Ch 2 - Tales of Three Kingdoms

Koguryo

Five Puyo clans moved into the rugged mountainous country between the middle-Yalu and Dongjia River basins in Manchuria. By 37 BC, the territory emerged as the confederated kingdom of Koguryo.

China's overwhelming presence on the Korean Peninsula affected not only Choson, but the southern Samhan states, where there was strong interest in acquiring the benefits of China's highly advanced culture. China had a great interest in Korea's natural resources, and whenever the Han Chinese sought economic gain or political submission from areas beyond their direct rule, they traditionally granted local leaders titular office and rank, official seals and ceremonial attire. In exchange, the Chinese got what they wanted without having to resort to force. Unlike the volatile Xiungnu to the north, southern Korea's inhabitants were primarily settled people who seemed quite willing to adopt most of the essential elements of Chinese culture. The leaders of the three Samhan States were generally eager participants in this tributary relationship. Through such exchanges, southern Korea's tribal societies not only absorbed the benefits of Chinese culture, they maintained their political independence in the process. Although the entire region tended to remain a Chinese sphere of influence, the Samhan states achieved impressive new developments on their own despite China's presence and sowed the seeds of a new social dynamism in Korea.

Despite the economic benefits that followed the Han expansion, the financial drain of holding such a large empire more than offset any benefits gained from increased trade. Foreign imports actually did more to line the pockets of wealthy men than provide benefits to China's ailing economy. Influential government officials, many of whom still held to the Legalist philosophy, were openly hostile to private merchants and pushed the government toward a more controlled economy. In 119 BC, faced with mounting expenses, the government took control of the salt and iron industries, monopolized the production and sale of alcohol, and established new taxes on wagons, boats, carts, and stock animals. Just four years later, the government appointed officers to equalize distribution. They bought vast quantities of commodities when prices were low and sold them when prices were high, thus preventing prices from being too low or too high and maximizing profit for the government. This process was institutionalized in 110 BC with the creation of a bureau of equalization and standardization.

As wealthy merchants bought and hoarded more and more goods for profit, Emperor Wu tried to curb profiteering by issuing new currency and severely punishing counterfeiters. He also ordered a series of major projects on a grand scale to refill his imperial treasury, including the construction of China's great canal systems. The canals not only improved crop irrigation, but made the transportation of tax grains to the capital city much easier.

China's wealthy families sought a hedge against insecurity by buying land;  lots of land. Many Han bureaucrats, large land owners themselves, took advantage of their office to buy choice plots and often managed to make their property tax exempt. This trend toward ever-larger land holdings, much of it tax-exempt, and the dramatic rise in the population of common peasants created a land shortage. Although government action eliminated treasury deficits and provided adequate supplies to armies stationed along the frontier, the people were left to eat without salt because of its high cost and had to use inferior iron tools to farm. The growing tax burden forced ordinary peasants to borrow money, often at usurious rates, just to meet their debts. This dramatically altered Chinese agriculture by triggering a decline in farming productivity. Peasants unable to pay their taxes and increased rents were evicted or forced to leave farming, which made more land available for the aristocracy. Conscription into labor and military service added to the peasantry's growing discontent. Some who left farming resorted to banditry. Some sold their children into slavery just to survive.

The situation in China outraged Dong Zhongshu, China's most renowned Confucian scholar. He loudly complained that wealthy families owned vast amounts of land, leaving the poor with nowhere to plant their own two feet. He also railed against the idea of peasants having to give up as much as fifty percent of their harvests as rent. Dong Zhongshu understood the dilemma faced by farmers who could not afford to buy iron tools and had to till the soil with wood and weed their fields by hand. He complained that common peasants had to sell their crops when prices were low then turn around and borrow money in the spring at high interest rates just to start planting. He also complained about the thousands put to death every year for banditry.

Dong Zhongshu proposed to solve the economic crisis by reducing taxes on the poor, reducing the state labor conscription of peasants, abolishing the government's monopoly on salt and iron, and improving the distribution of farm lands by limiting the amount of land that any one family could own. He faced a Confucianist aristocracy that was not about to support reforming a system that ran counter to their own economic interests. Emperor Wu wanted the peasants to prosper, but he needed the cooperation of wealthy landowners to finance his military campaigns and did not want to offend them by redistributing their property. Instead, the emperor imposed higher taxes on the wealthy and clamped down on attempted tax evasion.

Emperor Wu expanded the Han Empire across much of East Asia by the final century of the first millennium BC, from the barren Tarim Basin in the west to Korea in the northeast. The successful military and diplomatic campaigns of Emperor Wu and Zhangqian left China secure to trade, rebuild and regroup, but at a terrible cost of lives and treasure. Chinese commanders lost most of their men in several major battles during the Xiungnu wars between 103 and 90 BC, with casualties numbering in the tens of thousands. In 91 BC tens of thousands were arbitrarily executed for witchcraft and black magic. The entire campaign put an enormous financial strain on the Han Dynasty and the heavy costs associated with maintaining large occupation armies protecting new conquests placed a heavy burden on China's economy.

With so much of China's wealth dependent on trade, envoys were sent to western lands lured by the incentive of making money. In 105 BC, a Chinese ambassador, following the trail blazed by Zhangqian over a generation earlier, reached the borders of Iran. When he was presented to the Parthian monarch, King Mithridates II, he laid rich, luxurious silks at the ruler's feet. King Mithridates reciprocated by presenting the envoy with an ostrich egg and a troupe of conjurors as gifts to Emperor Wu. The exchange of gifts marked the birth of the fabled Silk Road, a trade artery that over time transformed the history of China in the East and Rome in the West. Camel caravans heavily laden with silks and treasures set out regularly from Changan (Xi'an), China, traveling westward nearly 6,400 km (4,000 mi) along a series of well-worn trails through Gansu Province to Samarkhand and on to Antioch, Baghdad, Alexandria, and the Mediterranean coast. Guard posts established all along the Silk Road protected China's lucrative gateway to the West against Xiungnu raids.

As Emperor Wu's fifty-four year reign neared its end in 91 BC, violent warfare erupted around Changan over who would succeed him on the Celestial Throne. Wu Di's empress and his heir apparent battled the family of one of the emperor's concubines and the two families came close to destroying each other. Just before Emperor Wu died in 87 BC, a compromise heir was finally chosen:  the emperor's eight year-old son from a concubine of neither family, who was enthroned as Emperor Zhao and put under the regency of former Han general Huo Guang.

Huo Guang, born a commoner, implemented a number of reforms to revitalize the exhausted empire. Loans were made to the poor;  payments and taxes were remitted in bad years or could be made in kind when grain prices were low. Horses were no longer demanded. The size of government was reduced, and imperial lands were distributed to the people. In 81 BC, Huo Guang sponsored a conference to hear the grievances of Emperor Chao's subjects. He summoned sixty scholars from around the empire to a public debate on the issues, including both Legalist government officials and worthy representatives of Confucianism.

During this great dialog, known as the Discourses on Salt and Iron, the Legalists argued strongly for maintaining the status quo, claiming it was their economic policies that successfully provided iron tools to the peasants, increased trade and wealth, and helped maintain China's defenses against the Xiungnu's continued hostility. They complained the government was protecting the people from the exploitation of traders, and argued in favor of the government's policy of western expansion on the grounds that it brought the empire horses, camels, fruits and various imported luxuries, such as furs, rugs and precious stones. Both sides complained bitterly about the growing dishonesty and moral decay in the empire.

The Confucianists saw the people's grievances as a moral issue and argued it was not the government's role to involve itself in trade or to compete with private merchants. Anyway, they complained, the imported goods so admired by the Legalists found their way into only the houses of the rich. The reformers emphasized moral principles and complained that government officials were using their positions to increase their incomes to incalculable levels, a practice Confucius disapproved. They also argued that expansion and foreign adventures had weakened China without maintaining safety. China should live in peace with its neighbors and stay within its own borders. It had no business in Central Asia. Those in power countered by criticizing the scholars for talking but not acting and asked them if they could devise a means to bring peace to the country and subdue foreign lands so that they would not raid and attack the frontiers.

The Discourses on Salt and Iron revealed clear divisions between the realistic legalists in power and the principled scholars who wanted reforms. After all the debate and posturing at the conference, the government retained its imperial monopolies on salt and iron, but replaced its control over alcohol with taxation. Aside from a small tax reduction and opening peace negotiations with the Xiungnu chieftains, little really changed.

Emperor Zhao's death in 74 BC triggered yet another round of conflict in the Changan palace. When he learned of the emperor's death, one of the possible heirs raced to Changan and was placed on the throne. The young man became so enthralled with the insatiable pleasures of palace life he forgot all about mourning his predecessor and was removed from office after 27 days. Huo Guang and the ministers replaced him with the eighteen-year-old Emperor Xuan. Xuan had been taught the Odes, Analects, and Filial Piety and was kind, benevolent, and loving to others. He was also someone Huo thought he could control. Huo Guang continued to run the government until his death just six years later. The dangerous Huo clan was methodically and completely removed from power over the next two years, leaving Xuan-di free to rule for himself.

Raised as commoner, Emperor Xuan understood the people's suffering and instituted a number of reforms to ease their plight. He gave grants to the heirs of capable officials who died poor, exempted those in mourning from required services, abolished laws banning gatherings of people, and increased salaries of lower officials to prevent extortion. He also reduced the number of military garrisons, loaned government land to the poor, opened the royal preserves to cultivation, and lowered the price of salt. Kind officials were promoted. Harsh officials were demoted. Corrupt officials were allowed to resign. Emperor Xuan also implemented a number of legal reforms. He ordered the appointment of special judges for difficult cases, pardons for those hiding relatives, investigations into prison deaths, and exemptions for punishing the elderly. Capital punishment required the emperor's consent. One official, who used capital punishment with such regularity he became known as "Uncle Butcher," was publicly executed for his cruel tyranny.

In the north, an internal dispute of inheritance split triggered a civil war among the Xiungnu, who split into the southern and northern Xiungnu. The southern Xiungnu led by Hu Hanye, looking for support, visited the Chinese court in Changan in 51 BC. Instead of resenting the man's imperial title, Emperor Xuan honored him as a guest and presented him with rich gifts. The same year Julius Caesar conquered the Gauls and invaded Britain, Hu Hanye bowed his head in submission to Emperor Wu's great-grandson, surrendered his 5,000 people, and settled in Shanxi Province, where they guarded the Han's northern border and fought against the Xiungnu. The grand strategy to guarantee Han China's security devised by Emperor Wu and, to a large extent by Zhangqian, had finally come to pass.

Near the end of his reign, Emperor Xuan noted that reductions in military service and forced labor had done little to eliminate poverty and corrupt officials. While it seems he did his best to harmonize the virtues of legalistic discipline and Confucian benevolence, despite modest successes he never managed to win support of scholars, some of whom called for his abdication.

Emperor Xuan reigned for twenty-eight unremarkable years as the last effective ruler of the Former Han Dynasty. The emperor's twenty-seven year-old son, Emperor Yuan, succeeded him in 48 BC, the first of a long string of dysfunctional Han rulers. While still the Crown Prince, Yuan criticized his father for applying laws too severely and suggested he employ more Confucian masters in government. Once on the throne, Yuan-di appointed Confucians to run his government, whose modest reforms reduced expenditures and lightened punishments. Under their influence, the civil service examination system was expanded to include a moral component as well as the literary test. Emperor Yuan's adoption of Confucian rituals and principles also led to favoring relatives in the name of filial piety. The resulting nepotism and matriarchal influences contributed to the eventual fall of the Former Han dynasty within two generations.

This timid intellectual, more interested in personal pleasure than ruling a great empire, left power in the hands of his eunuch secretaries and members of his mother's family, while he spent a great deal of time with concubines. Confucian influence in the palace was checked somewhat by the eunuch Shi Xian, the Chief Palace Writer, who had many Confucians arrested and executed for criticizing him. Things were no better under the rule of his son, Emperor Cheng, who ascended the Celestial Throne in 32 BC at age nineteen and ruled for twenty-seven years. Shi Xian was exiled and the office of Palace Writer was abolished to remove power from the eunuchs. Like his father, Cheng Di had little enthusiasm for governing and put his maternal relatives into prominent government positions. Also like his father, he enjoyed food, wine, music and such personal pleasures as visiting prostitutes at night.

With Han China in a quagmire of ineffective rule, the Korean peninsula earnestly began another period of restructuring and launched itself on a nearly two thousand year long struggle for unity. Tribes and clans sought strength in numbers and forged new alliances with each other to increase their political and military power. Many walled-towns, then the seat of local ruling power, expanded their collective wealth and influence by joining to form confederated kingdoms. When that wasn't possible, tribal clans moved into other regions and established their aristocratic way of life among the local population.

During the latter half of the 1st century BC, Tungusic Puyo tribes moved south from the broad flatland of Manchuria's Sungari River basin towards the foothills and high plains between the middle-Yalu and T'ung-chia (modern Hun Jiang) River basins. The region was populated by agricultural clans of the Yemaek, who were already in the process of developing a tribal league among the scattered villages and farms that dotted the countryside. Five Puyo clans led by Chu-mong rode into the rugged mountainous country of the Yemaek and established new settlements of their own. Although Chu-mong's followers were not native to the area, clan chieftain Tong-myong's strong leadership and Puyo's ruling elite gradually gained control of the region. By 37 BC, the territory emerged as the confederated kingdom of Koguryo.

The aristocratic societies of Puyo and Koguryo evolved around the person of the taega, a king-like figure traditionally chosen alternately from two or more royal clans by a kind of elective process. Each clan selected its own clan chieftain. The council of chieftains then selected one of their own to lead the entire community. This body of clan leaders held the authority to decide important issues like royal succession, declaring war, and concluding treaties. From their earliest beginnings, each of Korea's kingdoms gave its leader the Chinese title wang, or king, to put the mark of legitimacy on their leadership and their own status. People took the ability to command very seriously and not only held their king responsible for their welfare, but they held him personally accountable for virtually everything that happened to them. Among the Puyo clan, it was not uncommon to quickly remove a king from the throne, even kill him, in response to a disastrous harvest. Once a royal clan established its right to rule, succession came to rest within that clan and leadership became a heredity entitlement, passing from father to son.

Once established, the kingdoms of Puyo and Koguryo developed at a relatively rapid pace. The old style of rule by councils of chieftains and tribal alliances gradually gave way to a centralized state dominated by a king and supported by an aristocratic political power structure. Three distinct groups comprised Koguryo's ruling class and each shared political power nearly evenly:  the royal family, the nobility, and the warriors. The king, whose family held the right to the throne by birth, ruled the kingdom. The nobility, which had the privilege of being allowed to marry members of the royal family, directed the administration of state affairs. The warriors, those responsible for defending the kingdom, held the military power. The actual political power to rule rested not with the king himself, but among the large number of the king's retainers and their loyalty to him. These were either nobles, senior members of the royal family, or members of the various clans from which the queens were selected.

Kings possessed not only political power, but great economic wealth;  exquisite Chinese-style tableware, silk clothing and furs that were the envy of the Chinese, and crown-like headgear extravagantly adorned with gold and silver. The kingdom measured its true wealth in more practical terms however, how much land it controlled and how many slaves it owned. A kingdom needed land for grazing and agriculture and it needed slaves to produce food, make weapons, and supply other necessities for the aristocracy. The land belonged exclusively to the king and he could do with it as he wished. He also owned a considerable number of slaves and had first claim on tax levies collected from the peasants through village leaders. As a measure of the king's power, in extreme cases he could command that upon his death as many as one hundred servants should be killed and buried with him. It was only natural such men commanded the reverential respect of the societies they ruled.

Koguryo's early tribes lived among the high mountain valleys along the Manchurian side of the Yalu River near modern T'ung-kou. The scarce arable farmland in this region meant that survival, let alone prosperity, depended heavily on a tribe's hunting skills. To preserve its very existence, the kingdom needed a strong military force. To increase its wealth and power, Koguryo needed land and slaves. Clan chieftain Tong-myong met these needs during his early struggles with other tribes in the area by turning Koguryo's warriors from the pursuit of food to the acquisition of new lands and slaves. His warrior aristocracy pursued no other type of productive activity beyond training for combat, and they learned the art of warfare well. In their quest to secure more permanent sources of food and productive labor, young Koguryo's aristocratic society of mounted warriors made territorial expansion their principal objective.

Koguryo emerged within the territory administered by China's Xuantu Commandery and developed in the context of a nearly continuous conflict with the Chinese. King Yuri-myong, who succeeded Tong-myong in 19 BC, ruled Koguryo from his rugged mountain stronghold at Kungnae-song (modern Ji'an), just north of the Yalu River. He regularly dispatched his warriors on raids into agricultural regions of the surrounding lowlands and local farming populations governed by the Chinese, raids that became regular missions of tribute. Yuri-myong's armed cavalry developed a consuming interest in the spoils of war;  land, slaves, and domestic animals. The tribute and booty taken in these raids not only increased Koguryo's wealth, but further enhanced and consolidated the power of the king. Unlike the Puyo kingdom to the north, Koguryo gave China every impression of being a vigorous, warlike people with a fondness for attacking their neighbors.