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Emperors
From the First Emperor to the last Qing sovereign — how China was governed, and by whom.
The First Empires
秦汉221 BC – 220 AD3 dynastiesQin's conquests in 221 BC created a single empire for the first time; Han then held it together for four centuries and gave the Chinese their own name for themselves. The Silk Road opened, Confucianism became state doctrine, and the template of imperial rule was set.
- Qin Shi Huang Ying Zheng, 259 – 210 BC · First Emperor Qin Shi Huang was the king of the western state of Qin who conquered the six rival warring states and in 221 BC declared himself the First Emperor of a unified China. In eleven years of rule he standardised the script, the coinage, the weights and measures, and the roads, replaced hereditary lords with appointed officials, and built a frontier wall in the north. He also burned books, killed his political opponents, and consumed the last years of his life in a failed search for immortality.
- Qin Er Shi Huhai, c. 230 – 207 BC · Second Emperor of the Qin dynasty Huhai, the eighteenth son of Qin Shi Huang, reigned as the Second Emperor of Qin from 210 to 207 BC — the second and last emperor of a dynasty his father had designed to last ten thousand generations. Raised to the throne by a succession that even the ancient sources dispute, he destroyed his own family, refused to be told that his empire was in revolt, and was finally forced to kill himself by the chancellor who had made him.
- Ziying Ziying, d. 206 BC · The last ruler of the Qin dynasty, 207 – 206 BC — a king, not an emperor Ziying (d. 206 BC) held the throne of Qin for forty-six days and is counted as its last ruler, though he was never an emperor: Zhao Gao abolished the imperial title before installing him and crowned him King of Qin, on the ground that a state reduced to its old territory had no business keeping an empty name. He is remembered for one decisive act, the killing of Zhao Gao, and for the surrender that ended the dynasty — a plain carriage, a white cord around his neck, and the seals of office handed to Liu Bang.
- 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.
Division and Reunion
魏晋南北朝220 – 5893 dynastiesAfter the Han collapsed the north was ruled by steppe peoples and short-lived kingdoms, while a refugee court held the south. It was one of the most violent periods in Chinese history and also one of the most creative: Buddhism took root and calligraphy found its voice.
- Emperor Wen of Wei Cao Pi, 187 – 226 · founding emperor of Wei Cao Pi was the second son of Cao Cao who took the step his father never dared take, accepting the abdication of the last Han emperor in 220 and founding the state of Wei. In seven years he codified the law, created the nine rank system for selecting officials, and bound the imperial clan so tightly that no prince could defend the throne when a regent's family took it; his three campaigns against Wu all failed, and on his deathbed he left the regency to three men of whom the ablest was a Sima.
- Emperor Ming of Wei Cao Rui, 205 – 239 · emperor of Wei Cao Rui, emperor of Wei from 226 to 239, was the last ruler of his house to hold power in his own hands: he held the passes against every northern campaign of Zhuge Liang, annexed Liaodong, rebuilt the law and reformed the rites, and spent as freely on palaces as his father had tried to save. Dying at thirty-six with his sons dead before him, he entrusted the regency to Cao Shuang and Sima Yi, and the armies he had spent his reign holding became the inheritance of the house of Sima.
- The Prince of Qi Cao Fang, 232 – 274 · third emperor of Wei Cao Fang was the adopted son of Emperor Ming of Wei, set on the throne at the age of eight, and for fifteen years he watched two regents fight over the government of the north until one of them shut the gates of the capital in 249 and took it. His reign ended in 254 when that man's son deposed him, and he lived twenty more years as a prince and then as a duke.
- The Duke of Gaogui Cao Mao, 241 – 260 · fourth emperor of Wei Cao Mao was a grandson of the founding emperor of Wei whom the regent Sima Shi put on the throne at the age of thirteen, and who spent his six years as a scholar-emperor in a court that no longer belonged to his family. In 260 he took a few hundred palace servants and went out with his own sword against the troops of the regent Sima Zhao, was killed in the street by an officer named Cheng Ji, and had his imperial title taken from him; the histories remember him, without any posthumous name, as the Duke of Gaogui.
- Emperor Mu of Jin Sima Dan, 343 – 361 · fifth emperor of the Eastern Jin Sima Dan was the fifth emperor of the Eastern Jin, put on the throne in 344 at the age of two and dead in 361 at nineteen, so that his entire reign was conducted in his name by his mother, a prince of the blood and a succession of ministers. Those years contained the dynasty's last sustained northern offensive, the destruction of Cheng Han, two campaigns under Huan Wen and the recovery of Luoyang, but also the loss of two armies and the rise of a general whom the court could no longer control.
- Emperor Ai of Jin Sima Pi, 341 – 365 · sixth emperor of the Eastern Jin Sima Pi was the eldest son of Emperor Cheng of the Eastern Jin, passed over as an infant in 342 and restored to the throne in 361, when the throne had no other heir. He reigned four years in a court run by his uncle Sima Yu and the general Huan Wen, signed the land-based registration of 364 that outlived him, and died at twenty-four in 365 after poisoning himself with the longevity drugs he had taken in the hope of living forever, leaving no son and no temple name.
- The Duke of Haixi Sima Yi, 342 – 386 · the only emperor deposed in the Eastern Jin Sima Yi was the second son of Emperor Cheng of the Eastern Jin and a prince of Langye who became emperor in 365 when his elder brother died childless, and who reigned six years and nine months without leaving one recorded act of government. In 371 General Huan Wen, needing to recover the authority he had lost at Fangtou, had him deposed on a charge that he was impotent and his three sons were not his, killed the boys and their mothers four days later, and left him fifteen years as the Duke of Haixi in Wu county, where he refused a plot to restore him and died in 386 without a posthumous name.
- Emperor Jianwen of Jin Sima Yu, 320 – 372 · eighth emperor of the Eastern Jin Sima Yu was the most celebrated talker of his generation and, for twenty-six years, the head of the civil government of the Eastern Jin: a prince who held every office except the one that mattered. Lifted onto the throne by the general he had never been able to check, he wept as he received the seals, spent eight months preserving what dignity the court had left, and died leaving a testament that one of his own officials tore up in front of him.
- Duke Wu of Former Liang Zhang Gui, ? – 314 · founder of Former Liang Zhang Gui was a Confucian official of the Western Jin, appointed inspector of Liang province in 301 and governing the Hexi corridor from Guzang until his death in 314, taking over a frontier ruined by revolt and leaving it the one stable government in the north-west. He gave it a school for the sons of its leading families, a currency ordinance, and land for refugees from the central plains, and he refused the promotions and noble titles the court offered, never taking a reign title or the title of king, so that the state which grew from his appointment rested on a loyalty he never renounced.
- Duke Zhao of Former Liang Zhang Shi, ? – 320 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Shi, the eldest son of Zhang Gui, governed Former Liang from 314 to 320 as a Jin provincial officer rather than as a king, keeping his father's school, coinage and provincial establishment intact. When Chang'an fell in 316 and the court at Jiankang proclaimed new era names, he went on dating every document at Guzang by the Jianxing era of the deposed Emperor Min, a refusal that made a calendar the practical constitution of a state, and he was killed in 320 by the clients of a wonder-worker named Liu Hong and was succeeded by his brother Zhang Mao.
- Duke Cheng of Former Liang Zhang Mao, 277 – 324 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Mao (277–324) was the younger brother of Zhang Shi and the third ruler of the Zhang house in Liang province, which he held from 320 until his death. In 323, after a Han Zhao army came west and his river defences collapsed, he sent an envoy to submit to Liu Yao and accepted the title king of Liang, the first of his family to hold a royal rank from a sovereign other than Jin; he kept the province intact but paid tribute for it, and in 324 he died childless and left the province to his brother's son Zhang Jun.
- Duke Zhongcheng of Former Liang Zhang Jun, 307 – 346 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Jun held the province of Liang from 324 to 346 and never took a royal title, though he founded an academy, commissioned a state history in fifty scrolls, divided his territory into three provinces and turned the oasis of Gaochang into a commandery in 327. He kept the dead Western Jin era Jianxing on his documents, took and shelved titles from Jin, Han Zhao and Later Zhao as the balance of power required, and left behind a court that survived him and an heir chosen over an elder son.
The Tang Age
隋唐五代581 – 9601 dynastySui reunified the country and dug the Grand Canal; Tang turned that unity into a cosmopolitan empire whose capital at Chang'an was the largest city on earth. When Tang fell in 907, five short dynasties and ten regional kingdoms divided the country for half a century.