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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.
- The Prince of Kuaiji Sun Liang, 243 – 260 · emperor of Eastern Wu for six years Sun Liang was the second ruler of Eastern Wu, set on its throne at the age of ten in 252 and taken off it at sixteen, and he is known by no imperial title at all: the histories remember him by the demoted princely rank he held when he died, the prince of Kuaiji. Through his six years the government lay in the hands of three regents in succession, Zhuge Ke, Sun Jun and Sun Lin, and the one act the record gives him on his own account was a failed attempt to kill the last of them, which cost him the throne and, within two years, his life.
- Emperor Jing of Eastern Wu Sun Xiu, 235 – 264 · third emperor of Eastern Wu Sun Xiu, the sixth son of Sun Quan and third emperor of Eastern Wu, was a bookish prince in Kuaiji when the regent who had deposed his predecessor set him on the throne in 258. Within two months he destroyed that regent and his clan, and in six years he did what few rulers of Wu attempted, founding an academy, appointing erudites of the Five Classics, and lightening the land taxes; he died at thirty in 264, leaving a child heir and a government run by two favourites.
- The Marquis of Guiming Sun Hao, 242 – 284 · last emperor of Eastern Wu Sun Hao was the last ruler of Wu and the last of the Three Kingdoms' three emperors, a grandson of Wu's founder who took the throne in 264 as a young man praised for his mercy and died in 284 in the capital of the power that had destroyed him. He reigned sixteen years, and turned a state that had outlived both its rivals into one its own court could not defend, killing or driving out the ministers and commanders who might have saved it, so that he is remembered both as the emperor who opened his granaries and as one of the most notorious tyrants in Chinese history.
- Emperor Wu of Jin Sima Yan, 236 – 290 · founding emperor of the Western Jin Sima Yan, the founder of the Western Jin, inherited the government of Wei from three generations of his family and took the throne by abdication in 265, then spent fifteen years preparing the conquest that ended the division of China in 280. His reign produced the Taikang peace, a land and tax settlement, and a register of two and a half million households, but it also produced armed princes, disarmed provinces, and a crown prince who could not govern, so that the state he had unified began to break apart within a year of his death.
- Emperor Hui of Jin Sima Zhong, 259 – 307 · second emperor of the Western Jin Sima Zhong was the second emperor of the Western Jin, a man of limited mind at the centre of a state whose edicts were written by others, who reigned for seventeen years while his empress, his ministers and eight princes used his name to destroy one another. He was carried from Luoyang to Ye, to Chang'an and back, was deposed in 301 and restored in the same spring, and is remembered for asking why the starving did not eat meat gruel and for refusing to let the blood of a courtier who died shielding him be washed from his robe.
- Emperor Huai of Jin Sima Chi, 284 – 313 · third emperor of the Western Jin Sima Chi was the twenty-fifth son of Emperor Wu of Jin, a bookish prince who stayed out of the clan wars and was made heir in 304 because he had no party of his own. He took the throne in 307 at twenty-three, spent four years trying to govern through a regent who had taken the army and the administration to the frontier, and was captured when Luoyang fell in 311; he was killed at Pingyang two years later, after being made to pour wine at the conqueror's feast.
- Emperor Min of Jin Sima Ye, 300 – 318 · last emperor of the Western Jin Sima Ye was a grandson of the Jin founder who was adopted into a collateral line, made prince of Qin as a child, and set on the throne at fourteen in a Chang'an reduced to fewer than a hundred households. He surrendered to Liu Yao in 316 after a siege that reduced the imperial granary to a few cakes of brewer's yeast, was made marquis of Huai'an, and was killed in Pingyang fifteen months later, while the era name Jianxing that he had proclaimed went on being used in Liangzhou until 361.
- 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.