Peace should be valued in ethnic relations. Any policy of ethnic discrimination, national oppression and ethnic hatred can only bring about the decline and decline of the Chinese nation and lead to great social retrogression and destruction.
After the Eastern Han Dynasty, the nomads of the north migrated to the Central Plains and surrounding areas in batches, and mixed ethnic groups appeared in the vast area of the Yellow River Basin. These ethnic minorities who migrated inward can be roughly divided into three major ethnic groups: the Qiang, the Xiongnu, and the Donghu. The northern Xiongnu ethnic group was divided into northern and southern tribes since the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the southern Xiongnu Huhan Xidan was subordinate to the Han Dynasty, and the Eastern Han court divided the prefecture (present-day northern Shanxi and northern Shaanxi, and the Hetao area of Ningxia) as the residential area of the southern Xiongnu, and more than 5,000 tribes settled lived with the Han ethnic group, giving preferential treatment of exemption from military service. The tribal leaders of the Southern Xiongnu enjoyed the treatment of princes alone, and their descendants inherited them. The upper echelons of the Southern Xiongnu gradually accepted Han culture and changed their surname to Liu.
When Cao Cao came to power, he divided the Southern Xiongnu into five divisions, choosing the tribal leader as the capital lieutenant and the Han official as Sima. The left capital led the people to live in the area of Zishi County, the right part led the people to live in the area of Qi County, the southern part led the people to live in the Puzi area, the northern capital led the people to live in the Xinxing area, and the central capital led the people to live in the area of Tailing.
In the last years of the Cao Wei dynasty, many Xiongnu tribes moved south one after another. A total of 19 tribes have moved to the Central Plains, and they are the most powerful among the ethnic minorities. The Donghu ethnic group, which originally lived in the northeast region, was defeated by the Xiongnu in the early years of the Han Dynasty, and some tribes moved to live in the area of Wuhuan Mountain, renamed "Wuhuan" or "Karasuma", to help the Han Dynasty fight the Xiongnu. In the late Eastern Han dynasty, the warlord Yuan Shang lured Wuhuan to fight for him, but was defeated by Cao Cao. Cao Cao moved Wuhuan to the hinterland, and the Wuhuan accepted Han culture. Renamed Huan.
Other Donghu tribes also gradually moved inward, scattered in the vast area north of the Yellow River, the most powerful of which were the Xianbei tribes, including the Murong clan living in the Liao River Valley, the Qifu clan in the Ganliang region, the Bald clan in the Hexi region, the Tuoba clan in the northern Jinbei region, the Yujiulu clan (later renamed Rouran) in the former Xiongnu activity area, and so on.
The Qiang people, who originally lived in the present-day Qinghai and Xinjiang regions, have a very long history of exchanges with the Han people. After the fall of the Han Dynasty, many Qiang tribes gradually moved inward and scattered in today's western Sichuan and Longxi regions. Many Qiang tribes accepted Han culture, changed their surnames to Han people, and engaged in agricultural production.
From the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the turn of the Wei and Jin dynasties, the Central Plains was frequently in turmoil, and all kinds of Han warlords brutally oppressed the people of various ethnic minorities who moved inward, driving ethnic minorities to fight for them, and many ambitious ethnic minority leaders also tried to mix the water and expand their own power, and then imitate the Han rule. Reign supreme. In particular, many ethnic minorities who have migrated inward are transitioning to class society at the end of primitive society, and social differentiation has intensified after internal migration. The lower classes of the tribe were bullied and oppressed by the upper aristocracy of the tribe and the powerful Han landlords, or they were displaced, or they took risks.
Social contradictions in the Yellow River Basin are becoming increasingly complex, and ethnic relations are becoming increasingly tense. Faced with such a situation, the countermeasure proposed by the Wei-Jin rulers was to incite the roots of national hatred and transfer the crisis of rule. In the late years of Cao Wei, the famous general Deng Ai was punctual, and suggested to Sima Shi, who was in charge at the time: "Rong Qiu beast heart, do not be righteous." Strong is violent, weak is attached, and it needs to be guarded against. "The Xiongnu who have moved inward should be divided and ruled so that they are not connected, and the Qiang ethnic groups who have mixed with the Han should also be screened and separated, so as to prevent the customs of ethnic minorities from destroying the rituals and religion of the Han people." His suggestions were deeply appreciated by Sima Shi and were adopted.
Soon after the Jin army pacified Jiangnan, Shi Guoqin, the attendant Shi Guoqin, suggested to Emperor Wudi of Jin: this proposal was not approved by Emperor Wudi of Jin.
Guo Soft's suggestion was made directly to the emperor, and not many people knew about it. In the ninth year of Yuan Kang of the Western Jin Dynasty (299), the then Shanyin Ling Jiang Tong publicly wrote to the imperial court, and his "Theory of Migration" was a sensation, appreciated by many people in the ruling class, and had a long-term impact on future generations. The "Theory of Migration" claims that China has been ruled by the Han Imperial Dynasty since ancient times, and that various ethnic minorities obeyed the emperor's orders to guard the frontiers. The "Rong Di" ethnic groups in the north were the most cunning, "weak is fearful, strong is rebellion" Shang Gaozong, King Wen of Zhou, Han Gaoxiang, Emperor Wen of Han and other wise kings could not make them good and tame, and could not have the illusion of educating or living peacefully with them. At present, all ethnic minorities live in the Yellow River Valley, and "if they are not of our ethnic group, their hearts will be different," and they are bound to cause trouble. As a precaution, he suggested that forced use of force to "move ethnic minorities back to their hometowns outside Serbia."
Although the "Treatise on Migration and Self" was appreciated by many people in the government and the public, at that time, the Western Jin Dynasty had already experienced unprecedented internal strife in the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings", and it was impossible to fully implement this policy, and there were already wars in the border areas in which ethnic minority leaders rose up against the Jin Dynasty. Just one year before Jiang Tong's letter, a Di tribe in the Guanzhong region, unable to endure the oppression of Han landlords and years of famine, went to Shu County to seek food in defiance of the ban of the official government, and a large number of hungry people of different nationalities also followed the Li Te people to Shu.
In order to realize his personal ambitions, Zhao Liao, who wanted to divide Yizhou, first joined the Longlu Lite brothers, hoping to use their appeal to turn these more than 100,000 displaced people into his private armed forces. When his plot was revealed, he suppressed it by force, killing Li Ite's younger brother Li Itch. Li Te and another brother, Li Liu, led the displaced people to raise troops and kill Zhao Liao. The Western Jin court sent the new Yizhou assassin Luoshang to Chengdu to announce a pardon for the Li Te brothers, but according to the claim of the Migration Theory, forced the displaced people to leave Yizhou by July of that year.
On behalf of the displaced people, Li Te asked to leave with grain after the autumn harvest, but Luo Shang refused to allow it and sent an army to drive the displaced people. The displaced people could not bear it anymore, and elected Li Te as the "general of Zhenbei" and attacked Chengdu. This war was fought for several years. Li Te and his subordinates agreed on three chapters of the law, strict military discipline. And Luo Shang was greedy, and the people of Yizhou sang a ballad: "Li Te is acceptable, Luo Shang kills me." Later, Li Te and Li Liu were killed in battle, and their nephew Li Xiong led his people to occupy the entire Yizhou region and proclaimed himself the King of Chengdu. This local regime, established by the leaders of the Di ethnic group, later changed the name of the country to "Han" and became known as Cheng Han, and occupied parts of present-day Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou for more than 40 years.
Li Te, the leader of the Yi ethnic group, led a crowd of troops to warn the Western Jin rulers of the bankruptcy of the policy of excluding and oppressing ethnic minorities who moved inward, and was a signal that the ethnic minorities in the interior relocated rose up against the Jin Dynasty when the rule of the Jin Dynasty was in great turmoil. In the same year (304) that Li Xiong became king, the Xiongnu leader Liu Yuan also rebelled against the Jin Dynasty in Liishi (present-day Shanxi).
Like the Li Te brothers, Liu Yuan was an ethnic minority leader who embraced Han culture. He was a descendant of the Xiongnu Munton Shan Yu, and because Han Gaozu had been brothers to Hou Dun, his descendants all changed their surnames to Liu after moving in. Liu Yuan's family lived in Jinyang for several generations, he studied Confucianism since he was a child, was proficient in the "Legend of the Spring and Autumn Zuo Clan", served in the Central Plains court for a long time in his youth, and was appointed as the northern capital of the Xiongnu during the Western Jin Dynasty, which was deeply popular with the people.
Liu Yuan was more politically savvy than the Jin rulers and was not influenced by the policy of national hatred advocated by the Jin rulers. When the army was raised, some Xiongnu leaders advocated: The Jin Dynasty treated us as slaves, and we started the army to restore the great cause of Huhan and Xie Dan Yu. Liu Yuan, on the other hand, said: Destroying the Jin Dynasty is as easy as destroying the withering and decaying, but it is not easy to win the support of the Han people. The kindness of the Han Dynasty was long ago, and Liu Bei was able to compete with the Central Plains with the land of Yizhou and one state. We are brothers of the Han Dynasty, and rebuilding the Han Dynasty will give us the support of the Han people. With this in mind, he named the country "Han", honored the Han emperor as his ancestor, and tried to implement a policy of national reconciliation.
Unfortunately, his subordinates could not understand his intentions, and on the contrary, most of the generals were capable of killing and persecuting the Han people. His Pingjin general Liu Jing attacked Luoyang, and after defeating the Jin army in Yanjin, he slaughtered more than 30,000 innocent Han people at one time, and everywhere he went, there were ruins.
After Liu Yuan's death, his son Liu Cong ascended the throne, and although he was well-versed in history and civilized and martial, he was extremely cruel, and he gave up the policy of winning the support of the Han people and replaced it with a policy of ethnic vendetta and national oppression. After capturing Luoyang, the column burned and looted, and beheaded the remaining Jin officials. In the war, victory was slaughtered by the city, and defeat was driven by the Han people to move to their capital, the Pingyang area. Liu Cong promoted the "Hu-Han Division", in which the Han people were under the control of the left and right divisions in the Hezhou region under his rule, while the Xiongnu and other ethnic minorities set up the Xiongnu alone under the left and right auxiliaries.
After Liu Cong's brother Liu Yao became emperor, he further implemented the policy of national oppression, changed the name of the country to "Zhao" (historically known as Former Zhao), no longer respected the Han emperor as his ancestor, appointed his son as Da Dan Yu, and changed the titles of officials at all levels to Xiongnu chieftains, all of which were appointed by ethnic minorities, and Han people could only be ruled.
The separatist regime, established by the Xiongnu, existed for more than 20 years before it was wiped out by another ethnic minority regime called "Zhao", Shi Le of the Qiang ethnic group, the founder of the Zhao state (historically known as Later Zhao), who was born into a family of small Kami chiefs who settled in Dangwu Township, Hezhou, due to class division. When Scheller was a teenager. His family was already extremely poor, and he had to work as a "field guest" for others to make a living.
In the early years of the Western Jin Dynasty, natural disasters and man-made disasters struck the Shangdang region, and Shi Le and some young people of the Qiang ethnic group went out to the wilderness and were hunted by officials of the Jin Dynasty as fugitive slaves, and they were finally able to escape. When he was cornered, he was received by a conscientious Jin Dynasty official, Guo Jing. Shi Le was grateful, so he offered advice to Guo Jing: Now that the famine is serious and the Qiang people have nothing to live on, you can persuade the Qiang people to go to Jizhou to escape the famine, and then sell the young adults of the Qiang ethnic group to the locals as slaves when they get there, you can get a slave value, and the Qiang people can also get a way to live.
Although Guo Jing was moved when he heard this, he was a humble official and could not do this. Soon, the Jin Dynasty's Jin Dynasty's Emperor Sima Teng, the King of New Cai, really began to implement a whole set of ethnic persecution or tactics on a large scale. Sima Teng ordered a search for young people of the Qiang tribe in Hezhou, put on a wooden yoke for every two people, and escorted to Jizhou to be sold into slavery. Shi Le was also among them, and was sold to a family in Qiping (present-day Shandong) in Jizhou to work as a slave. Fortunately, the master saw that he had a peculiar appearance, brave and powerful, and was very appealing among the slaves, and was afraid that he would lead the trouble, so he let him go, and Shi Le was good at Soma and was hired by a local tycoon Kisang to herd horses. In the last years of the Western Jin Dynasty, the kings fought in chaos, and Jizhou became a battlefield, and Shi Le gathered 18 accomplices to take advantage of the chaos to steal and share the loot. Later, when Kisang rebelled against the Jin Dynasty, Shi Le became the vanguard, first attacking the city of Ye, which was entrenched by Sima Teng the King of New Cai, killing Sima Teng and burning the city to the ground.
Scheller's experience was only a microcosm of the suffering of the poor ethnic minority people at that time. From his encounters, we can see the cruel oppression of the ethnic minority people by the rulers and landlords of the Western Jin Dynasty, and under the historical conditions at that time, this oppression contributed to the extreme hatred of the ethnic minority people towards the Han ruling class and even the Han people. Shi Le rebelled against Jin officials out of this hatred, and his army was extremely destructive and combative. After Kisang's death, Shi Le first defected to Liu Yuan, but soon established himself and divided Jizhou.
When Liu Yao became known as Zhao in 319, Shi Le also proclaimed himself the Prince of Zhao in the same year and established the capital Xiangguo. Shi Le did not read words, but liked to hear people read books such as "Zuo Chuan" and "Shiji", and proclaimed: If I meet Han Gaozu, I should bow down and fight the world for Han Gaozu together with Han Xin, Peng Yue and others; If you meet Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty, you can fight with him for the world in the Central Plains, and I don't know who killed the deer. The eldest husband should do things in an honest manner, and cannot bully orphans and widows like Cao Cao and Sima Yi's father and son. Shi Le hated high-ranking officials of the Jin Dynasty, but knew how to appoint lower-class Han readers to advise him, much more clever than Liu Yao, who completely rejected Han Chinese.
Soon after he set up his own portal, he organized Han readers as the "Gentleman's Camp", in charge of bookkeeping, and also appointed Han reader Zhang Bin as the main adviser. Therefore, Shi Le's forces later prevailed, and finally conquered Former Zhao, basically unifying the north. However, Later Zhao was still a regime that pursued a policy of national oppression, and Shi Le stipulated that the Qiang people were "national people" and rulers; Although Han people can be officials, they can only be petty officials and staff officers, and cannot be independent chief officials. It is forbidden to say the word "hu", and even "hu cake" must be called "hemp cake". It's just that he himself is relatively tolerant of Han officials.
Once, when a drunken officer rode into the palace, Shi Le was furious and brought the gatekeeper to ask about the crime, and the gatekeeper, who was a Han man, said in panic: Just now a "drunken beard" rushed in, and he didn't understand when talking to him. Shi Le smiled and said, "Hu Ren is struggling to speak. Shi Le appointed Fan Tan, a Han national, to join the army, and once summoned Fan Tan, and when he saw that Fan Tan's clothes were tattered, he asked why. Fan Tan forgot his taboo for a while, saying: Not long ago, he was robbed by a group of unscrupulous thieves, and his family wealth was wiped out.
Shi Le smiled and said: "The karmic thieves" are so cruel, I will compensate for them. Only then did Fan Tan find out that he had lost his mouth, and quickly kowtowed to plead guilty. Scheller said: My law is only for laymen, and has nothing to do with your old gentleman. He then rewarded Fan Tan with a large amount of treasure.
Scheller claimed that the emperor died of illness shortly after the emperor. His sons and nephews fought for the throne, and the final victor was Shi Le's nephew Shi Hu. Shi Hu came from a military background. After ascending the throne, he blindly believed in force and used military force. Once sent an army of 180,000 on a safari, he stood on a high place to watch, and said triumphantly: My father and son have such an army, and I am afraid that the sky will fall apart! They think that no matter how perverse they are, they will not be punished.
Attacked the Liang Kingdom in the west, conquered the Eastern Jin Dynasty in the south, and Former Yan in the Northern Expedition: he moved the capital to Yecheng, built a large number of civil works, recruited hundreds of thousands of people to build palaces for him, recruited more than 30,000 beautiful women aged 13 to 20 in the people to fill the harem, broke up countless families, and forced countless good people to death. In order to suppress dissent, special "private opinions" and "even language" laws were set up to intimidate subjects. Such tyrannical rule lasted for 15 years until Shi Hu fell ill and died. A brutal war broke out between Shi Hu's sons and nephews for the imperial throne, and Shi Hu's adopted son Ran Min, who had a heavy army, took the opportunity to seize the throne.
Ran Min was originally a Han Chinese from Huang (present-day Henan) in Wei County, and his father was adopted by Shi Le as an adopted son at the age of 12 and changed his surname to Shi. Ran Min showed outstanding military talent when he was a teenager and soon became Shi Hu's favorite general. After seizing the imperial throne, Ran Min changed the name of the state to "Great Wei" and restored his surname Ran, which was historically known as Ran Wei. Ran Min slaughtered the descendants of the Shi clan, and fearing that the Qiang and other ethnic minorities would rebel, he followed the methods of the rulers of the Western Jin Dynasty and gained support by inciting hatred of the Han against the ethnic minorities.
He first ordered that all ethnic minorities with weapons be killed. The ethnic minorities of Yecheng had long been terrified when they saw that the Han people had become emperors, and when they heard about this decree, they absconded out of the city. Ran Min ordered the gates of the city to be opened, and Yibu: Those who are with me enter the city, and those who do not have a heart with me go out of the city. Han people within a hundred miles have entered the city, while ethnic minorities in the city have left the city. Seeing that only the Han people supported him, Ran Min ordered a massacre of the ethnic minorities, and where the Han people could kill a "Hu man", the first rank was sent to the Fengyang Gate, the civil official was promoted to the 3rd rank, the military attache was the captain of the Yamen, and the people were given knights.
Ran Min also personally led the guards everywhere to search for ethnic minorities. Tens of thousands of ethnic minorities were killed in Yecheng that day, more than 200,000 ethnic minorities in the Central Plains were slaughtered within a few days, and some Han people were mistakenly killed just because their noses grew higher and their beards grew denser.
Ran Min sent an army of 300,000 to attack the old nest of the Later Zhao regime of the Shi clan, and notified the Eastern Jin Dynasty, asking the Eastern Jin Dynasty to send troops to "destroy Hu", but the Eastern Jin regime ignored it. Ran Min's policy of ethnic vendetta forced the people of various ethnic minorities who had lived in the interior for a long time to flee to the frontiers, and the ethnic minorities joined forces to resist Ran Wei's attack. Although Ran Min completely eliminated the remnants of the Shi regime of the Qiang clan after repeated bitter battles, he was defeated by Former Yan of the Xianbei clan, and Ran Min was captured and killed, and this regime that began by inciting ethnic vendetta existed for only 3 years before dying.
However, Ran Min's policy of ethnic vendetta forced a large number of ethnic minorities who had already settled in the interior to flee to Serbia, and the Han people who originally lived in the border areas moved to the interior to escape the retaliation of ethnic minorities. Displaced people flooded the roads, starved and cold, and corpses were strewn with devastation. For more than 60 years, from the unification of the Western Jin Dynasty to the demise of the Ran Wei Dynasty, the Han people in the Yellow River Basin and the ethnic minorities who migrated inward suffered unprecedented suffering, and the economic center of China at that time was also greatly damaged.
In ancient historical books, ancient historians blamed all this suffering and destruction on the ethnic minorities who migrated inward, the so-called "five hu", namely: Xiongnu, Xiang, Xianbei, Di, and Qiang, this period of history is called "five hu chaohua". The vast majority of ancient thinkers praised Jiang Tong's "Theory of Migration", believing that the failure of the Jin rulers to accept Jiang Tong's advice was the main reason for the demise of the Western Jin Dynasty. This view reflects the prejudice of Han chauvinism and the "orthodoxy" of feudal historiography that promotes ethnic discrimination.
From our above narrative, it is not difficult to find out who the real culprit is. The policy of national oppression and hatred pursued by the Western Jin Dynasty and the Former Zhao, Later Zhao and Ran Wei regimes was an important cause of this suffering and destruction. The development and growth of the Chinese nation has always depended on the exchanges and integration of various ethnic groups, and the Han nationality itself was formed by integrating the pre-Qin Xia ethnic group and the northern and southern ethnic groups. Originally, since the Eastern Han Dynasty, the internal migration of various ethnic minorities has created an opportunity for the integration of various ethnic groups in the north, and the ethnic minority people have learned advanced farming technology from the Han people, and the Han people have learned animal husbandry technology from the ethnic minority people.
However, the Wei and Jin rulers implemented a whole set of national oppression policies, economically enslaved various ethnic minorities who moved inward, and Han landlords wantonly oppressed "Hu Nu", "Hu Wu" and "Hu Tong", and the suffering like Shi Le was a fate that the poor people of the lower ethnic minorities at that time could not escape.
Some ethnic minority leaders were also enslaved by Han royalty and nobility, such as Yao Fu, the tribal leader of the Qiang people, who had long herded horses for Emperor Wu of Jin. Politically, the Wei and Jin rulers tried to control the ethnic minorities who migrated inward, tried in every possible way to monitor them, demanded hostages from the leaders of ethnic minority tribes, and often drove ethnic minority people to war, to attack political enemies and suppress dissidents for them, and used this ethnic group to fight against other ethnic groups, vainly hoping that all ethnic minorities would kill each other, and even planned to drive all ethnic minorities who moved internally to Serbia.
Culturally, the Han rulers regarded the ethnic minorities as barbarians and beasts, believing that Hu customs would destroy the Han traditions of ritual and religion, and tried in every possible way to isolate the interaction between the various ethnic groups. This policy of ethnic persecution will inevitably cause resistance from the ethnic minority people, and some ethnic minority aristocratic leaders also intend to promote ethnic hatred, overthrow the Western Jin Dynasty on the basis of hatred and oppression of the Han people, and establish their own rule. As a result, ethnic contradictions have intensified. Class contradictions were covered up by ethnic contradictions, and various social contradictions were expressed in the form of ethnic conflict struggles, making the ethnic contradictions and conflicts in this period particularly fierce and cruel, resulting in an unprecedented national tragedy in Chinese history. What a painful lesson in history!
In addition, an analysis of the so-called "migration" policy alone shows that this policy is both barbaric and devoid of any practical feasibility. To drive the millions of ethnic minority people who have been moving inward for several years or hundreds of years and have settled for two or three generations to Serbia, hundreds of miles away, even if they have not encountered strong armed resistance, it is still necessary to mobilize a considerable amount of troops and materials and build many roads. Moreover, after ethnic minorities move out, millions of Han residents will move in from other areas. It was unimaginable for the rulers of the time to bear such a price. Because of this, the Wei and Jin rulers did not adopt the advice of "Yu Rong".