THE EPOCH OF THE FIRST DIVISION OF CHINA (A.D. 220-580)
(A) The three kingdoms (220-265)
1 Social, intellectual, and economic problems during the first division
The end of the Han period was folowed by the three and a half centuries of the first division of China into several kingdoms, each with its own dynasty. In fact, once before during the period of the Contending States, China had been divided into a number of states, but at least in theory they had been subject to the Chou dynasty, and none of the contending states had made the claim to be the legitimate ruler of al China. In this period of the "first division" several states claimed to be legitimate rulers, and later Chinese historians tried to decide which of these had "more right" to this claim. At the outset (220-280) there were three kingdoms (Wei, Wu, Shu Han); then came an unstable reunion during twenty-seven years (280-307) under the rule of the Western Chin. This was
folowed by a stil sharper division between north and south: while a wave of non-Chinese nomad dynasties
poured over the north, in the south one Chinese clique after another seized power, so that dynasty folowed
dynasty until finaly, in 580, a united China came again into existence, adopting the culture of the north and the traditions of the gentry.
In some ways, the period from 220 to 580 can be compared with the period of the coincidentaly synchronous
breakdown of the Roman Empire: in both cases there was no great increase in population, although in China
perhaps no over-al decrease in population as in the Roman Empire; decrease occurred, however, in the
population of the great Chinese cities, especialy of the capital; furthermore we witness, in both empires, a
disorganization of the monetary system, i.e. in China the reversal to a predominance of natural economy after
some 400 years of money economy. Yet, this period cannot be simply dismissed as a transition period, as was
usualy done by the older European works on China. The social order of the gentry, whose birth and
development inside China we folowed, had for the first time to defend itself against views and systems entirely opposed to it; for the Turkish and Mongol peoples who ruled northern China brought with them their traditions
of a feudal nobility with privileges of birth and al that they implied. Thus this period, socialy regarded, is especialy that of the struggle between the Chinese gentry and the northern nobility, the gentry being excluded at www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11367/pg11367.html
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first as a direct political factor in the northern and more important part of China. In the south the gentry continued in the old style with a constant struggle between cliques, the only difference being that the class assumed a sort of
"colonial" character through the formation of gigantic estates and through association with the merchant class.
To throw light on the scale of events, we need to have figures of population. There are no figures for the years around A.D. 220, and we must make do with those of 140; but in order to show the relative strength of the three states it is the ratio between the figures that matters. In 140 the regions which later belonged to Wei had roughly 29,000,000 inhabitants; those later belonging to Wu had 11,700,000; those which belonged later to Shu Han
had a bare 7,500,000. (The figures take no account of the primitive native population, which was not yet
included in the taxation lists.) The Hsiung-nu formed only a smal part of the population, as there were only the nineteen tribes which had abandoned one of the parts, already reduced, of the Hsiung-nu empire. The whole
Hsiung-nu empire may never have counted more than some 3,000,000. At the time when the population of what
became the Wei territory totaled 29,000,000 the capital with its immediate environment had over a milion
inhabitants. The figure is exclusive of most of the officials and soldiers, as these were taxable in their homes and so were counted there. It is clear that this was a disproportionate concentration round the capital.
It was at this time that both South and North China felt the influence of Buddhism, which until A.D. 220 had no more real effect on China than had, for instance, the penetration of European civilization between 1580 and
1842. Buddhism offered new notions, new ideals, foreign science, and many other elements of culture, with
which the old Chinese philosophy and science had to contend. At the same time there came with Buddhism the
first direct knowledge of the great civilized countries west of China. Until then China had regarded herself as the only existing civilized country, and al other countries had been regarded as barbaric, for a civilized country was then taken to mean a country with urban industrial crafts and agriculture. In our present period, however, China's relations with the Middle East and with southern Asia were so close that the existence of civilized countries
outside China had to be admitted. Consequently, when alien dynasties ruled in northern China and a new high
civilization came into existence there, it was impossible to speak of its rulers as barbarians any longer. Even the theory that the Chinese emperor was the Son of Heaven and enthroned at the centre of the world was no longer
tenable. Thus a vast widening of China's intelectual horizon took place.
Economicaly, our present period witnessed an adjustment in South China between the Chinese way of life,
which had penetrated from the north, and that of the natives of the south. Large groups of Chinese had to turn over from wheat culture in dry fields to rice culture in wet fields, and from field culture to market gardening. In North China the conflict went on between Chinese agriculture and the cattle breeding of Central Asia. Was the
wil of the ruler to prevail and North China to become a country of pasturage, or was the country to keep to the agrarian tradition of the people under this rule? The Turkish and Mongol conquerors had recently given up their old supplementary agriculture and had turned into pure nomads, obtaining the agricultural produce they needed
by raiding or trade. The conquerors of North China were now faced with a different question: if they were to
remain nomads, they must either drive the peasants into the south, or make them into slave herdsmen, or
exterminate them. There was one more possibility: they might instal themselves as a ruling upper class, as nobles over the subjugated native peasants. The same question was faced much later by the Mongols, and at first they
answered it differently from the peoples of our present period. Only by attention to this problem shal we be in a position to explain why the rule of the Turkish peoples did not last, why these peoples were gradualy absorbed and disappeared.
2 Status of the two southern Kingdoms
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When the last emperor of the Han period had to abdicate in favour of Ts'ao P'ei and the Wei dynasty began,
China was in no way a unified realm. Almost immediately, in 221, two other army commanders, who had long
been independent, declared themselves emperors. In the south-west of China, in the present province of
Szechwan, the Shu Han dynasty was founded in this way, and in the south-east, in the region of the present
Nanking, the Wu dynasty.
The situation of the southern kingdom of Shu Han (221-263) corresponded more or less to that of the
Chungking regime in the Second World War. West of it the high Tibetan mountains towered up; there was very
little reason to fear any major attack from that direction. In the north and east the realm was also protected by difficult mountain country. The south lay relatively open, but at that time there were few Chinese living there, but only natives with a relatively low civilization. The kingdom could only be seriously attacked from two corners—
through the north-west, where there was a negotiable plateau, between the Ch'in-ling mountains in the north and the Tibetan mountains in the west, a plateau inhabited by fairly highly developed Tibetan tribes; and secondly through the south-east corner, where it would be possible to penetrate up the Yangtze. There was in fact
incessant fighting at both these dangerous corners.
Economicaly, Shu Han was not in a bad position. The country had long been part of the Chinese wheat lands,
and had a fairly large Chinese peasant population in the wel irrigated plain of Ch'engtu. There was also a wealthy merchant class, supplying grain to the surrounding mountain peoples and buying medicaments and other
profitable Tibetan products. And there were trade routes from here through the present province of Yünnan to
India.
Shu Han's difficulty was that its population was not large enough to be able to stand against the northern State of Wei; moreover, it was difficult to carry out an offensive from Shu Han, though the country could defend itself wel. The first attempt to find a remedy was a campaign against the native tribes of the present Yünnan. The
purpose of this was to secure manpower for the army and also slaves for sale; for the south-west had for
centuries been a main source for traffic in slaves. Finaly it was hoped to gain control over the trade to India. Al these things were intended to strengthen Shu Han internaly, but in spite of certain military successes they
produced no practical result, as the Chinese were unable in the long run to endure the climate or to hold out
against the guerrila tactics of the natives. Shu Han tried to buy the assistance of the Tibetans and with their aid to carry out a decisive attack on Wei, whose dynastic legitimacy was not recognized by Shu Han. The ruler of Shu
Han claimed to be a member of the imperial family of the deposed Han dynasty, and therefore to be the rightful, legitimate ruler over China. His descent, however, was a little doubtful, and in any case it depended on a link far back in the past. Against this the Wei of the north declared that the last ruler of the Han dynasty had handed over to them with al due form the seals of the state and therewith the imperial prerogative. The controversy was of no great practical importance, but it played a big part in the Chinese Confucianist school until the twelfth century, and contributed largely to a revision of the old conceptions of legitimacy.
The political plans of Shu Han were wel considered and far-seeing. They were evolved by the premier, a man
from Shantung named Chu-ko Liang; for the ruler died in 226 and his successor was stil a child. But Chu-ko
Liang lived only for a further eight years, and after his death in 234 the decline of Shu Han began. Its political leaders no longer had a sense of what was possible. Thus Wei inflicted several defeats on Shu Han, and finaly
subjugated it in 263.
The situation of the state of Wu was much less favourable than that of Shu Han, though this second southern
kingdom lasted from 221 to 280. Its country consisted of marshy, water-logged plains, or mountains with narrow www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11367/pg11367.html
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valeys. Here Tai peoples had long cultivated their rice, while in the mountains Yao tribes lived by hunting and by simple agriculture. Peasants immigrating from the north found that their wheat and pulse did not thrive here, and slowly they had to gain familiarity with rice cultivation. They were also compeled to give up their sheep and cattle and in their place to breed pigs and water buffaloes, as was done by the former inhabitants of the country. The lower class of the population was mainly non-Chinese; above it was an upper class of Chinese, at first relatively smal, consisting of officials, soldiers, and merchants in a few towns and administrative centres. The country was poor, and its only important economic asset was the trade in metals, timber, and other southern products; soon there came also a growing overseas trade with India and the Middle East, bringing revenues to the state in so far as the goods were re-exported from Wu to the north.
Wu never attempted to conquer the whole of China, but endeavoured to consolidate its own difficult territory
with a view to building up a state on a firm foundation. In general, Wu played mainly a passive part in the
incessant struggles between the three kingdoms, though it was active in diplomacy. The Wu kingdom entered into relations with a man who in 232 had gained control of the present South Manchuria and shortly afterwards
assumed the title of king. This new ruler of "Yen", as he caled his kingdom, had determined to attack the Wei dynasty, and hoped, by putting pressure on it in association with Wu, to overrun Wei from north and south. Wei answered this plan very effectively by recourse to diplomacy and it began by making Wu believe that Wu had
reason to fear an attack from its western neighbour Shu Han. A mission was also dispatched from Wei to
negotiate with Japan. Japan was then emerging from its stone age and introducing metals; there were countless
smal principalities and states, of which the state of Yamato, then ruled by a queen, was the most powerful.
Yamato had certain interests in Korea, where it already ruled a smal coastal strip in the east. Wei offered
Yamato the prospect of gaining the whole of Korea if it would turn against the state of Yen in South Manchuria.
Wu, too, had turned to Japan, but the negotiations came to nothing, since Wu, as an aly of Yen, had nothing to offer. The queen of Yamato accordingly sent a mission to Wei; she had already decided in favour of that state.
Thus Wei was able to embark on war against Yen, which it annihilated in 237. This wrecked Wu's diplomatic
projects, and no more was heard of any ambitious plans of the kingdom of Wu.
The two southern states had a common characteristic: both were condottiere states, not built up from their own population but conquered by generals from the north and ruled for a time by those generals and their northern
troops. Natives gradualy entered these northern armies and reduced their percentage of northerners, but a gulf remained between the native population, including its gentry, and the alien military rulers. This reduced the
striking power of the southern states.
On the other hand, this period had its positive element. For the first time there was an emperor in south China, with al the organization that implied. A capital ful of officials, eunuchs, and al the satelites of an imperial court provided incentives to economic advance, because it represented a huge market. The peasants around it were
able to increase their sales and grew prosperous. The increased demand resulted in an increase of tilage and a thriving trade. Soon the transport problem had to be faced, as had happened long ago in the north, and new
means of transport, especialy ships, were provided, and new trade routes opened which were to last far longer
than the three kingdoms; on the other hand, the costs of transport involved fresh taxation burdens for the
population. The skiled staff needed for the business of administration came into the new capital from the
surrounding districts, for the conquerors and new rulers of the territory of the two southern dynasties had brought with them from the north only uneducated soldiers and almost equaly uneducated officers. The influx of scholars and administrators into the chief cities produced cultural and economic centres in the south, a circumstance of great importance to China's later development.
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3 The northern State of Wei
The situation in the north, in the state of Wei (220-265) was anything but rosy. Wei ruled what at that time were the most important and richest regions of China, the plain of Shensi in the west and the great plain east of
Loyang, the two most thickly populated areas of China. But the events at the end of the Han period had inflicted great economic injury on the country. The southern and south-western parts of the Han empire had been lost,
and though parts of Central Asia stil gave alegiance to Wei, these, as in the past, were economicaly more of a burden than an asset, because they caled for incessant expenditure. At least the trade caravans were able to
travel undisturbed from and to China through Turkestan. Moreover, the Wei kingdom, although much smaler
than the empire of the Han, maintained a completely staffed court at great expense, because the rulers, claiming to rule the whole of China, felt bound to display more magnificence than the rulers of the southern dynasties.
They had also to reward the nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu in the north for their military aid, not only with cessions of land but with payments of money. Finaly, they would not disarm but maintained great armies for the continual fighting against the southern states. The Wei dynasty did not succeed, however, in closely subordinating the various army commanders to the central government. Thus the commanders, in colusion with groups of the
gentry, were able to enrich themselves and to secure regional power. The inadequate strength of the central
government of Wei was further undermined by the rivalries among the dominant gentry. The imperial family
(Ts'ao Pei, who reigned from 220 to 226, had taken as emperor the name of Wen Ti) was descended from one
of the groups of great landowners that had formed in the later Han period. The nucleus of that group was a family named Ts'ui, of which there is mention from the Han period onward and which maintained its power down to the
tenth century; but it remained in the background and at first held entirely aloof from direct intervention in high policy. Another family belonging to this group was the Hsia-hou family which was closely united to the family of Wen Ti by adoption; and very soon there was also the Ss[)u]-ma family. Quite naturaly Wen Ti, as soon as he
came into power, made provision for the members of these powerful families, for only thanks to their support
had he been able to ascend the throne and to maintain his hold on the throne. Thus we find many members of the Hsia-hou and Ss[)u]-ma families in government positions. The Ss[)u]-ma family especialy showed great activity, and at the end of Wen Ti's reign their power had so grown that a certain Ss[)u]-ma I was in control of the
government, while the new emperor Ming Ti (227-233) was completely powerless. This virtualy sealed the fate
of the Wei dynasty, so far as the dynastic family was concerned. The next emperor was instaled and deposed by
the Ss[)u]-ma family; dissensions arose within the ruling family, leading to members of the family assassinating one another. In 264 a member of the Ss[)u]-ma family declared himself king; when he died and was succeeded
by his son Ss[)u]-ma Yen, the latter, in 265, staged a formal act of renunciation of the throne of the Wei dynasty and made himself the first ruler of the new Chin dynasty. There is nothing to gain by detailing al the intrigues that led up to this event: they al took place in the immediate environment of the court and in no way affected the
people, except that every item of expenditure, including al the bribery, had to come out of the taxes paid by the people.
With such a situation at court, with the bad economic situation in the country, and with the continual fighting against the two southern states, there could be no question of any far-reaching foreign policy. Parts of eastern Turkestan stil showed some measure of alegiance to Wei, but only because at the time it had no stronger
opponent. The Hsiung-nu beyond the frontier were suffering from a period of depression which was at the same
time a period of reconstruction. They were beginning slowly to form together with Mongol elements a new unit,
the Juan-juan, but at this time were stil politicaly inactive. The nineteen tribes within north China held more and more closely together as militarily organized nomads, but did not yet represent a military power and remained
loyal to the Wei. The only important element of trouble seems to have been furnished by the Hsien-pi tribes, who had joined with Wu-huan tribes and apparently also with vestiges of the Hsiung-nu in eastern Mongolia, and who www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11367/pg11367.html
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made numerous raids over the frontier into the Wei empire. The state of Yen, in southern Manchuria, had already been destroyed by Wei in 238 thanks to Wei's good relations with Japan. Loose diplomatic relations were
maintained with Japan in the period that folowed; in that period many elements of Chinese civilization found their way into Japan and there, together with settlers from many parts of China, helped to transform the culture of
ancient Japan.
(B) The Western Chin dynasty (A.D. 265-317)
1 Internal situation in the Chin empire
The change of dynasty in the state of Wei did not bring any turn in China's internal history. Ss[)u]-ma Yen, who as emperor was caled Wu Ti (265-289), had come to the throne with the aid of his clique and his extraordinarily large and widely ramified family. To these he had to give offices as reward. There began at court once more the same spectacle as in the past, except that princes of the new imperial family now played a greater part than under the Wei dynasty, whose ruling house had consisted of a smal family. It was now customary, in spite of the
abolition of the feudal system, for the imperial princes to receive large regions to administer, the fiscal revenues of which represented their income. The princes were not, however, to exercise ful authority in the style of the
former feudal lords: their courts were ful of imperial control officials. In the event of war it was their duty to come forward, like other governors, with an army in support of the central government. The various Chin princes succeeded, however, in making other governors, beyond the frontiers of their regions, dependent on them. Also, they colected armies of their own independently of the central government and used those armies to pursue
personal policies. The members of the families alied with the ruling house, for their part, did al they could to extend their own power. Thus the first ruler of the dynasty was tossed to and fro between the conflicting interests and was himself powerless. But though intrigue was piled on intrigue, the ruler who, of course, himself had come to the head of the state by means of intrigues, was more watchful than the rulers of the Wei dynasty had been, and by shrewd counter-measures he repeatedly succeeded in playing off one party against another, so that the
dynasty remained in power. Numerous widespread and furious risings nevertheless took place, usualy led by
princes. Thus during this period the history of the dynasty was of an extraordinarily dismal character.
In spite of this, the Chin troops succeeded in overthrowing the second southern state, that of Wu (A.D. 280),
and in so restoring the unity of the empire, the Shu Han realm having been already conquered by the Wei. After the destruction of Wu there remained no external enemy that represented a potential danger, so that a general
disarmament was decreed (280) in order to restore a healthy economic and financial situation. This disarmament applied, of course, to the troops directly under the orders of the dynasty, namely the troops of the court and the capital and the imperial troops in the provinces. Disarmament could not, however, be carried out in the princes'
regions, as the princes declared that they needed personal guards. The dismissal of the troops was accompanied by a decree ordering the surrender of arms. It may be assumed that the government proposed to mint money
with the metal of the weapons surrendered, for coin (the old coin of the Wei dynasty) had become very scarce;
as we indicated previously, money had largely been replaced by goods so that, for instance, grain and silks were used for the payment of salaries. China, from c. 200 A.D. on until the eighth century, remained in a period of such partial "natural economy".
Naturaly the decree for the surrender of weapons remained a dead-letter. The discharged soldiers kept their
weapons at first and then preferred to sel them. A large part of them was acquired by the Hsiung-nu and the
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were glad to do so, for the Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi had not the efficient administration and rigid tax colection of the Chinese; and above al, they had no great landowners who could have organized the colection of taxes.
For their part, the Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi had no reason to regret this immigration of peasants, who could provide them with the farm produce they needed. And at the same time they were receiving from them large
quantities of the most modern weapons.
This ineffective disarmament was undoubtedly the most pregnant event of the period of the western Chin
dynasty. The measure was intended to save the cost of maintaining the soldiers and to bring them back to the
land as peasants (and taxpayers); but the discharged men were not given land by the government. The
disarmament achieved nothing, not even the desired increase in the money in circulation; what did happen was
that the central government lost al practical power, while the military strength both of the dangerous princes within the country and also of the frontier people was increased. The results of these mistaken measures became evident at once and compeled the government to arm anew.
2 Effect on the frontier peoples
Four groups of frontier peoples drew more or less advantage from the demobilization law—the people of the
Toba, the Tibetans, and the Hsien-pi in the north, and the nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu within the frontiers of the empire. In the course of time al sorts of complicated relations developed among those ascending peoples as wel as between them and the Chinese.
The Toba (T'o-pa) formed a smal group in the north of the present province of Shansi, north of the city of
Tat'ungfu, and they were about to develop their smal state. They were primarily of Turkish origin, but had
absorbed many tribes of the older Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi. In considering the ethnical relationships of al
these northern peoples we must rid ourselves of our present-day notions of national unity. Among the Toba there were many Turkish tribes, but also Mongols, and probably a Tungus tribe, as wel as perhaps others whom we
cannot yet analyse. These tribes may even have spoken different languages, much as later not only Mongol but
also Turkish was spoken in the Mongol empire. The political units they formed were tribal unions, not national states.
Such a union or federation can be conceived of, structuraly, as a cone. At the top point of the cone there was the person of the ruler of the federation. He was a member of the leading family or clan of the leading tribe (the two top layers of the cone). If we speak of the Toba as of Turkish stock, we mean that according to our present knowledge, this leading tribe ( a) spoke a language belonging to the Turkish language family and ( b) exhibited a pattern of culture which belonged to the type caled above in Chapter One as "North-western Culture". The next layer of the cone represented the "inner circle of tribes", i.e. such tribes as had joined with the leading tribe at an early moment. The leading family of the leading tribe often took their wives from the leading families of the "inner tribes", and these leaders served as advisors and councilors to the leader of the federation. The next lower layer consisted of the "outer tribes", i.e. tribes which had joined the federation only later, often under strong pressure; their number was always much larger than the number of the "inner tribes", but their