Home / Dynasties / The First Empires / Han Dynasty
Han Dynasty汉朝
202 BC – 220 AD
A golden age that defined Chinese identity; the Silk Road opened under Han rule.
Emperors
- Emperor Gaozu of Han Liu Bang, 256 – 195 BC· founding emperor of the Han dynasty from 202 BC Liu Bang was a low-ranking village official from Pei who became a rebel in middle age and emperor of China seven years later. He lost almost every battle he fought against Xiang Yu and won the war anyway, because he could recognise better men than himself and pay what their continued loyalty was worth. As emperor he kept the Qin bureaucracy, cut the land tax to one part in fifteen, bought peace on the northern frontier with tribute and marriage, and destroyed the warlords whose help had made him. The dynasty he founded lasted four hundred years and gave its name to the Chinese majority.
- Emperor Hui of Han Liu Ying, 210 – 188 BC · Second emperor of the Han dynasty Emperor Hui of Han (Liu Ying, 210–188 BC) was the second ruler of the Han dynasty and the son of its founder, remembered less for his own seven-year reign than for the mother who governed through him — and for the gentleness that made his father judge him unfit to rule. A man whom violence made physically ill, he nonetheless put his name to the measures that settled the young dynasty's peace: lighter taxes, the repeal of the Qin ban on private books, and the walls of Chang'an.
- The First Boy Emperor of Han c. 192 – 184 BC · Third emperor of the Han dynasty The first boy emperor of Han (c. 192–184 BC) was a son of Emperor Hui, taken from his mother in infancy and raised as the child of the childless empress, then made emperor at about five under the regency of his grandmother, Empress Lü.
- The Second Boy Emperor of Han Liu Hong (born Liu Shan, then Liu Yi), d. 180 BC · Fourth emperor of the Han dynasty The second boy emperor of Han (d. 180 BC) reigned for four years under Empress Lü and was then declared — after her death and the massacre of her clan — not to be a son of Emperor Hui at all. That verdict, delivered by the ministers who had destroyed his grandmother's family, removed him and his five brothers from the imperial line and cleared the way for Emperor Wen.
- Emperor Wen of Han Liu Heng, c. 203 – 157 BC · Fifth emperor of the Han dynasty Emperor Wen of Han (Liu Heng, c. 203–157 BC) was the fifth ruler of the Han dynasty — a frontier prince whom nobody had watched, raised to the throne in 180 BC by the ministers who had just destroyed the family of the empress dowager Lü. His twenty-three years of subtraction — taxes halved and then abolished altogether, the mutilating punishments repealed, the court kept in coarse silk and the army kept inside its own walls — are remembered as the gentlest reign of the Han, and they left his son a rebellion to fight and his grandson an empire to spend.
- Emperor Jing of Han Liu Qi, c. 188 – 141 BC · Sixth emperor of the Han dynasty Emperor Jing of Han (Liu Qi, c. 188–141 BC) was the sixth ruler of the Han dynasty — the son of the emperor Wen, who in sixteen years did what his father never would and broke the power of the kings, crushing the Rebellion of the Seven States in three months and leaving his son an empire no prince could challenge.
- Emperor Wu of Han Liu Che, 156 – 87 BC · Seventh emperor of the Han dynasty Emperor Wu of Han (Liu Che, 156–87 BC) was the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty and one of the most powerful rulers in Chinese history, who made Confucianism the state creed, broke the Xiongnu, and opened the road to the West. A brilliant but costly sovereign, he doubled the empire’s reach as no Han emperor before him, and ended his reign with an edict admitting the suffering his ambitions had cost.
- Emperor Zhao of Han Liu Fuling, 94 – 74 BC · Eighth emperor of the Han dynasty Liu Fuling was eight when he became emperor in 87 BC and twenty-one when he died thirteen years later, never having ruled in his own name. His father, Emperor Wu, had his mother killed before naming him heir, and the regent Huo Guang did the governing: the salt and iron debate of 81 BC, a princes' conspiracy crushed in 80 BC, the envoy Su Wu recovered after nineteen years among the Xiongnu.
- The Marquis of Haihun Liu He, 92 – 59 BC · King of Changyi; ninth emperor of the Han dynasty for twenty-seven days in 74 BC; afterwards a commoner, and from 63 BC marquis of Haihun Liu He was a grandson of Emperor Wu, king of Changyi, and emperor of the Han for twenty-seven days in 74 BC, until the regent Huo Guang removed him on a dossier of more than a thousand offences; he then lived eleven years as a watched commoner before Emperor Xuan made him marquis of Haihun in 63 BC, at Yuzhang, where he died in 59 BC.
- Emperor Xuan of Han Liu Xun, 91 – 49 BC · Tenth emperor of the Han dynasty Emperor Xuan of Han was the only ruler in Chinese history to come to the throne out of a prison register: a great-grandson of Emperor Wu, carried into a commandery gaol as an infant in 91 BC and kept alive by a warder named Bing Ji, he was raised in the palace workshops and the lanes of Chang'an. Chosen as a safe replacement for a deposed emperor in 74 BC, he waited six years for the regent Huo Guang to die, then governed for nineteen as the dynasty's most practical administrator, receiving the Xiongnu chanyu as a guest and refusing to set aside the son he believed would ruin his house.
- Emperor Yuan of Han Liu Shi, 74 – 33 BC · Eleventh emperor of the Han dynasty Liu Shi, Emperor Yuan of Han, was the son his father predicted would ruin the house: a prince raised on the classics who watched the reign of law-clerks from outside and came to the throne in 49 BC meaning to govern by the virtue his teachers taught him. He cut his own household, gave up a commandery rather than tax the hungry, rebuilt the ancestral temples on Confucian lines and listened to scholars for sixteen years, and handed the government to the eunuch who ran the palace secretariat and raised his empress's family to the height from which, two generations later, it took the throne.
- Emperor Cheng of Han Liu Ao, 51 – 7 BC · Twelfth emperor of the Han dynasty Liu Ao, Emperor Cheng of Han, reigned from 33 to 7 BC as the twelfth emperor of the Western Han and the son of the empress dowager Wang Zhengjun. He came to a court in good order and a mother's family already at its head: within a month of his accession he made his uncle Wang Feng grand marshal and general-in-chief.
- Emperor Ai of Han Liu Xin, 25 – 1 BC · Thirteenth emperor of the Han dynasty Liu Xin, Emperor Ai of Han, reigned from 7 to 1 BC as the thirteenth emperor of the Western Han, an adopted heir fetched from Dingtao to succeed an uncle who died without a son. In his first months he issued the most specific reforming decree of the late Han, capping every great household at thirty qing of land and a fixed number of slaves; it was shelved within the year, the men it would have cut down being his own relatives.
- Emperor Ping of Han Liu Kan, 9 BC – AD 6 · The last emperor of the Western Han to be formally enthroned Liu Kan was nine when the Wang family of the Grand Empress Dowager brought him from Zhongshan to the Han throne in 1 BC, and for the five years of his reign Wang Mang governed in his name, taking the titles Duke of Anhan and Grand Tutor, giving the boy his own daughter as empress, and answering the demand for omens with a manufactured white pheasant. He died in the Weiyang Palace in AD 6, aged fourteen.
- Ruzi Ying Liu Ying, AD 5 – 25 · Made crown prince of the Western Han at the age of two and never enthroned, deposed as a child, walled up so that he grew up without a world Ruzi Ying was the Western Han's last nominal sovereign: Liu Ying, born in AD 5, chosen at the age of two in AD 6 to be crown prince rather than emperor so that Wang Mang could govern in his name, and deposed as a small child in AD 8 when Wang Mang took the throne and ended the dynasty. Kept in a house inside Chang'an with orders that no one was to speak to him, he grew up unable to name the six domestic animals, and in AD 25, in the year the Han was restored under another branch of the family, he was brought out and set up as a claimant at Linjing, and beheaded within months.
- Emperor Guangwu of Han Liu Xiu, 5 BC – AD 57 · founding emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Xiu (5 BC to AD 57), a farmer's son and distant kinsman of the Han house, took back a dynasty that had been dead for sixteen years and gave it two more centuries of life. He fought under another man's flag, lost a brother to a court he dared not defy, and won the empire less by battle than by patience, letting better generals fight, buying off the very men who had won it for him, and governing so quietly that his son inherited a realm in which nothing remarkable happened.
- Emperor Ming of Han Liu Zhuang, 28 – 75 · second emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Zhuang (28-75), the second emperor of Eastern Han, inherited a realm restored by his father Guangwu and gave it permanent form through the ritual capital of Luoyang, the great state sacrifices, the repair of the Yellow River, the reopening of the road to the Western Regions, and the earliest official court record of Buddhism in the dynastic histories. His reign also destroyed his brother the Prince of Chu in a case of manufactured treason that ran for years and cost, by the count of the histories, thousands of lives, a contradiction that stands at the center of his record.
- Emperor Zhang of Han Liu Da, 56 – 88 · third emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Da, the third emperor of the Eastern Han, reigned from 75 to 88 and completed, with his father, the era later called the peace of Ming and Zhang. He ruled with leniency, loosened the penal code, convened the White Tiger Hall conference that fixed the court's reading of the classics, and restored the Han position in the Western Regions.
- Emperor He of Han Liu Zhao, 79 – 106 · fourth emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Zhao came to the Eastern Han throne at ten as the adopted son of the empress who had destroyed his birth mother, and spent four years as the figurehead of her family's regency before taking the government into his own hands at fourteen, aided by a eunuch. In thirteen years of personal rule he closed the Xiongnu question on the northern frontier, restored the Han protectorate in the Western Regions, and presided over the court that produced paper.
- Emperor Shang of Han Liu Long, 105 – 106 · fifth emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Long was the infant son of Emperor He of Han, born in 105 and raised outside the palace because his elder brothers had died one after another; enthroned at about a hundred days old when his father died, he reigned for eight months entirely under the regency of the empress dowager Deng Sui. He died before his first birthday, the shortest-lived sovereign of the Han, and his death moved the throne sideways for the first time in the Eastern Han, from the dead emperor's own line to his nephew Liu Hu, later Emperor An.
- Emperor An of Han Liu Hu, 94 – 125 · sixth emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Hu was a boy of thirteen taken from a collateral branch of the imperial house in 106 to fill a throne the dowager Deng and her family meant to keep, and he spent fifteen of his nineteen years as emperor watching her govern in his name.
- The Marquis of Beixiang Liu Yi, ? – 125 · a marquis set on the throne of Han for seven months Liu Yi, marquis of Beixiang, was a grandson of Emperor Zhang through a collateral line, and in 125 the widow of a dead emperor set him on the throne because he was the only Liu of the house about whom nothing bad had been said. He reigned seven months under the regency of her family while her brothers filled the offices of the empire with their own men.
- Emperor Shun of Han Liu Bao, 115 – 144 · eighth emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Bao, 115 to 144, was the eighth emperor of the Eastern Han, ruling from 125 to 144 after nineteen palace attendants killed three officials in one night and carried him from under the West Bell of the Hall of Established Virtue to a throne he had already lost as crown prince. He revoked his own deposition, restored his mother's name, and sent commissioners to examine the provinces, yet he left the marquisates of the inner palace hereditary, let the office of General-in-Chief pass from Liang Shang to Liang Ji, and left a two-year-old heir to a consort house that spent the dynasty.
- Emperor Chong of Han Liu Bing, 143 – 145 · ninth emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Bing was the only son of Emperor Shun and became emperor of the Eastern Han in 144, at the age of two, on the day his father died. He reigned a little under five months as the ward of his father's childless empress, Liang Na, while the real government passed to her brother the General-in-Chief Liang Ji; he died in 145 before he could speak in his own name, and his reign is remembered mainly as the moment the Liang family finished taking over the court.
- Emperor Zhi of Han Liu Zuan, 138 – 146 · tenth emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Zuan was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Zhang whom the general-in-chief Liang Ji brought out of an obscure princely line and set on the throne in 145 at the age of eight, because a child could be governed. He reigned some seventeen months, told the general to his face that he was a domineering general, and was poisoned in the summer of 146.
- Emperor Huan of Han Liu Zhi, 132 – 168 · eleventh emperor of the Eastern Han Emperor Huan of Han, born Liu Zhi in 132, was a great-grandson of Emperor Zhang whom the empress dowager Liang and her brother Liang Ji made emperor in 146, at fifteen, because he was harmless; for thirteen years he was the least consulted man in his own palace. In 159 he destroyed the Liang with five eunuchs' help, halved the land tax on their confiscated fortune, gave the government to those eunuchs, and then had the officials and the thirty thousand students of the Imperial Academy arrested and barred from office for life as a party; he died childless at thirty-six in 168.
- Emperor Ling of Han Liu Hong, 156 – 189 · twelfth emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Hong (156-189) came to the throne at twelve as a great-great-grandson of the emperor Zhang, chosen by the dowager Dou Miao and her father, and reigned twenty-one years. He is remembered for selling offices at fixed prices, for the eunuchs who ran his household, for the Yellow Turban rising of 184 that he survived only by letting provincial governors raise armies of their own, and for building a palace park and a pleasure city while the provinces went hungry.
- The Boy Emperor Liu Bian Liu Bian, 176 – 190 · emperor of Han for five months Liu Bian (176-190) was the son of the emperor Ling by the empress He, and spent part of his childhood in the house of a Daoist because the palace was thought unsafe for him. He was emperor for five months in 189, in which his uncle He Jin was killed and the eunuchs were massacred, and a general from the frontier brought his army into the capital, deposed him, made him prince of Hongnong, and had him killed in 190.
- Emperor Xian of Han Liu Xie, 181 – 234 · last emperor of the Eastern Han Liu Xie was made emperor of the Han at nine by the general who had deposed his brother, and spent the rest of his reign as a prize in other men's hands: the generals of Liangzhou, the four soldiers of Chang'an, and for twenty-four years the house of Cao, which turned the emperor into an asset to be used and finally converted into a new dynasty. He survived the abdication of 220 as the marquis of Shanyang, keeping the Han calendar, the Han robes and the Han rites in his own small state.
Historical Figures
Contemporary regimes
States that existed at the same time as the Han Dynasty, in whole or in part.