After Qin Shi Huang completed the great cause of annexing the Six Kingdoms, China officially entered a unified feudal society. The Qin Dynasty was established in 221 BC to its demise in 207 BC, and it took 15 years to complete the full count. The great unified dynasty after the Qin Dynasty did not exceed 300 years except for the 407 years of the Han Dynasty, and there was a new dynasty established by Wang Mang for 14 years in the middle of the Han Dynasty, a total of 319 years in the two Song Dynasties, but the Southern Song Dynasty was partial to half a wall, and the Northern Song Dynasty did not recover youyun Sixteen Prefectures and other places ruled by the Central Plains Dynasty since ancient times, and coexisted with ethnic minority regimes such as Khitan, Dangxiang, and Jurchen for a long time, so I personally think that the Northern Song Dynasty is not a great unified dynasty.
Why didn't China's great unified dynasty break the curse of 300 years of destruction? I also read very relevant articles when writing this article, summarizing the following points:
1. The laws of history
The great unified dynasty of ancient China will certainly go through the initial period, the development period, the peak period, the decline period, and the demise period. In the early days, the emperor was generally shrewd and capable, there were many capable people under his hands, most of the world would be submissive, and the prototype of such a powerful dynasty in the future had already been initially formed; the dynasty founded the subsequent kings who would find ways to consolidate their rule, and no emperor wanted his family's world to be buried in his hands, and generally would exert great efforts to govern, carry out some social reforms, and the dynasty gradually became stronger; in its heyday, the Central Plains Dynasty already belonged to the dynasty of all nations, surrounded by its own little brothers. And the monarchs in the heyday often ignore or cannot shake many fuses that promote the demise of the dynasty, such as taxes, heirs, harems, foreign wars, etc., so that with the gradual accumulation of contradictions, there will eventually be an outbreak day; once the dynasty goes into decline, the lord of moderation cannot be restored to the heyday, or slowly reform for too long to resolve the contradiction, or rush to touch the interests of the majority, and even the emperor ignores government affairs, and the officials force the people to rebel As soon as the contradictions accumulated during the period of decline broke out, or with peasant revolts or foreign invasions, the decaying dynasties could not withstand these shocks and perished.
2. The problem of land annexation cannot be completely improved
The issue of land annexation has not been completely resolved since the Spring and Autumn Period until the fall of the feudal dynasty. At first, the land annexation brought about by the war was actually not serious, until it developed into a long war of annihilation in the Warring States period, and the land in the hands of the people could not solve their own food and clothing, and could only sell the land to work for the families with more land, so that the people without land became poorer and poorer, and those who had land developed into rich peasants and became landlords. Land annexation is one of the most significant problems in the decline of a late dynasty, if the most grass-roots people have no grain to eat and no land to plant, there will be resentment boiling over, most of the peasant uprisings in history are related to land annexation, such as the most famous Wang Xiaobo is rich and poor, Fang La uprising. The feudal dynasty can not break the curse of three hundred years, it can be said that the land annexation problem will slowly accumulate and erupt in about three hundred years, and eventually usher in a reshuffle and enter the next cycle.
(3) The reform was incomplete or contrary to the interests of the nobility
Reforms can make a country strong (such as the Martingale Transformation Law), and failed reforms can accelerate a country's demise (such as the Penghu Reform Law). Generally, the gradual rise of national strength in the early dynasties and some reforms will have positive development, while whether a country carries out reforms in a period of decline will often not have a good distribution of benefits. Vested interest groups will not give up interests, resulting in social conflicts that cannot be reconciled. However, the original intention of the rulers to change the law and reform was good, they wanted to make the country rich and strong, and the people could live and work in peace and contentment, but because the aristocratic class did not want to be touched by interests, it led to failure. Although Wang Anshi's white hair eventually failed, he also accumulated a lot of wealth for the Northern Song Dynasty. If Wang Anshi's change of law could guarantee the interests of the nobility a little, perhaps the change of law would not fail miserably.
4, Tianzi Ning has a kind of yay?
Chen Sheng once said, "The prince will have a kind of xiangning? It is precisely because this sentence contains the spirit of resistance and struggle that the people at the bottom dare to struggle against the feudal dynasty. If the people were merely providing taxes to the ruling clique, there might have been several great unified dynasties that had not been cut off for more than 300 years.