The Western Jin Dynasty & 5 Barbarians (266 - 316)
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- China was unified for a few decades before things went very wrong with the War of the Eight Princes and the Five Barbarians Rebellion.
Comments:
The warlord Wang Jun (王浚) (252 - 314) is a different person than the general Wang Jun (王濬) (206 - 286) in the Three Kingdoms video. Unfortunately Chinese is full of homonyms that are highly confusing.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:41 Confucian Elites
4:24 Western Jin Succession Crisis
8:11 New Philosophies: Xuanxue & Qingtan
12:37 War of the Eight Princes
17:31 Five Barbarians
20:06 End of the War
21:31 Disaster of Yongjia
25:24 Zu Ti's Expedition
27:19 Eastern Jin Dynasty Established
References:
Chan, A. (2019, May 28). Neo-Daoism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved February 6, 2023, from plato.stanford.edu/entries/ne...
Dien, A. E., & Knapp, K. N. (2019). Cambridge History of China: The Six Dynasties, 220-589. Cambridge University Press.
翦伯赞. (2011). 中国史纲要. 北京大学出版社.
劳榦. (2018). 魏晋南北朝简史. 中华书局.
万绳楠整理. (2008). 陈寅恪魏晋南北朝史讲演录. 贵州人民出版社.
Book of Jin
Zizhi Tongjian
Attributions:
Maps were created using maps-for-free.com/ by ©OpenStreetMap www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons
#chinesehistory #china #history #ancienthistory #warfare #中国历史 #中国 #历史 #三国 #五胡
As a Korean studying in America who majored in history I always found the parallels between Rome & China around this time very interesting, as both saw iincreased pressure from nomadic steppe peoples & the remnant of the empires set up a separate government aided by a natural barrier to survive another few hundred years.
But the Mediterranean Empire that was Rome never reunified, though at times it got close, but China after 300 years or so managed to reunify itself.
I remember some chinese guy saying that Europe failed to stabilize and keep consistent unified Empires, while china succeeded. I believe it was in one of Possible Hisstory's videos, probably one of the first ones I've ever watched.
@@welfdeath Umm not exactly, the lands south of the Yangtze river had not been Han traditionally, especially the southern end of those, cities like Guangzhou area were populated by Austronesian peoples. Just look at the sheer diversity of Chinese dialects, and compare that with how close some of the Romance languages are.
Neither Rome nor China at the time were particularly homogeneous, even during the Warring States Period, you can see that Yue and Chu definitely were considered "semi-barbarians" by those in the central Chinese Plains, and archaeological evidence shows that especially Yue definitely has Austronesian roots.
And then by the time of the fall of the Roman Empire, China also would see massive changes with the invasion of northern nomadic peoples during the 5 Barbarians and 16 states period & would remain divided, with the north almost creating a new hybrid culture from the mixing of the nomadic invaders with the Han populace. And then shortly after Sui reunited China, came Tang and it definitely had a cosmopolitan character with lots of trade across the silk road, and every few centuries you'd have nomadic tribes taking over the northern Chinese plains, with the Liao, Jin, then of course the Mongols, then finally from thte 17th century with Qing until the 20th century.
@@welfdeath Ancient China was as culturally diverse as Western Europe, and considering that much of Europe still speaks Latin language descendants it’s not like the Roman’s didn’t try as hard at “romanization” as the Chinese did with “sinicization” . Again the fact that eventually a successor state was able to reunite the old empire and continue this process again compares to the failure of the Roman successors/rump states to do the same (HRE, Eastern Roman, Iberian Empire)
I can’t really say why honestly, maybe the ease of travel due to the rivers and plains in China made reuniting easier so long as the difficult South could be dominated. As well by the Late Roman Empire and early Medieval Europe fortified towns and castles were everywhere making any large scale gains very difficult as each was a strong point that needed to be sieged down (difficult before cannons).
@@LeperMessiah01234 Honestly I'd actually say that while the Mediterranean was the Mare Nostrum it was almost a highway connecting the cities along the coastline, in times of war it became a better natural barrier when it fractured unlike the Northern Chinese plains where once the nomadic steppe invaders bypassed the Great Wall, it was all mostly flatlands, even past the Yellow River, until really you hit the tributaries of the Yangtze River.
The nomadic invaders w/ their cavalries once past the natural and man-made barriers could wreak havoc over in the central plains, so even after fracturing it was hard to hold onto - Song dynasty with the loss of the 16 Prefectures were always in a much more exposed position to the nomadic horse peoples, especially also as they lost the lands suitable to raising horses as well. Kaifeng was located in a great position for the capital in peacetime as the Great Canal connected the Yangtze and the Yellow River there, but because it's all flatlands around there it was always in danger.
The Yangtze definitely provided the last line of defense for southern China though, just consider how long Xiangyang alone held on - only after the Mongols brought siege engineers from the Middle East could they take Xiangyang. Mongols bc of various reasons couldn't conquer Southern Song for 44 years, as they were unable to directly assault Linan (Hangzhou), as they had to pass through a bunch of swamps and wetlands around the Yangtze delta to get there, where their infamous cavalry could not do as much damage there unlike the norhtern Chinese plains, and not only that there were formidable defenses along the river - cities like Nanjing was impossible to take really unless you can overpower the Song Navy, and they had to take Xiangyang to be able to even do that. But time after time they failed to make a push, though they came close at times, and even bypassed the Yangtze by attacking Sichuan area instead, but ofc the mountainous terrain there also was not easy to get through, and even bypassed that by invading the Dali kingdom in today's Yunnan province, completing a near encirclement of Southern Song to launch a 3 pronged attack. Yet Mongke Khan even died while trying to take Daoyu Fortress in Sichuan.
The first Mongol invasion of Song was in 1235, but it was only in 1279 that Southern Song was conquered (it was mostly over by 1276 but that's still 41 freakin years).
IN that time period, Mongols also expanded to Russia, invaded Vietnam & Japan, defeated the Poles at Legnica, invaded Hungary etc.
But Xiangyang freakin held on until 1273, and after it fell it was all but over.
The Mediterranean however once the Roman Empire fractured, when the Germanic invader set up their own political traditions & co-opting the existing Roman structures, could not be reunified, though Justinian did manage to reconquer some of the West & the Byzantines still were a great power until the 4th Crusade, especially after the rise of Islam the mediterranean became the great barrier instead of the highway of trade it was under Rome - and Europe was born. (sidenote: I honestly think Europe as a concept is a post-Roman thing, it was very much a Mediterranean Empire - someone traveling from Rome to Antioch in Syria or Alexandria in Egypt or Carthage in modern day Tunisia in the Roman times was less of a cultural difference going from Rome to say, Roman britain & even more of a difference when you went from Rome to modern day Germany.
Southern China however did have a good natural barrier in Yangtze, which is really wide as far as rivers go & you'd need a navy to cross it (since the days of Cao Cao at Chi Bi it always was the big barrier for a northern Chinese dynasties to conquer the southern ones), but really until the Song era the southern Chinese lands had been turned from a land that was mostly jungles into rich farmlands that could support a huge number of population. In fact when you look at some of the ceremonial artifacts that are found, the further int he past you go, you can see that the depictions of animals such as elephants and rhinos are much more realistic, but as time passed it became much more abstract and fantastical, like rhinos basically turned into some uniconr hybrid looking thing, suggesting that by that point those animals habitations were destroyed as the jungles turned into rich farmlands. Also when Southern Song lost the lands north of the yellow river as well as the Ordos plateau, they had lost a great source of grazing pastures fit to raise horses, and it lost a lot of cavalry, it was much harder for a southern Chinese dynasty to conquer the north, the only one to manage to do it was the Ming. Once the first major barrier in the Great Wall was breached, the only other major barrier was the Yangtze - but in the Mediterranean once fractured it became much harder to reunify although the Islamic Empire definitely could have had Constantinople fell imo, and much later the Ottomans also was the closest thing to Rome in creating a mediterranean empire - but Western Europe in particular had not only the Mediterranean but also the mountainous terrain of the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Italian Peninsula had the Apennines as well, making it a much harder endeavor.
It's also interesting how eventually the equivalent of the Frankish Empire - one born from a group of foreign invaders that destroyed the former empire but slowly created a hybrid culture - that reunified China in the form of Sui.
But also w/r/t fortifications, i think cities like Constantinople especially was THE single greatest location for defenders in pre-gunpowder era, just taking a look at the map of Constantinople & the layout of the Theodosian Walls you see why there's like 20+ sieges of Constantiople lmao - I think it was the closest thing to a strategic weapon in pre-gunpowder warfare, lol Heraclius just trusting the Theodosian Walls and going on the attack is kind of nuts if you think about it lmao @@LeperMessiah01234
The prince of Changsha was also known as Sima Ai.
He was basicly the only 'good guy' in this episode.
The powerful families persistent until the early Tang Dynasty. It is only with the civil service examination, these powerful families were gradually reduced their power but still there were a few families with talented young sons still hold swings during the middle of the Tang such as the clan Wang Wei came from.
Yes definitely, and since their role in politics grew even more over the next few centuries, I wanted to spend some time in this video to explain where they came from. It does slow the pace of the first half of the video a bit, but should help with the future videos in this series.
@@gatesofkilikien Absolutely. There are so many fascinating stories from this period of time!! I worked on some of Tao Yuan-ming's drinking wine poems which has a lot to do with the Chaotic consequences originated from this period!! Keep up the great work! I surely enjoyed it very much!
@@dr.gaosclassroom Thanks, and yes I'll have to watch your stuff on Tao Yuan Ming sometime. For the next video that I'm writing now on the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the 16 Kingdoms I plan to talk about him a little bit.
Oo eoreiuuuoore3336
I don't understand your language but I thank you for your attention. @@PlaxicoDurress
this has gotta be the most chaotic dynasty i cannot keep track of whats happening 😭😭
Yay! Always great to see another video from you. The War of the Eight Princes is a real complicated mess to untangle, but I think you handled it about as well as you could without doubling the length of the video. Also like the inclusion of the 成语 interspersed in there.
One thing you didn't cover which I'd be interested to know more about is what the official role of a 'Prince' in this period actually is. We haven't really talked much about what an imperial prince actually does since the abolition of the princely states after the Seven States Rebellion way back in the Western Han. Since then, have the princes had any independent power? Obviously many of them are influential at court but that's not the same thing as ruling a semi-autonomous fiefdom. For example here, the Prince of Chengdu is based in Ye, which is nowhere near Chengdu, so I'm guessing the geographic designation is just honorary. And is he actually the provincial ruler of Ye in some capacity and is able to command government troops from that region or he just has estates there and his plan was to rely entirely on Liu Yuan's Xiongnu for the army? Another long question I know, but I really like to get into the weeds of how this all actually works at the ground level.
Thank you again for another video! Hope to see more from you soon. As you go forward into the Southern Dynasties, I would in particular be interested to hear more about the migrations down from the North and what the process of sinicization and colonization of the South during this period looked like.
Thanks again for the kind words, and always great to hear from you too. Yes the War of the Eight Princes is a ridiculous mess, and I feel like both for the war and the other events in this video it was very hard to find the right balance between going into details vs being general. If I try to go into details then it's really easy to introduce too many names/ideas, but if I try to stay general it ends up being a lot of common historical cliches, which I wanted to avoid too.
To answer your question about the princes (and when I have time in the future I can add an addendum to my video too), most of their powers came from assignments outside of their fiefs. In the case of the Prince of Chengdu, even though his fief was in Chengdu, most of his powers came from the fact that he was the general in charge of the military garrison at Ye. This is why he was based out of Ye, even though Chengdu was on the other side of the empire.
The whole situation was very fluid/messy, and the princes each had their unique situations. One factor that made the War of the Eight Princes so chaotic though was simply the fact that the princes were allowed to take assignments outside of their fiefs, including important positions in the central government, rather than just stay in their fiefs.
The pattern of southern migrations/colonization/sinicization during the 300s and 400s is a very interesting topic for me too, and it's something I'm really excited to write about, so definitely looking forward to including it in the upcoming videos.
I appreciate the explanations of those traditional sayings, older Chinese throw them into conversation and I was always like “huh?” (But I guess I do the same thing when I quote movies that others haven’t seen). And history through language is awesome. Thank you!
Thanks, glad you've enjoyed the video, and yes there's so much cultural context that would be lost if I just translated them into English, so for that I try to include both Chinese and English.
My dude---thank you so much. You are crushing it right now. All the best...
Thanks, appreciate the support!
Just discovered your channel. I love it! Keep up the good work
Thanks!
Super interesting. Well done.
glad you've found it helpful!
Chinese history is amazing! Thank you for posting this series, it deserves a lot more views.
Thanks! Yes there’s lots of very famous events in Chinese history that aren’t well known in the English-speaking world, so hopefully I can show some of that here
These are great videos, as someone who only speaks English it can be tough to delve into Chinese history because a lot of English sources are written more for academics who are already familiar with the topic than someone with a hobbyist's interest in history. It seems quite difficult to keep track of all these factions and ethnic groups vying for power, but you've done an admirable job.
Thanks for your support, and one of my main goals for these videos is to help make Chinese history more accessible to an English-speaking audience. This video, and the next few that I'm currently working on, do cover some of the most chaotic periods in Chinese history though. They are so chaotic that even pretty detailed history books in Chinese typically only just gloss over these events, and they're supposed to be very hard to follow. It's a very rewarding period to write about though, and hopefully once I get through this period I can write about the other periods much more quickly.
@@gatesofkilikien Well I enjoy stories of intrigue, so even if I have to watch more than once to understand it all I'm looking forward to it.
@@user-if4nx2jn8r you'll really like Chinese history then, if not already. It's full of intrigues and all kinds of other craziness besides.
@@gatesofkilikien From what I know of it so far, it definitely seems that way. Looking forward to learning more.
Great video. Can't wait for the battle of Fei Shui.
Thanks, yes that's an episode I've been looking forward to doing for a while
the way u pronounce the sima family members sounds badass lol..love it
lol thanks, glad to hear!
Just found the channel - love it. Would be great to see some vids on the Qing
Thanks! I'll get to more modern stuff eventually, although my current thought on this series on medieval Chinese history is to end it around the early Ming Dynasty. I'll certainly be referencing the Qing Dynasty in various videos though alongside other dynasties.
Nice video, and I appreciate you posted your references (even if I'm too lazy to check them). English language chinese history videos are somewhat sparse. Subbed!
thanks, appreciate the support!
Fascinating.
Btw, is your channel name referring to the Gates of Cilicia, would you ever make a video regarding their importance?
Thanks!
Yes it is. I chose it because of it being at the crossroad of civilization and association with so many different cultural traditions. Eventually I'll make a video focused on it, and in the meantime I'll probably end up talking about it a lot in passing while discussing other topics.
Great video, would you consider doing videos on notable aristocratic clans like the Langya Wang?
Thanks. I'll be introducing the notable aristocratic houses like the Lanling Xiao, Fanyang Lu, etc. during the appropriate time periods for the videos. I've had vague plans in the past of doing one video on the early medieval Chinese aristocracy in general, although it may end up being too dense of a subject that doesn't fit well with the UA-cam format, so not sure yet.
Ahhhh yes. The Seven sages of the Bamboo grove. The original Hippies of China.
Chinese Dynasties palace drama would result in a really good series.
Yeah for sure, although this period might be too chaotic and depressing even for TV.
Nobody gonna talk about how Qingtan is exactly the same 'political' discourse we have in the woke MSM media these days?
Nah. Not really. For one thing, Qingtan had actual scholars and they actually had interesting philosophies, even if some of it comes off as pretentious and meh (a bit like most philosophies). The woke nonsense today is just a bunch of garbage tirade spat about by garbage filth whose only achievement is virtue signaling and being a trash human being. They are not the same.
@@ikmalkamal5830 Write "actual" and "garbage" some more. You'll see you're it.
What a coincidence that that same Yang clan of Hongnong (弘農楊氏) would later create the next great unified Chinese dynasty, the Sui, 300 years later.
Yes such a cool way to think about it, that the family which contributed greatly to the mess eventually became the one to end it.
@@gatesofkilikien Before creating another mess first with 隋煬帝, and then again during the Tang with 楊國忠 and the Anshi Rebellion.
So basically, through the Jin dynasty, Cao Cao got what he wanted
Yeah but at what cost? The end of a golden era of Chinese imperialism? The deaths of millions? The end of his line? All for 60 years of civil war and 20 years of rule just to get overthrown. If he was smart he would’ve backed liu bie claim as emperor and ruled from the shadows they both could’ve united the land with the illusion of a restoration of the Han Empire but such treachery begets karma and probably would’ve fell apart as well
4:20 Were you explaining the Chinese drama , Princess Wei Yang
It's a good video.
However, there is an error in the map. The Jin Dynasty never had the Korean Peninsula as its territory.
14:20 is and XD moment in chinese history
Any history of Zeng dynasty?
Zeng Dynasty?
Wow, this period makes the Fall of the Han/Three Kingdoms era look like a friendly dispute!
No it doesn't.
@@genovayork2468 To me, it does. When the Han Dynasty fell, there was still a chance for a revival (however tiny it might have been). When the Jin dynasty fell, there was no chance for a revival (partly because of lack of support but also because nomadic foreigners had come to occupy the northern half of China).
@@alaricthescholar2517 Jin country didn't fall, it just got a new dynasty in the form of Liu Song lmao.
So, the 7 Sages started "Lying Flat" movement first
Many Turkic Barbarians 👁️👄👁️
Ok Muslim Armenian 🇹🇷
@@Neversabased
@@Neversa He's Turkish.
@@rod9829No.
Wait so arguing over philosophical concepts during times of crisis is detrimental to the societies survival. Hmm where did I hear this before?
Let me have a word with the Eastern Romans....
Lol yeah, and it makes studying both periods really hard too. I feel like I have to become a theologian to read Eastern Roman/Byzantine history
@@gatesofkilikien Indeed, it's hard to understand the time and place without the influence of Christianity. I've found Ryan Reeves's channel very useful for this, especially his videos on early Byzantium: ua-cam.com/video/GQowJ4sKsFw/v-deo.html
(actually, looking through the rest of your channel, I'm sure none of this is news to you 😆 Keep up the good work)
@@andrewroby1130 Thanks for the link, and I'll check out the video sometime. It seems very comprehensive and there's still a lot of knowledge gaps I want to fill for this area, so looking forward to watching it
Wait a mimutes, Chengdu not in Yi Province?
It is, but for the War of the Eight Princes the fiefs and home bases are decoupled. The Prince of Chengdu got his title/fief from Chengdu, but then got most of his actual power from being in charge of the military garrison at Ye. I'll add a comment in the description section explaining this.
Im all for the barbarians
Cao Cao 😂
Dang til stoners also existed in ancient China
The link between the Huns and Xiong'nu has not "largely been disproven". It has been proven, in fact, there is just nothing to show the link was anything more than cultural exchange as a group migrated west and became a new group, mixing with other ethnic groups to go through the nomadic style of ethnogenesis.
Bronze artifacts, especially small bronze bowls, that the Huns had in the western part of the European Steppe (east Ukraine and southwest Russia) in the mid-4th century are exactly like those of the Xiong'nu. There is nothing to show they are genetically linked, or linguistically linked except distantly. But their material culture is demonstrably linked, this may just have been through trade or cultural diffusion, not descent.
Eastern Han > Cao Wei > Western Jin
Doesn’t seem as if upper Chinese society has changed much : Still very corrupt; still back-stabbing; still jockeying for position..
Yes, unfortunately it's just human nature anywhere anytime and across different levels of society, both during good times and bad.
we need cantonese
the worst chinese dynasty
Probably one of the most disliked dynasties.
your maps are wrong sinos never held Lodong it was a han propaganda gkys
5 "barbarians" that invaded were Caucasians