Chinese culture, outlook & politics c.20BC - 20 AD

I was wondering if you guys could tell me a bit about China during the reigns of Emperor Cheng of Han and his immediate successors, especially in terms of their their relations with neighbouring nomad tribes, India, and trade with Arabia and Africa?

How flexible is Confucianism and how maleable is it for syncretism with our faiths?
How xenophobic are the Chinese, how open are they to foreign intermarriage and foreign ideas?

Any help much appreciated.
 
The Han Empire was the result of a civil war that came out of the collapse of the Qin Empire. It was founded, interestingly enough, by a peasant. This particular peasant retained much of the Qin legalist system but modified the worst excesses, and again used the Mandate of Heaven concept to justify how a Peasant could claim to be the universal Son of Heaven. The Han Empire established a fairly formidable military system, under Wudi it actually conquered more under one single Emperor than the entirety of the Roman Republic and Roman Empires put together. :eek:

The major weaknesses of the Former Han proved to be the very clan-based structure of Chinese politics that influenced the imperial system, namely the promotion of favorites of powerful women for no other reason other than being someone's cousin/uncle/nephew/son without regard for actual competence. Too, the emergence of the eunuchs during this time meant that the Court could be divided into multiple feuding factions, all of whom would find it preferable to have a minor Son of Heaven on the throne who would not be able to contain them any at all.

Zhonghua/All Under Heaven basically at this point is a Rome without a Parthia near it, it was not very open to foreign ideas because it had no nearby sophisticated competitors to challenge its own. Confucianism at this point in time is a more narrowly limited philosophy than later Confucianism, while the Chinese system as a whole in the Former Han started very centralized but enough minor emperors and noble intrigue helped pave the way for ultimately Wang Mang's coup.
 
Thanks. Did the Emperors stay put in a single palace all of their lives, or did they go out, tour the land, wage war, etc?
 
Thanks. Did the Emperors stay put in a single palace all of their lives, or did they go out, tour the land, wage war, etc?

It depended on the Emperor, really. A lot of the minor ones did not, no, nor did the ones who were weak rulers. The really warlike ones like Wudi definitely did.
 
Thanks! Were all wives taken from the nobility, or did they ever venture to take some Siberian, nomad or Indian concubines?
 
Thanks! Were all wives taken from the nobility, or did they ever venture to take some Siberian, nomad or Indian concubines?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure how specific the Chinese records are on Imperial harems, though I do believe most of the overmighty subjects became that way through being the mother of the Imperial heir more than any particular station.
 
I've seen side-by-side to-scale comparisons of the Han and Roman Empires, and to me, the two weren't THAT much different in size. The Han probably had more interior land, due to two very large river systems and a LOT of smaller ones.

One theory I've read for the similarity in sizes was that for many empires, that was the largest an empire could get due to the limitations of distance in terms of travel time and communication lag. Neither the Romans nor the Chinese were ocean-bound, so they don't have the ease of transport that ships allowed for the (much) later European empires.
 
Thanks, everything's been very helpful thus far.

So when I see maps talking about trade between the Red Sea coast in Africa and China, they mean Arabian traders going back and forth between Africa and India? And not Chinese sailors?
 
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