Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han, the first two "models" in the camp of ancient Chinese emperors, have a lot of similarities between the two, in short, "hegemony governs the world", but the evaluation of the future generations of the two is very different, Qin Shi Huang in the name of thousands of years, but also left a book burning pit Confucianism, harsh punishment, abuse of people's power of the brutal image, Emperor Wu of Han is flawed, more with wenzhi martial arts flowing for thousands of years, he northern Expedition Xiongnu, Nanping Baiyue, Dongding Korea, open up the territory and unify China, he strengthened the centralization of power and respect Confucianism, since then with The Confucian " Wang Dao", "balancing the "hegemony" of the Dharma. The different legendary images of the two "hegemonic" emperors reflect the political transformation from "Qin" to "Han", that is, how centralized power was truly established, and what kind of state structure and spiritual culture were used to implement rule. The significance of our reading of the history of the Qin and Han Dynasties lies in the fact that the results of the exploration of "building power and establishing the country" in the qin and Han empires for more than 400 years have crossed and standardized the long history of China for the next two thousand years.
one
Why did Qin Shi Huang leave a name of cruelty?
The greatest empirical evidence of Qin Shi Huang's name of cruelty was the "book burning pit Confucianism", he ordered the burning of private collections of "poems", "books" and other classics to avoid private study, and later executed more than 460 people who slandered him, including many alchemists who failed to refine the elixir for him, not all of whom were readers. In fact, similar incidents occurred in both the Song and Qing Dynasties, especially the Qing Dynasty's literal prison, which was also shocking for the length of time and the wide spread.
Qin Shi Huang was attacked by intellectuals of all dynasties for this reason, so why did he take such a brutal measure? His original intention was to unify public opinion and maintain his own authority, that is, to bring Qin's rule under the ideology based on legalist thought, and "rule of law in the world" became the foundation of the Qin system, which was not only directly inherited by the Han Dynasty, but also continued to future generations. Why did the Qin Dynasty choose the idea of the Fa? This goes back to the rise of Qin as a princely state.
The Mystery of Qin: Rediscovering Qin Shi Huang
Lee Kai-won
CITIC Publishing Group
ISBN: K827=33/95
Collection: Four floors of historical and geographical documents in Block B
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when wars between the princely states arose frequently and competed for supremacy over the world, the ancestors of the Qin State were sealed in the westernmost part of the backward region (present-day southeast of Shaanxi) for their meritorious contributions to raising horses for the Zhou royal family, located in a remote area, lacking in resources, and backward in culture, and were despised by the princes of the Central Plains as "Yidi". Mr. Qian Mu believes that the rise of Qin stems from opening up due to backwardness, introducing talents to the East, and learning from the experience of the East, but most of the talents caused by it are people from the "Han, Zhao, and Wei" three Jin regions, rather than the "Confucians" and "Mo family" of the more advanced Qilu and Lu countries, the culture of the Three Jins is dominated by the Fa, the Bing, and the Zongheng family, and the "Shang Martingale Transformation Law" that we are familiar with is essentially "governing the country by law", and the "law" at that time was "the study of criminal names", which is simply to go up to the major affairs of the country, down to the lives of the people, and everything, as long as there is a "name", it is necessary "Management", and Qin's unification of currency, writing, and weights and measures is a specific measure of "the study of criminal names".
History of the Qin and Han Dynasties
Qian Mu
Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore
ISBN: K232/3:2
The regulations of the "study of criminal names" are all-encompassing, and in order to manage the affairs of the world, it is necessary to understand the administrative bureaucrats of these laws and regulations, which is the "grammar official", they are different from the scholars and doctors of later generations, and they are essentially professional bureaucrats, but Li Si designed the arrangement of "taking the officials as teachers", that is, the "grammar officials" also need to be models and teachers of the people.
With a large camp of "grammar officials", Qin could directly send officials to various places to help the central government implement direct rule, and Qin successfully abolished the indirect rule of the "feudal system" of the Zhou Dynasty and switched to the direct rule of the "county system". The Zhou Dynasty is a model of feudalism, the so-called feudal system is that Zhou Tianzi will divide the world to the princes, the princes with their own clans to build cities, collect taxes and set up armies in the ruling jurisdiction, and Zhou Tianzi is not allowed to interfere. Qin set up counties instead, managed all the people in the country, directly collected taxes, sent labor, military service, and even abolished the privileges of the nobility, thus strengthening the centralization of power, and being able to gather the strength of the whole country to do great things.
Being able to rely on the law and grammar officials to exercise direct rule over the country and make the state apparatus operate efficiently, Qin thus destroyed the six kingdoms and unified the world, but also destroyed the country because it was running to the limit.
"Qin Brick"
Liu Sanxie
Bass | Beijing United Publishing Company
ISBN: K223.09/61
two
Who can be emperor?
The Han Dynasty from the Western Han Dynasty to the Eastern Han Dynasty, coupled with the short-lived new dynasty in the middle, the two Han Dynasties had many "famous" emperors, especially from the Western Han Dynasty to Wang Mang, and almost every emperor was trying to find ways to open a new situation to consolidate imperial power. Here we would like to remind everyone that during the Qin and Han dynasties, the legitimacy of the imperial rule was not established, and Chen Sheng wuguang shouted at the end of the Qin Dynasty that "the prince will have a kind of xiangning", which can be unveiled and overthrow the Qin Dynasty.
From Qin to Han, instead of realizing the great unification of the world under the surname Liu, he fell back to the feudal system. Han Gaozu's ancestor Liu Bang won the trust of the people under the banner of "three chapters of the law", saying that he wanted to abolish all the laws of the Qin Dynasty, but the reality was that after the founding of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Bang continued the core structure of the Qin system such as law, grammar officials, and household Qimin, which shows the beauty of propaganda and the cruelty of reality.
Qin Beng: From Qin Shi Huang to Liu Bang
ISBN: K233.07/18
Collection: Block A Chinese Library Library
In the Qin system, only "centralized power" was something that Liu Bang longed for and could not, first, the banner of the uprising was to eliminate the centralized rule of the Qin Dynasty, and it was impossible to speak without words; second, the world relied on Han Xin, Xiao He, Cao San, and many other heroes who supported the army and respected themselves, and they really did not have the strength to kill and kill as soon as they came to power. As a result, Liu Bang had to divide the meritorious men into princes with different surnames, but after that, Liu Bang and his descendants were reluctant to find a way to cut the domain, just to obtain "centralized power".
When Liu Bang reigned, almost all the kings with different surnames were cut off, and the princes with the surname of Liu were changed to their own bloodline, except for the prince, the other seven sons were crowned kings and went to other places, but for the emperor, the threat of rule from his brothers and uncles was no less than that of the kings with different surnames, so the slashing of the domain that began from the Han Jing Emperor became the infighting of the Liu family, emperor Jing took back the real power of the princes by means of chao's wrong advice, the central government sent officials to directly implement the government decrees, the princes could only collect land rent, and the rest of the authority to boil salt mining belonged to the central government. When Emperor Wu of Han arrived, he relied on the "Tui En Order" and "Huang Jin to seize the lord" and seriously weakened the local aristocratic power, almost half of the marquis became a commoner, Liu Bei's family lost his aristocratic status in the "Jin Jin to seize the lord" storm, and the "great Han Emperor" could only sell straw shoes for a living.
In the Western Han Dynasty, the legitimacy of royal rule was not established, what kind of person could be the Son of Heaven? Are the Son of Heaven and the Emperor one flesh? This lack of ideological or ideological and cultural levels makes the roommates of "Frying He Too Anxious" too common, leaving a negative impact that the clan members of the Liu family are withering away day by day, and there is no successor. By the end of the Western Han Dynasty, even the common people generally accepted that the Mandate of Heaven of the Han Dynasty was coming to an end, and tacitly allowed Wang Mang, who had the image of a "Confucian sage", to follow the example of the Duke of Zhou and rely on "Zen Concession" to gain the right to rule, without the need for bloody usurpation of power. As a foreign nobleman, Wang Mang did not be arrogant and arrogant, spending days and drinking, but studied hard, treated people respectfully, cultivated himself strictly, and regarded himself as a "Confucian student", becoming a moral model in the hearts of the people. The "new dynasty" he established was entirely a practice of Confucianism, and he firmly believed in the "unity of virtue and position" that could turn Confucius's ideal of the monarch into reality. He copied the reform of the liturgical system and implemented a system that took into account both "performance incentives" and "counterpart poverty alleviation", and he dreamed of giving orders as a "moral sage" to give orders to the Confucian liturgical system, and bureaucrats everywhere also had noble morality, leading by example and taking the initiative. This utopian setting of the world's great unity has made Wang Mang regarded by many as an alternative to history, with mixed praise and criticism.
Xiang Rui: Wang Mang and His Time
Zhang Xiangrong
Century Wenjing | Shanghai People's Publishing House
three
Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty relied on something to hide his true face of "hegemony"
Speaking of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he relied on the solid financial foundation painstakingly built during the period of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing to open up territory and win a series of foreign wars, thus covering up the various crises under his rule, and his 50 years of reign were far from being a glorious period of prosperity and prosperity, but full of various intricate social contradictions. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, despite his great talents and great strategy, invaded the east and the west, but also exerted too much pressure on the people, and complaints were rife, causing him to worry about his own dominance. During the Han Dynasty, the people generally believed in the theory of ghosts and gods, believing that the heavens would descend auspicious or calamities according to the conditions of the human world, and how to interpret xiangrui or calamities was what Confucianism was good at, and Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty needed Confucianism to explain natural disasters in the direction of his own benefit, after all, in a society where the people did not have a good life, natural disasters were more noticeable, and he needed to cover up his true face as "Qin Shi Huang".
Dong Zhongshu entered the vision of Emperor Wu of Han because of his disobedience. Dong Zhongshu, in addition to expounding his "theory of disasters" to Emperor Wu, was more interested in promoting Confucianism, and he believed that the most important thing was to enable Confucians to become officials and become a management class, but he only focused on the great principles of Confucianism, and could not propose the strategies that Emperor Wu was more interested in, and often did not please Emperor Wu, after all, Emperor Wu had no intention of studying the essence of Confucianism. Dong Zhongshu's life was doomed to be bumpy, he was deposed several times, and he was almost executed in prison, and he was not used by Emperor Wu at all.
On the other hand, another Confucian scholar, Gongsun Hong, can see the sincerity of Emperor Wu of Han in the comparison. Gongsun Hong and Dong Zhongshu were two people with completely different virtues, and the Tao was not mutually exclusive, and Gongsun Hong even sent Dong Zhongshu to the tiger mouth of the prince Jiaoxi King. Gongsun Hongfei Huang Tengda's trick was to wrap the Fa Jia's laws with Confucian thought, and he fully understood the authoritarian character of Emperor Wu! When Gongsun Hongguan reached the rank of Chancellor, he had enough ability to adopt Dong Zhongshu's suggestion, that is, to thoroughly reform the civil official system of the Han Dynasty and open up the bright road for Confucian students to enter the shi and even monopolize the career path. Therefore, since the beginning of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Confucianism has been truly revered and has begun the journey of eventually becoming the state religion.
At this point, we truly see that Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty respected Confucianism, not because he respected Confucianism, but because he hoped to use the Confucian royal way to whitewash the hegemony of the Fa, who was the Qin Shi Huang who was cloaked in the cloak of "Royal Dao".
The Qin and Han Empire
[Sun] written by Seisei Nishijima
Translated by Gu Shanshan
Social Science Literature Publishing Co., Ltd.
ISBN: K232/19
In his later years, Emperor Wu of Han was as keen on pursuing immortality as Qin Shi Huang, and many alchemists appeared around him, and Emperor Wu, who was deeply trapped in the world of witchcraft, suffered the greatest sorrow of his life - the chaos of the witchcraft. Crown Prince Liu was falsely accused by Jiang Chong of cursing Emperor Wu, and when the crown prince learned that he had been framed, he decided to preemptively attack Jiang Chong and lead his troops to attack the Xiang Mansion, but was killed by Emperor Wu of Han, his mother Wei Zifu was forced to commit suicide, and his children were all killed. When he learned of Aizi's grievances, Emperor Wu of han, who was still in a state of flux, stopped his foreign conquests, began to reflect on his past policies and repent, and expressed his remorse for his sins. The image of the Ming Emperor who repented of his sins became a model of emperor in Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian, but some scholars believe that all this has been greatly beautified, and the "Luntai Zhao" is not at all a landmark document for the han dynasty's rule from wuzhi to wenzhi, but only a temporary strategic adjustment.
"Making Emperor Wu of Han"
Xin Deyong
ISBN: K827=341/156
The Han Dynasty really realized the "confucianism of solitude" during the Han Yuan Emperor period, his father Liu Qing of Han Xuan still insisted on the hegemonic Taoism, but he used Confucianism to educate the prince, making the Han Yuan Emperor Liu Yi the first emperor to receive a complete Confucian education since the Han Dynasty, thus making Confucianism a state religion, and the times were truly transformed.
The Qin and Han Empires were the first powerful empires in the Eastern world to emerge unified, and had a profound impact on Chinese history, East Asian history and even world history, comparable to the Roman Empire at the same time. But history is always tortuous and hidden, occasional and symbolic events are more likely to be seen, and the inevitable evolution of history is hidden in a long river, so history is often read and new, never boring.
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