Cosmopolitan Tang

Week 12: The Unified Empire: Cosmopolitan Tang Historical Overview To give some historical context, our story in this third mini-course begins not in 618 when the governor of Taiyuan, Li Yuan, declared himself the emperor of the new Tang dynasty. Rather, we begin with the political reunification of China in 589 under the short-lived Sui Dynasty. The Sui's defeat of the southern dynasties put an end to the four centuries of division between north and south and between ethnically Han and non-Han peoples that followed the demise of the Han Dynasty in 220. This short period in the late sixth and early seventh centuries also sewed the seeds for the political, cultural, social, and religious trends that the early Tang rulers would bring to fruition. These included the strengthening of central, civil control over local administration and the militarized aristocracy, the economic linkage of the politically powerful north and the fertile south through the building of the Grand Canal, the attempted expansion of the empire into Southeast and Northeast Asia, and the flourishing of a Sinicized, state patronized Buddhism across the realm. But amid the military overextension and environmental pressures that sent the Sui spiraling into civil war, the northwestern military Li family emerged among its equals to subdue its domestic opponents by 618, and of equally great importance, to win by 630 hegemony of Central Asia from the Turkic tribes who had dominated it throughout the previous century. The first century and a half of the Tang saw the establishment of a new, centralized, and cosmopolitan empire. Internal political competition subsided to some extent as aristocratic families were enticed to lay down their weapons in exchange for the privilege and prestige of civil power. Tang-dominated trade was resecured along routes through Central Asia and a reorganized tax system, the equal field system, brought income and the land that produced it back under central control. Non-Chinese peoples were integrated into the empire, and the flourishing of scholarship, literature, and law that we will examine in this unit attracted envoys, pilgrims, and traders from across Asia. Expansion into new areas, however, soon taxed the Tang militia system, requiring the establishment of professional armies and reliance on frontier peoples to staff and run them. The An Lushan Rebellion of 755 to 763, headed by one such frontier military official and growing out of the political turmoil of this situation, wreaked havoc upon the dynasty, ushering in the developments we associate with later Tang, generally the period between 760 and 918. These included a breakdown in the tax and military systems supporting the dynasty and the search for solutions in terms of a reformed tax system and concessions to local military governors and ascended frontier kingdoms, such as those of the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Turks. It also included the retreat of central government from commerce and the resultant development in private enterprise as well as the search in literature and philosophy for new modes of expression in relation to self, state, society and universe. From 874 to 884, one time civil service aspirant Huang Chao led his bands of merchants, farmers, and bandits in revolt, executing the aristocratic families at the core of the state. The Tang system, long overstrained, soon collapsed, ultimately devolving into the shifting, local warlord domains that we know today as the Five Dynasties in 10 Kingdoms, which would precede the establishment of the Song Dynasty in 960. Section 1: A Great Tang, A Troubled Tang, A Cosmopolitan Tang We turn now to the Tang Dynasty. Like the Han Dynasty, which it saw as its great predecessor, the Tang Dynasty followed a short-lived dynasty before it-- in this case, the Sui-- which had done much of the work to unify north and south after a period of division and warfare. Now the Tang is seen today, I think, as one of the greatest dynasties in Chinese history. It was not untroubled. In the late 7th/early 8th century, the Empress usurped the throne and created a new dynasty with herself as Emperor, or Empress-- the only female ruler in Chinese history. 100 years later, in 755, the general on the northeastern border, An Lushan, rebelled, and the dynasty was thrown into chaos. And yet, despite that, it is seen as one of the greatest periods in Chinese history. But why? Was it the territorial expanse of the Tang-- which in some sense gives us a sense of China as the great hegemon of East Asia. Was it the centralized hierarchical order that Tang created-- a new model of a highly rational state that others could imitate? Or was it Tang as the great cosmopolitan moment in Chinese history? We might pause for a minute and think about what we understand the word cosmopolitan to mean. I think one of the things we'll see is that cosmopolitan can mean at least two things. One is to take in from the world, but at the same time, to give something back to the world. And both of those things, I think you'll see, are true of Tang. But in order to understand why it could be a great cosmopolitan country, with a centralized bureaucratic order, with a vast territorial expanse, we need to talk about the Tang system itself. Section 2: The Social-Political Order Let's begin with the socio-political order that the Tang created. And to do that, I want to begin with the imperial family itself. It was one of the great clans of the northwest. But the northwestern clans had a quality that set them apart from the other great clans. They had intermarried with the tribal peoples of the northwest. The Li family, the imperial family of Tang, was, in fact, of so-called mixed blood. They had intermarried with the Turks. In fact, the son of the founder of the dynasty, at various points, lived in the palace grounds in a yurt, trying to speak Turkish. This was true of the Sui Dynasty as well. The wife of the Sui founder had the surname of Dugu, which was a Turkish surname. Foreign clans provided generals for the military. There was not a sense of anti- foreignism at this point. For the Tang, what was foreign just meant what was still outside the imperium. And we find in the Tang period, many people from foreign countries serving as part of the Tang administration. One of the things we see in the Tang-- and this is already suggested by the fact that Empress Wu could usurp the Dynasty and get away with it for a number of years-- was the role of imperial women, or the role of women in the north and the northwest, was rather different from that in the south. In the south, the expectation had been that they would be secluded and stay at home. In the north, women were out in public, they rode horses, they played polo. And, in fact, the wife of the founder of the Sui Dynasty had said that she should be regarded as one of the two sages on the throne-- that she and her husband were ruling together, and that he might not have any children by any other person besides her. Empress Wu, the Empress of the Tang Emperor Gaozong-- her usurpation brings with it a proclamation of a new dynastic name even, the Zhou Dynasty, going back to the ancient Zhou-- although it ends with her death. One of the policies of the Tang Empire, and one of the reasons for its success, was its ability to bring the great clans into government. The great clans from the northwest, where the dynasty was founded, the northeast, the southeast, and from Sichuan. The problem though, that they faced, was how to get these clans to shift their loyalty to the dynasty, rather than seeing the dynasty and the government merely as a means to advance themselves. How were they to do this? Well, they settle on, of course-- which is the obvious solution. They make sure that these families are able to stay in government, and put their descendants in government as well. They have another problem. How do they cut the tie that links these great clans from their home bases where they dominate the locality-- sometimes whole counties dominated by a single clan. The solution is an administrative reform. They start to set a series of rules. They reorganize some of the prefectures and counties. They set in place a rule of avoidance-- this was already done in the Sui Dynasty. The rule of avoidance says, and it still operates in China today, that you may not serve as an official in a place where you have relatives. The idea was to break the great clans from local government, to give local government independence. The government takes control over appointment and rank. That is, great clans can make their children-- their male children eligible for offices, for roles in government. But they can't decide what roles they'll get. They can't pass on office to them. And finally, they make education one possible path into office. And education, at least potentially, is something that all could compete for. They have another problem which is that the great clans had prestige that was so high that they rivaled the prestige of the ruling house. The solution to this problem was to create national lists-- ranked lists of all the great clans in the Empire-- and then to adjust the ranking to reflect what people had done for the dynasty.

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