A History of China - Wolfram Eberhard

All these struggles raged round the capital, for each of the princes wanted to secure full power and to become emperor. Thus the border regions remained relatively undisturbed. Their population suffered much less from the warfare than the unfortunate people in the neighbourhood of the central government. For this reason there took place a mass migration of Chinese from the centre of the empire to its periphery. This process, together with the shifting of the frontier peoples, is one of the most important events of that epoch. A great number of Chinese migrated especially into the present province of Kansu, where a governor who had originally been sent there to fight the Hsien-pi had created a sort of paradise by his good administration and maintenance of peace. The territory ruled by this Chinese, first as governor and then in increasing independence, was surrounded by Hsien-pi, Tibetans, and other peoples, but thanks to the great immigration of Chinese and to its situation on the main caravan route to Turkestan, it was able to hold its own, to expand, and to become prosperous.

Other groups of Chinese peasants migrated southward into the territories of the former state of Wu. A Chinese prince of the house of the Chin was ruling there, in the present Nanking. His purpose was to organize that territory, and then to intervene in the struggles of the other princes. We shall meet him again at the beginning of the Hun rule over North China in 317, as founder and emperor of the first south Chinese dynasty, which was at once involved in the usual internal and external struggles. For the moment, however, the southern region was relatively at peace, and was accordingly attracting settlers.

Finally, many Chinese migrated northward, into the territories of the frontier peoples, not only of the Hsien-pi but especially of the Huns. These alien peoples, although in the official Chinese view they were still barbarians, at least maintained peace in the territories they ruled, and they left in peace the peasants and craftsmen who came to them, even while their own armies were involved in fighting inside China. Not only peasants and craftsmen came to the north but more and more educated persons. Members of families of the gentry that had suffered from the fighting, people who had lost their influence in China, were welcomed by the Huns and appointed teachers and political advisers of the Hun nobility.

5 Victory of the Huns. The Hun Han dynasty (later renamed the Earlier Chao dynasty)

With its self-confidence thus increased, the Hun council of nobles declared that in future the Huns should no longer fight now for one and now for another Chinese general or prince. They had promised loyalty to the Chinese emperor, but not to any prince. No one doubted that the Chinese emperor was a complete nonentity and no longer played any part in the struggle for power. It was evident that the murders would continue until one of the generals or princes overcame the rest and made himself emperor. Why should not the Huns have the same right? Why should not they join in this struggle for the Chinese imperial throne?

There were two arguments against this course, one of which was already out of date. The Chinese had for many centuries set down the Huns as uncultured barbarians; but the inferiority complex thus engendered in the Huns had virtually been overcome, because in the course of time their upper class had deliberately acquired a Chinese education and so ranked culturally with the Chinese. Thus the ruler Liu Yüan, for example, had enjoyed a good Chinese education and was able to read all the classical texts. The second argument was provided by the rigid conceptions of legitimacy to which the Turkish-Hunnic aristocratic society adhered. The Huns asked themselves: "Have we, as aliens, any right to become emperors and rulers in China, when we are not descended from an old Chinese family?" On this point Liu Yüan and his advisers found a good answer. They called Liu Yüan's dynasty the "Han dynasty", and so linked it with the most famous of all the Chinese dynasties, pointing to the pact which their ancestor Mao Tun had concluded five hundred years earlier with the first emperor of the Han dynasty and which had described the two states as "brethren". They further recalled the fact that the rulers of the Huns were closely related to the Chinese ruling family, because Mao Tun and his successors had married Chinese princesses. Finally, Liu Yüan's Chinese family name, Liu, had also been the family name of the rulers of the Han dynasty. Accordingly the Hun Lius came forward not as aliens but as the rightful successors in continuation of the Han dynasty, as legitimate heirs to the Chinese imperial throne on the strength of relationship and of treaties.

Thus the Hun Liu Yüan had no intention of restoring the old empire of Mao Tun, the empire of the nomads; he intended to become emperor of China, emperor of a country of farmers. In this lay the fundamental difference between the earlier Hun empire and this new one. The question whether the Huns should join in the struggle for the Chinese imperial throne was therefore decided among the Huns themselves in 304 in the affirmative, by the founding of the "Hun Han dynasty". All that remained was the practical question of how to hold out with their small army of 50,000 men if serious opposition should be offered to the "barbarians".

Meanwhile Liu Yüan provided himself with court ceremonial on the Chinese model, in a capital which, after several changes, was established at P'ing-ch'êng in southern Shansi. He attracted more and more of the Chinese gentry, who were glad to come to this still rather barbaric but well-organized court. In 309 the first attack was made on the Chinese capital, Loyang. Liu Yüan died in the following year, and in 311, under his successor Liu Ts'ung (310-318), the attack was renewed and Loyang fell. The Chin emperor, Huai Ti, was captured and kept a prisoner in P'ing-ch'êng until in 313 a conspiracy in his favour was brought to light in the Hun empire, and he and all his supporters were killed. Meanwhile the Chinese clique of the Chin dynasty had hastened to make a prince emperor in the second capital, Ch'ang-an (Min Ti, 313-316) while the princes' struggles for the throne continued. Nobody troubled about the fate of the unfortunate emperor in his capital. He received no reinforcements, so that he was helpless in face of the next attack of the Huns, and in 316 he was compelled to surrender like his predecessor. Now the Hun Han dynasty held both capitals, which meant virtually the whole of the western part of North China, and the so-called "Western Chin dynasty" thus came to its end. Its princes and generals and many of its gentry became landless and homeless and had to flee into the south.

1 The Later Chao dynasty in eastern North China (Hun; 329-352)