The Decline and Fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty (106 - 220)

The collapse of the Eastern Han Dynasty, one of the most chaotic events in Chinese history, led to the establishment of the Three Kingdoms.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
0:28 Political Death Spiral
1:41 Emperors Huan and Ling
3:21 Power of the Confucian Scholars
5:18 Yellow Turban Rebellion
6:46 Collapse of Order
10:06 Rise of Cao Cao
13:24 Formation of the Three Kingdoms
15:49 Legacy of Cao Cao
16:46 Nomadic Migrations
17:57 Fall of the Han Dynasty


#handynasty #chinesehistory #historyofchina #xiongnu #emperor #threekingdoms #asia #history

[treeinafield]

I love that you use maps with elevation information. It's so much easier to imagine why particular cities are where they are, easier to imagine where armies move and why, and it makes visualizing the setting so much easier and more. It's such a smart thing to utilize.

[dyla-gent]

These are some remarkably high quality and informative videos for such a small channel, keep up the great work dude.

[SacredDaturaa]

Watching your videos on Chinese geography is already paying dividends - I find myself able to intuit much more of the underlying reasons for certain events where I hadn't before. For instance Dong Zhuo's relocation from Luoyang to Chang'an in the face of military pressure makes more sense - he was fleeing an exposed position to a much more defensible one between the passes.

[vaiyt]

History is written by the literate. Emperors who treated confucian scholars well entered written history as just and kind, while those that executed them and burned their books would be remembered as depraved cannibals.

[tfsweet]

I couldn't wait for part 2!!!! Super informative. Keep up the quality work!

[natashatercera]

Where do you get your maps? I love your map of China. It illustrates the elevation so much better than is usually done.

[baylithe]

Me a Dynasty Warriors fan that thought Sun Ce was a good dude: WHAT lol

Love these videos

[feilox]

wow you're really good. Can you do commentary on the art of war, 36 stratgem or other miltary books as well? I like your insight on it as you are a cinese person. It's very hard to understand when the book is translated to english without the perspective of the chinese people.

[tehkaihunganthony]

Great work, love the short concise content, keep em up!

[LOLMAN]

Lü Bu was the name of the general who assassinated Dong Zhuo on May 22, 192, with the aid of Interior Minister Wang Yun and Cavalry Captain Li Su.

As mentioned in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, on that day, Lü Bu greeted Dong Zhuo outside the palace gates with about 12 trusted men, all under the command of Li Su, who first stepped forward and stabbed Dong Zhuo in the arm. As the warlord cried for Lü Bu to save him, Lü merely told Dong, "This is an Imperial edict", and delivered a fatal blow to Dong.

[Nick-higx]

During the late part of the Eastern Han, a new agricultural labor system was invented, the Tuntian system. At first it was very similar to the Roman colonies of settled veterans, it was just farmland run by soldiers and their families, maybe former soldiers. I've seen Cao Cao credited with the creation of it, but just like "Zhuge's bow", he didn't make it. He renovated, now turning those refugees tied to the land into essentially serfs, directly monitored by soldiers a lot of the time, which is why Cao Cao was able to tax them heavily AND efficiently.
The loss of life in the ~100 years from the end of the Han to the last phase of the Three Kingdoms can't be overstated. China went from 55-60m people down to something like 30m. Enormous portions of that had been in the China Plain. Cao Cao forcibly revitalized an entire region of China, something that hasn't been successfully done in many places in history. For all the talk of strategy and tactics from the Three Kingdoms era, it was Cao Cao's economics that won. First in controlling the Central Plain against Liu Bei/Tao Qian, Yuan Shu, then Yuan Shao and the Sun. Then it was controlling the entire north of China, with the exception of the far west, which were just under his hegemony and not direct control. China had its economic heart ripped out of it, and rather than build a new one elsewhere like multiple other warlords tried, Cao Cao just shoved that heart back in. With a sword. Or probably a horse, a ji, and crossbow.

[vincently]

End of the Han Dynasty = Pre-Three Kingdoms Era

[Sean]

Gate of are good books on ancient china to someone who knows nothing about china (aside from the 20th century). Audio books are also accetable, I'm just trying to get out of Europe and get into Asia. I still love middle eastern history.

[Alusnovalotus]

16:41
I beg to differ!! the FANTASTIC performance by Chen Jianbin as Cao Cao completely revised his reputation in modern western fandom. He is always a top pick in the many role playing games and has a following with us as a man who used all the tricks in his toolbox to achieve his goals. Brutal, yes, but this was a different time and life was valued differently then.

[planescaped]

Ah, so He Jin and Dong Cheng and their ilk were consort kin?

Man, it really was a repeating cycle until Dong Zhou broke it wasn't it.

[Jay_in_Japan]

7:13 Lol @ how the eunuchs favored the younger son instead, got massacred for it, then the younger son got installed anyways 😂 Life is often a tragic comedy

[gwnifer]

Crazy that china didn't have real unified government after the fall of han dynasty, and only the Tang dynasty finally unified china

[AlexVictorianus]

The "good" emperors like in Rome, some decades later.

[alaricthescholar]

There is a growing Western interest in this period: see Baptiste Pinson Wu's historical fiction "Yellow Sky Revolt."

[jeffersonthomas]

You say "him", why would you use a pronoun ? I could not understand who meant. He was deified ? Who ? You should have written the name on the screen AND spoken the name.
personally, i feel you use way too many pronouns, say the name, repeat the name, use pronouns sparingly.
limit them to three in a row at most and two is better.
Oh and Good Job, you do very good work.