states, no single state had much power. Th us, they joined into a
series of continuously shift ing alliances as a way of defending
themselves from the northern barbarians.
Th e name of the second phase of the Eastern Zhou, the
Warring States Period, gives a clear indication of the nature
of Chinese life during this time. Many of the military and
political alliances that had been forged during the Spring and
Autumn Period fell apart. China descended into considerable
chaos as various states tried to fi ll the power vacuum and ab-
sorb other states, and the Zhou emperor ruled in name only.
Warfare between states was nearly constant. By the end of the
period, instead of hundreds of city-states, the number was
eight or nine, with each vying to gain control of all of China.
Th e nature of warfare changed dramatically during this pe-
riod. Earlier, war had been conducted in feudal fashion, with
aristocratic nobles each leading his own small army. During
the Warring States Period armies became much larger and
were made up of professional warriors.
It was during the brief, but ruthless Qin Dynasty that
China’s kingdoms merged for the fi rst time into an imperial
nation. Th e Qin emperors, who ruled from 221 to 207 b.c.e.,
confi scated all weapons, including those of the nobles who had
fought during the Warring States Period. Th is step was taken
to prevent uprisings. Th e Qin rulers also expanded China’s
borders by going to war against the northern barbarians. Dur-
ing the Warring States Period nobles had built walls and for-
tifi cations to defend their realms. Th e Qin emperors ordered
that all these walls be linked to form China’s fi rst great wall to
keep out foreign invaders. (Th e Great Wall of China familiar
to tourists was built much later, under the Ming Dynasty.)
Despite the eff orts of the Qin rulers to quell dissent
and rebellion, they were unsuccessful. Near the end of the
dynasty the nobles began to reassert their power. Peasants,
prisoners, and soldiers rebelled. Th e result was the overthrow
of the Qin Dynasty and the creation of the Han Dynasty,
which ruled until 220 c.e. Th e Han Dynasty, however, began
with an interregnum period from 206 to 202 b.c.e. called the
period of Chu-Han Contention. During this period, in the
vacuum created by the overthrow of the Qin Dynasty, two
factions emerged that went to war to determine which would
lead the kingdom. One faction was the Han people; the other
was the Chu. Th ese factions were led by the nobles who had
been stripped of their power during the Qin Dynasty. Th e
numerous battles these two sides fought—the battles of Julu,
Pengcheng, Lingbi, and Xi River, for example—became part
of the cultural identity of the Chinese and are still depicted
in Chinese movies, television shows, and even board games.
Th e power struggle was fi erce; at times the warring armies
were as large as half a million men. Aft er the tide shift ed back
and forth several times, the Han, led by Liu Pang (r. 206–195
b.c.e.), emerged victorious and created the Han Dynasty.
Th e Han Dynasty tried to scale back the level of warfare.
To the north the rulers paid tribute to the Xiongnu and tried
to buy peace through intermarriage. Th e dynasty also tried to
appease other neighboring nomads, which continued to be athreat. At the same time, the Han Dynasty used its superior
military force to extend its borders into the regions of present-
day Vietnam and Korea. Th e military also functioned to keep
open the Silk Road, the trading route that eventually extended
westward all the way to Rome. In 154 b.c.e. the military had to
put down the Rebellion of the Seven States, led by several mi-
nor princes who objected to the Han Dynasty’s eff orts to cen-
tralize the government. Th e rebellion was marked by initial
ferocious fi ghting, but in the end it lasted only three months.
Less than three decades later the Han Dynasty concluded
that its treaties with the Xiongnu were ineff ective and costly.
In 129 b.c.e. a force of 40,000 Chinese cavalry attacked. War-
fare persisted intermittently until 119 b.c.e., when a Chinese
force of 100,000 cavalry and 200,000 foot soldiers drove the
Xiongnu into the Gobi Desert. Th e campaign, while success-
ful, was costly; the Chinese took 140,000 horses into the des-
ert, but fewer than 30,000 returned. Th e Xiongnu, however,
just would not go away. In the fi rst century of the Common
Era, China dispatched one of its most famous generals, Pan
Ch’ao (31–101 c.e.), to subdue them and drive them out of the
Tarim Basin to China’s west. In 97 c.e. he commanded an
army of 70,000 men to drive them even farther west; he went
as far as the Caspian Sea, where he struck an alliance with the
Parthian Empire. Despite all of China’s successes against the
Xiongnu, in 311 c.e., 100 years aft er the end of the Han Dy-
nasty, the Xiongnu sacked Luoyang, the capital of the Han.
One of the last military actions of the Han Dynasty was
the suppression of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, sometimes
called the Yellow Scarves Rebellion. Th e rebellion took place
in 184 and was led by Daoist peasants who objected to the re-
gime’s decision to make China a Confucian rather than a Dao-
ist state. Despite fi elding an army of 360,000, the rebels were
unsuccessful and were put down in 185. Fighting erupted again
in 186, 188, and 192, when the rebellion was fi nally ended.
For many historians, the Yellow Turban Rebellion, so
called because of the yellow headscarves the rebels wore, was
the unoffi cial start of the Th ree Kingdoms Period (220–263
b.c.e.) that followed the Han Dynasty. Again, China was
wracked by instability. Th e “three kingdoms” were those of
Wei, Shu, and Wu, though they were not really kingdoms but
regions whose emperors each claimed to be the legitimate
heir to the Han Dynasty. Th e period was marked by a great
deal of infi ghting, which eventually led to the defeat of the
Shu by the Wei. Th e Wei, in turn, were then defeated by an
alliance of the Wu and the Jin Dynasty (265–420 c.e.). Th e
period was extremely bloody, with a large percentage of the
population killed during the wars that raged from about 190
to 280. On the heels of these civil wars came the War of the
Eight Princes (also called the Rebellion of the Eight Kings or
Rebellion of the Eight Princes), another period of civil war
from 291 to 306 c.e. Th e rebellion was centered in northern
China. Again, it led to huge population losses, which greatly
reduced the power of the Jin Dynasty. Th e dynasty itself was
rent by divisions, leading to the creation of the Western Jin
Dynasty (265–316 c.e.) and the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420war and conquest: Asia and the Pacific 11370895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1137 1137 10/10/07 2:31:12 PM