Emperor Xuan of Han (91 BC–49 BC) was an emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty from 74 BC to 49 BC.
Emperor Wu ordered that all prisoners, regardless of whether they had been convicted or not and regardless of the severity of the charges, were to be executed.
Emperor Xuan's early reign was generally known for his willingness to innovate, to commission officials who were lenient on the people, and to listen to advice.
The western-eastern Han convention is used nowadays to avoid confusion with the Later Han Dynasty[?] of the Period of the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms though the earlier nomenclature was used in traditional historical texts like Si-ma Guang's Zi Zhi Tung Jian[?].
The beginning of the Han Dynasty can be dated either from 206 BC when the Qin dynasty crumbled or 202 BC when Liu Bang killed Xiang Yu, the leader of a competing rebellion that sought to re-instate the Zhou dynasty aristocracies.
Emperor Wu decided that Taoism is no longer suitable for China, and officially declared China to be a Confucian state; however, alike the emperors before him, he combined Legalist methods with the Confucian ideal.
Emperor Wudi had the obsession to be cursed by witchcraft and to be the victim of political plots of the feudal princes and their consultants ("clients" binke 賓客, "wandering knights" youxia éä¿ ).
A state as large as HanChina after the expansion to the west, south and northeast (see next chapter) lacked junior staff for the many civil offices in the capital and throughout the empire.
The time of EmperorXuandi is often compared with the peaceful and prosperous time of the Emperors Wendi and Jingdi, but the political background and the forces acting within the inner court were very different to that of the early Han period.
China's prosperity had risen under Hedi (between the years 88 to 106), and the court of Hedi had become in size and luxury equal to the courts of previous Hanemperors.
The boy was a great-great-grandchild of the emperor Zhangdi and became the emperor Lingdi.
Emperor Ling died in 188 or 189, at the age of thirty-three, while military governors were clinging to the greater independence that they had acquired during the war against the Yellow Turbans.
Han emissary countered it by stating that Chanyu Modok even engaged in patricide while Han prince rebellion was merely an argument between father and son due to instigation by prime minister.
However, Han army was informed of the invasion beforehand and thoroughly defeated the three Hunnic columns with the armies from Zhangye "tai-shou" [magistrate] and auxiliary troops from the military farming areas.
Han court also dispatched representatives to kings and county magistrates as either military officials or civil service officials, which were validated by excavations from Wulei ruins in Luntai county.
The conquest of south China was a well prepared enterprise, and the troops of the new Sui Dynasty found almost no resistance by the Chen é³, last of the Southern Dynasties (Nanchao å—æ).
The final spark that enflamed the suppressed population were the three successless campaigns against the Korean kingdom of KoguryÅ since 608 that emptied the state treasury and posed a high toll to the population that served in and for the troops.
The extreme ruthlessness of Emperor Yangdi against opponents and rebels - in some cases more than 30,000 people are said to be executed - contributed to his defamation as the typical evil last ruler of a dynasty.
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The emperor travelled around and relieved tax in the provinces he passed by and refused to accept their offerings (again "raised" by the sycophants trying to "please" the emperor).
The Han might was extended to the northern barbarians and the Chanyu of the Xiongnu came to submit as vassal states.
Exploring Chinese History :: Biographical Database :: Imperial China- (?- 1644)(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-23)
Guang Wudi Emperor of Eastern Han; 光武皇帝; Guang Wudi (January 15, 5 BCE- March 29, CE 57)- Born Liu Xiu, Emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty, restorer of the dynasty in CE 25 and thus founder of the Later Han or Eastern Han.
After assembling forces and proclaiming himself emperor in the face of competitors, he was able to defeat his rivals, destroy the peasant army of the Chimei (Red Eyebrows, 赤眉), known for their disorganization and marauding, and finally reunify the whole of China in CE 36.
The emperor devoted great personal care to the whole project, and in his instruction to the ministers told them that the code of laws should be comprehensive and intelligible, so as not to leave any loophole for lower officials to misinterpret the law through twisting its language.
China(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-23)
Revered in China during his lifetime in a way not easy for non-Chinese to understand, he was enormously influential around the world as well.
It is essentially a corridor running from the upper Yellow River in the east, along the verge between the Tibetan plateau on the one hand and the Gobi desert on the other, to the edge of the Xinjiang wastes in the west.
It formed with the encouragement of China, which needed a buffer zone between itself and the then-aggressive Tibetans, but Nan Chao soon became expansionist in it's own right, and proved to be a considerable threat to China at times.
Xuandi later grabbed the wife of Duke Xiyang-gong (Yuwen Wen) and made her into the fifth empress by killing the whole family of Yuwen Wen.
When Xuandi died at the age of 22, after being in self-abdicated reign for less than three years, Yang Jian was made 'grand leftside prime minister' for assisting the young Emperor Jingdi (Yuwen Yan, reign AD 578-581).
Emperor Taizong, rebutting the advice of his minister Wei Zheng (who cited the Hunnic ravaging of China during the late Jinn Dynasty as a result of their dwelling south of the Yellow River, Hetao area), relocated over 100,000 eastern Turks to the border areas, all the way from Shaanxi-Shanxi to today's Beijing city.
www.uglychinese.org /tang.htm (6781 words)
Emperors of China(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-23)
Each Emperor at birth [except in the Yuan Dynasty received a given name and a personal name.
After the accession of the Emperor the personal name became taboo.
After the death of an Emperor, a posthumous or temple name was used in Confucian rites.
When Mr Liang Suming (Last Confucian Of China) published an article "An Exploration Into Yuan Dynasty" in 1918 and hence was appointed lecturer of philosophy at Peking University, people would not know that Liang, a youth of 25 from Guiling, today’s Guangxi Province in Southern China, would be a Mongol in heritage.
Those people in southern China did historically claim that they were the descendants of Khitans who were dispatched to southern China by the Mongols in the 14th century.
An emissary was sent to Jurchen emperor for a ceasefire, and Jurchen emperor surrendered Wanyan Yongji's daughter (Princess Qiguo), 500 boys and girls, and 3000 horses to Genghis Khan.
I hope to be able to show that they had a consistent and in some respects distinctive legal philosophy, one that backed up the authority of the classics with cosmological theory to shift the responsibility for disorder from the people to their ruler.
In his description of the evils of Qin, the preceding dynasty, whose success in unifying China under Legalist rule had been followed by swift and spectacular collapse, the adoption and the misuse of punishment are mentioned in the same breath, implying that reliance on coercion could not be combined with fairness (13).
It was written into Han law very early in the dynasty (49) and seems to have found its chief theoretical support among Shangshu (Book of Documents) scholars, who were probably one of the first groups within the Confucian school to come to terms with the Five Forces (50).
Han, Wei, Shu, Wu, and Jin Officer, Strategist, and Ruler Biographies
I hope to one day present you with biographies for all of the rulers (written by myself or others like Jonathan Wu), but for now the basic ruler information provided will do.
- HanXuandi (Liu Bingyi), “Proclaimed Emperor”, 73 BC - 49 BC
