History of the State of Han Zhao

Author: Zhou Weizhou
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-05-01
Features: The Sixteen Kingdoms period, although only a small segment in the long river of China's several thousand years of history, has rich content and distinct characteristics of its time. Past feudal historians, constrained by ethnic prejudices and bound by traditional feudal orthodox historical perspectives, viewed the Sixteen Kingdoms as usurpations and denigrated them excessively, especially regarding the regimes established by ethnic minorities. As a result, over the millennia, apart from those who wrote histories of the Sixteen Kingdoms during that era, there have been few specialized books on the individual histories of the Sixien Kingdoms. In recent years, domestic academic circles have begun to pay attention to the study of the individual histories of the Sixteen Kingdoms, but have been hindered by the scattered nature of historical records and the lack of materials, yielding limited results. The path is always forged by those who walk it. To study the laws of historical development in China, particularly the characteristics of ethnic relations in history, as a reference for today, and to promote the cultural cause of the motherland, the author, without hesitation and with courage, has written this book, "The History of the Han Zhao State."
The Han Zhao State was a regime established by the Xiongnu, an ethnic group that had migrated inward, and was one of the earlier regimes among the Sixteen Kingdoms in Chinese history. Although its existence lasted only twenty-six years, it still left a certain impact on Chinese history. Past feudal historians often blamed the Xiongnu who established the Han Zhao State as the culprit behind the division and chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms period in Chinese history. This is unfair. The formation of the fragmented and separatist situation in the northern Sixteen Kingdoms was the inevitable result of the development of domestic self-sufficient feudal economy and the rise of aristocratic families since the Eastern Han Dynasty, as well as the decline of imperial power, and was not something that the inward-migrating ethnic minorities could control. On the contrary, the founders of the Han Zhao State could adapt to the historical trend, utilizing the struggles of people of all ethnic groups against the Western Jin Dynasty to overthrow the corrupt Western Jin Dynasty and establish a new regime. This regime inherited the traditions of Han and Wei dynasties in terms of politics, economy, and culture, while also incorporating its own customs, developing and creating in some aspects, and exerting some influence on later feudal dynasties. Additionally, under the severe economic devastation in the Central Plains at that time, the rulers of the Han Zhao State took measures favorable to the recovery and development of production, such as rebuilding towns, which led to a significant increase in the population, and restored and developed the economies of its capital cities, Pingyang and Chang'an.
From the rise and fall of the Han Zhao State, one can also see the cruelty and mismanagement of the Xiongnu rulers, the complex interweaving of class and ethnic contradictions within the state, and how it quickly declined and was ultimately destroyed by Later Zhao. Based on existing historical records and archaeological findings, this book first discusses the activities of the inward-migrating Xiongnu since the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the changes in their social status, then narrates the rise and fall of the Han Zhao State, and finally makes bold explorations into its political system and social structure. The title of the book is "The History of the Han Zhao State" because the former Zhao historian Bao wrote a historical work titled "Records of the Han Zhao."
In conclusion, the study and writing of individual histories of the Sixteen Kingdoms have only just begun. This book is offered as a modest contribution to the field, and that is all.