A History of China

by Wolfram Eberhard

Economically, 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 well 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 well. 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. Finally it was hoped to gain control over the trade to India. All these things were intended to strengthen Shu Han internally, 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 guerrilla 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 all 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 well 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 still 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 finally 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 valleys. 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 compelled 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 small, 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 called 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 small 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 small 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 ally 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 gradually 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 all the organization that implied. A capital full of officials, eunuchs, and all the satellites 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 tillage 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, especially 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 skilled 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 equally 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.

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 still gave allegiance to Wei, these, as in the past, were economically more of a burden than an asset, because they called 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 smaller 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. Finally, 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 collusion 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 naturally 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 especially 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 virtually sealed the fate of the Wei dynasty, so far as the dynastic family was concerned. The next emperor was installed 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 all the intrigues that led up to this event: they all took place in the immediate environment of the court and in no way affected the people, except that every item of expenditure, including all 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 still showed some measure of allegiance 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 still politically 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 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 followed; 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.