The First Empires 29
other religious accoutrements such as incense, made their way to China
by both land and sea.
Han Wudi was the most consequential Han emperor for a number
of other reasons besides his economic and military success. He greatly
strengthened the power of the emperor by eliminating threats to the
throne from imperial in-laws, eunuchs, and Confucian scholar-advisors.
He raised state revenues very substantially by establishing central-gov-
ernment-run monopolies on the production of salt, iron, copper, bronze,
and alcohol. Although he acted like a Legalist emperor in many ways, he
also narrowed the curriculum of the state academy to teach prospective
offi cials by focusing on the doctrines of the Confucian school, and he
did more than any other emperor to establish Confucianism as a state-
sponsored doctrine. He removed some regional overlords, curtailed the
power and infl uence of many aristocratic families, recruited offi cials
from humble backgrounds, and instituted examinations for offi cials in
the Confucian classics.
From the reign of Han Wudi onward, Chinese emperors came to be
seen not only as the military commander-in-chief but also as the cultural
leader of the empire and its foremost patron of the arts and scholarship.
It was especially on this basis that the emperor demanded and received
the support, loyalty, and service of China’s educated elite. Thus emper-
orship came to be identifi ed with the arts and values of Chinese civiliza-
tion, in self-conscious contrast with (and despite constant borrowing
from) the nomadic cultures on China’s borders.
The most infl uential scholar of the Han era, in subsequent periods if
not in his own time, was Sima Qian, a court historian under Han Wudi.
When Sima defended a Han general unfairly accused of treason, he was
sentenced to death or castration for the crime of insulting the emperor.
Everyone expected Sima Qian to take his own life, as castration was
seen as the ultimate humiliation, which would send one to the under-
world in a maimed condition. He agonized over his decision, and in the
end he decided to accept the pain and humiliation of castration and to
live on in order to complete his beloved history, as he later explained in
a letter to his friend Ren An:
When I have completed this work, I shall deposit it in the Mountain of
Fame, so that it can be handed down to men who will understand it,
and penetrate to the villages and great cities. Then, although I should
suffer death from ten thousand cuts, what regrets should I have?^3All the dynastic histories from the Han dynasty up to the twentieth
century have been modeled after Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand