With the murder of the First Emperors heir and son by his brother, chaos quickly ensued the Qin rule.
Uprisings soon followed with commoners taking up arms rather than be overworked labour and military slaves. Over the next few years there were many assinations of emperors and ministers in the Qin palace with people fighting for the throne, generals defected and Zhou royals raised armies against the Qin.
In the end Liu Bang a fomer peasent from the state of Han, lead his army to victory over the Qin in 206 B.C and became King Han. For four years after that he was at war with his rival Xiang Yu for the throne and finally defeated him in 202 B.C and became Emperor of China, starting the Han Dynasty.
The Han dynasty is broken into three parts: The Western Han (206 B.C - 9 A.D) The Xin ( 9 A.D - 23 A.D) and The Eastern Han ( 25 A.D - 220 A.D)
The Han Capital is in Chang-an in todays Xian, Shannxi province.
There were 24 Emperors on the throne in total, spanning 426 years.
The main goal of the Han was again unification although Liu Bang at the begginning gave vassal states to his friends with titles, but soon changed his mind, going back to total rule and the legalist system (reward and punishment), but intertwined this time with strong morals of Confucianisim.
Art, literature, philosophy, music and statecraft flourished in this golden age.
Confucius' teachings were made the dominant creed and cornerstone of Chinese thought.
Sima Qian (145 B.C - 87 B.C) wrote his famous book The Grand Historian (Shiji).
Agriculture grew with better iron tools and use of ox drawn ploughs.
Irrigation systems were increased to help develop the north of China, and crop rotation was introduced.
Paper was invented so a way of recording was now far more readily available, and knowledge and ideas could be spread further and faster, porcelain was also invented.
Acupuncture began to be practised.
Trade with the outside world began with the opening of the Silk Route, as the Chinese under the rule of the noted Emperor WuTi (141 - 87 B.C) spread north pushing back the Huns further into the Gobi. Expansion went as far as Vietnam and Korea.
Buddhism was introduced in the Western Han period, transforming Religious ideas and minds of the Chinese civilisation and culture.
The Han dyansty came to an end with Emperor Xian, as the warlord Dong Zhuo destroyed the empire and fractured it into different regimes with different ruling warlords. Eventually one of those warlords Cao Cao began to reunite the regimes still under Emperor Xians "rule".
But Cao Cao's efforts to completely reunify the empire were stopped at the Battle of Red Cliffs, where his naval army was defeated. Cao Cao died in march 220 A.D and by December of that year his son Cao Pi had Emperor Xian relinquish the throne truly ending the Han Dynasty.
This left China divided into three spheres :Cao Wei, Eastern Wu, and Shu Han, and started the next period of Chinese history, The Three Kingdoms.
Uprisings soon followed with commoners taking up arms rather than be overworked labour and military slaves. Over the next few years there were many assinations of emperors and ministers in the Qin palace with people fighting for the throne, generals defected and Zhou royals raised armies against the Qin.
In the end Liu Bang a fomer peasent from the state of Han, lead his army to victory over the Qin in 206 B.C and became King Han. For four years after that he was at war with his rival Xiang Yu for the throne and finally defeated him in 202 B.C and became Emperor of China, starting the Han Dynasty.
The Han dynasty is broken into three parts: The Western Han (206 B.C - 9 A.D) The Xin ( 9 A.D - 23 A.D) and The Eastern Han ( 25 A.D - 220 A.D)
The Han Capital is in Chang-an in todays Xian, Shannxi province.
There were 24 Emperors on the throne in total, spanning 426 years.
The main goal of the Han was again unification although Liu Bang at the begginning gave vassal states to his friends with titles, but soon changed his mind, going back to total rule and the legalist system (reward and punishment), but intertwined this time with strong morals of Confucianisim.
Art, literature, philosophy, music and statecraft flourished in this golden age.
Confucius' teachings were made the dominant creed and cornerstone of Chinese thought.
Sima Qian (145 B.C - 87 B.C) wrote his famous book The Grand Historian (Shiji).
Agriculture grew with better iron tools and use of ox drawn ploughs.
Irrigation systems were increased to help develop the north of China, and crop rotation was introduced.
Paper was invented so a way of recording was now far more readily available, and knowledge and ideas could be spread further and faster, porcelain was also invented.
Acupuncture began to be practised.
Trade with the outside world began with the opening of the Silk Route, as the Chinese under the rule of the noted Emperor WuTi (141 - 87 B.C) spread north pushing back the Huns further into the Gobi. Expansion went as far as Vietnam and Korea.
Buddhism was introduced in the Western Han period, transforming Religious ideas and minds of the Chinese civilisation and culture.
The Han dyansty came to an end with Emperor Xian, as the warlord Dong Zhuo destroyed the empire and fractured it into different regimes with different ruling warlords. Eventually one of those warlords Cao Cao began to reunite the regimes still under Emperor Xians "rule".
But Cao Cao's efforts to completely reunify the empire were stopped at the Battle of Red Cliffs, where his naval army was defeated. Cao Cao died in march 220 A.D and by December of that year his son Cao Pi had Emperor Xian relinquish the throne truly ending the Han Dynasty.
This left China divided into three spheres :Cao Wei, Eastern Wu, and Shu Han, and started the next period of Chinese history, The Three Kingdoms.
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