the other products it had to offer, to the West: Han China was conducting trade with the whole of Asia.

Apart from nomadic intruders at the northern borders, populous China was relatively peaceful and orderly under a centralized administration with a vast number of officials. Culture was flourishing and so was technology: the wheelbarrow, the watermill, paper, the glazing of pottery, cast iron—these were all Chinese inventions from this period. Experiments were conducted that would result in the production of porcelain, and the manufacture of textiles, especially silk fabrics, was highly advanced. The regime, however, began to show internal weaknesses. Powerful clans, notably those of the court eunuchs and of the empresses and their relatives, vied with each other and with the bureaucrats, the Confucian officials. The central government weakened and there were

Antiquity: Greeks andRomans in Context, First Edition. Frederick G. Naerebout and HenkW. Singor. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 byJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Map 17 Eurasia, 1st-6th c. AD

Map 17  (Continued)

Re-feudalizing tendencies. Large-scale landownership increased, and small independent farmers were no match for large estates farmed by tenants: they gradually became the serfs of a small group of rich and powerful landowners. Those at the lower end of the social scale were increasingly worse off. The central government was harassed by rising internal unrest and by financial problems resulting from a decrease in tax revenues because of the decline of the peasantry. Apart from unruly peasants, usurping generals, and warlords who tried to take advantage of waning central authority, there was increasing pressure at the borders. The policy to establish “barbarians” as auxiliary troops within the borders proved to be a danger rather than a safety measure.

The period between 200 and 600 AD has been called the Chinese “middle ages.” After 220 AD, the Han Empire broke up into three states: Wei in the north, Shu-Han in Sichuan, and Wu on the lower reaches of the Yangzi and in the south. Attempts to restore the Han Empire resulted in war between the three new realms, but these attempts in the end were unsuccessful. Even internally, the new states showed very little effective unity. The ensuing chaos, a succession of civil wars, and usurpations of power are reminiscent of the end of the feudal era in the 4th and 3rd century BC. It is remarkable that, now as then, cultural vigor went hand in hand with political decline. The northern and western borders lay open to “barbaric” invaders, proto-Tibetans and nomadic tribes of various cultural backgrounds who spoke Turkish and Mongol languages. Up to the Sichuan mountain range and the Yangzi, everything descended into disorder and fragmentation, a jumble of small “barbaric” states that were usually short-lived. Nevertheless, there was no significant cultural rupture: invaders were absorbed by China in an ongoing process of acculturation. The newcomers even continued the expansionist policies of the Han Empire. However, as has been mentioned before, acculturation is always a two-way development, and this was also the case in this period. China itself was deeply influenced by the “barbarians” within its borders. During the so-called Epoch of the Six Dynasties (3rd to 6th centuries AD), in the southern regions one weak dynasty replaced another, but not one was able to restore internal order, let alone reconquer the north. But in this case, too, expansionist policies were not completely abandoned and the sinification of southern China continued.

During the Eastern Han, Buddhism reached China via Central Asia. With it came elements of Iranian and Hellenistic culture: even Japanese Buddhist sculpture of the 7th and 8th centuries still shows traces of Western influence. A flourishing of Buddhism came only during the 3rd and 4th centuries. In that period, there was also direct overseas contact with the Indian subcontinent and with Sri Lanka. This was part of the commercial activities that were instrumental in spreading both Buddhism and Hinduism to Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago. Buddhism, and the Indian scholarship that came in its wake, left a significant mark on China. Both further developed in China and from there found their way to Japan and Korea. The period from the 4th through the 9th century AD has been called the Buddhist era of Asian history.