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The Nature of Han Politics
The instabilities and conflicts of Han dynasty politics were
often the results of one of the basic difficulties of a hereditary
monarchy. Sometimes it would produce a child sovereign or an adult one
who was not a very capable or energetic ruler. Who would control the
imperial institution in those circumstances? Frequently it would be the
dead emperor’s widow, the dowager empress, and her male relatives. This
domination of the court by “outside relatives” (wai qi)
was one of the most persistent difficulties of Han politics, and it
plagued many later dynasties as well....For the idealistic Confucian,
the power of the outside relatives was a deplorable violation of the
ideals of selection and promotion of officials on the basis of merit
and of decision making based on principled discussion of the issues. A
more distant and more cynical observer might conclude that it was at
least a kind of solution to the inherent problems of hereditary
monarchy and was to a degree inherently self-limiting. As an emperor
came to adulthood, his empress and her relatives would form a faction
of their own. Sooner or later the dowager empress would die, her
relatives would lose their ultimate source of support within the
palace, and the relatives of the present empress would have a chance to
expel and replace them. Thus a kind of circulation of outside relative
cliques followed the passing of the generations. [MOF, 74-75] |
Wang Mang
33 BCE-23 CE
From beginning to end, Wang Mang’s public life was full
of demonstrations of his humility and selflessness, and also of
ambition, political skill, and ruthlessness. We have to come to terms
with this mix of personal traits if we are to understand his actions,
his appeal to the people of his times, and his ultimate failure. Our
efforts are considerably complicated by the biases of the most
important source on his career, a long chapter in the History of Han
by Ban Gu, written in the first century C.E. Ban Gu was a member of an
extremely devoted and eminent family of ministers of the Later Han,
which rose out of the collapse of Wang Mang’s regime. A Confucian
moralist explanation of the fall of Wang Mang and the success of Later
Han had to show that Wang was brought down by his own moral failings,
not by bad luck or events beyond his control. Ban Gu’s account
presents, very skillfully and insidiously, a picture of Wang as a
power-hungry hypocrite. It records Wang’s many selfless deeds very
matter-of-factly, and it is only gradually that Ban Gu argues that none
of Wang’s acts of selflessness were sincere, that all were calculated
to make the best possible impression and to advance his career. [MOF,
78]
In 1 B.C.E. envoys from a foreign people came
to the capital and presented a white pheasant. It was an auspicious
sign; foreigners had presented a white pheasant to the duke of Zhou. In
1 C.E. various courtiers proposed that the grand dowager empress should
grant him new honors, including the title “Duke Who Brings Peace to the
Han” (An Han gong). Wang
declined repeatedly, insisting that others were more worthy than he.
After his closest associates all had been granted lesser honors, he
finally accepted and was given full power to control the government and
make decisions on behalf of the boy emperor. In 2 C.E. the elaborate
process was begun that would lead to the selection of a wife for the
boy emperor. Wang Mang firmly and repeatedly refused to have his
daughter included among the young women considered, but hundreds of
officials urged that she be selected, and finally he gave in. Now if
the boy lived to adulthood there would be a new Empress Wang, and
the family’s power as the ultimately successful outside relatives would
be unchallengeable.
The normal Han practice was to grant
the father of a new imperial wife a large amount of land and gold;
emperors, after all, were supposed to set an example of filial piety
and generosity to their relatives. Wang Mang accepted these gifts, but
lived much more frugally than most of the great men of his time. He
abstained from meat and rich dishes at any time when there was a food
shortage in the empire, advised the grand dowager empress to dress more
simply, and made large contributions of money and land to relief of the
poor and hungry. Many other great men, it was said, followed his
example in making such contributions. Wang also used his own funds to
support large numbers of scholars at the capital, which enhanced his
reputation for generosity and put some of the best talent in the empire
at his disposal. [MOF, 79-80] |
It is not easy to explain Wang Mang’s decision
to
abandon his declared intention to return power to the Han prince some
day and to take the throne himself. The grand dowager empress was still
alive as the ultimate guarantor of his power. In 9 C.E. he had the Han
prince married to one of his granddaughters, setting the stage for a
still longer continuation of outside-relative power. Perhaps Ban Gu is
right, and usurpation had been his goal all along. Perhaps there were
weaknesses in his position that we cannot see from our limited sources
that impelled him to this step. We do know that at the end of 8 there
was a great rush of reports of portents that Wang should become
emperor. Messengers from Heaven appeared to various people in their
dreams. As a message on a stone was being examined, a wind arose, and
when the cloud of dust subsided there was a pattern of silk on the
ground that was interpreted as another message from Heaven. An official
proposed a reinterpretation of the abortive prophecies of 5 B.C.E. to
mean that a regent would change the reign period. Finally, a metal box
was presented to the ancestral temple of Emperor Gao, founder of the
Han, in which there were two documents one reporting that the Lord of
Heaven was sending a seal to Wang Mang, the other reporting that the
Red Emperor, Emperor Gao, was transmitting the mandate to the Yellow
Emperor. When this was reported to the court, Wang Mang rushed to the
temple of Emperor Gao and declared that he finally was convinced that
he no longer could evade Heaven’s command that he should take the
throne and found a new dynasty. The name of his dynasty, in fact, was
to be New (Xin). [MOF 84]
It was to the Ceremonies of Zhou and other real and imagined Zhou precedents that Wang now turned to guide a series of far-reaching policy initiatives....Most
important of all was his proclamation that henceforth there would be no
private landholding; all land would be known as the king’s fields
and would be subject to confiscation and redistribution. Immediately,
rich families having more than one hundred mou
(about thirty-three acres) of land were to distribute the excess over
that amount to their distant relatives or neighbors. Slaves were not
freed, but it was forbidden to buy or sell them. Wang justified these
measures as first steps toward the restoration of the well-field
system, which he said had been inhumanely destroyed by the Qin.
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Ban’s account of Wang’s last years shows an
increasingly tyrannical government, arresting thousands of people for
violating the monopoly on minting coins, conducting executions the year
round (in gross violation of the harmony of Heaven and humanity, which
restricted them to autumn, the season when the natural world dies).
Wang is shown as more and more out of touch, not wanting to hear about
rebel advances, but refusing to allow his commanders to mobilize or
move their troops on their own initiative. Pursuing the lore of omens
and correspondences that had justified his seizure of power, in 21 he
ordered a wide search in the empire for women to enter his household:
“Because the Yellow Lord had 120 women, he became an
immortal.” He also
sent men to violate the temple of Emperor Gao of the Han, chopping up
its doors and windows, whipping its walls with the whips used to whip
criminals. He spent vast sums on splendid ceremonies at the temples of
his ancestors; he had come a long way from the times when he did not
eat meat if there was hunger anywhere in the empire. Even in these late
years, however, Ban records one case in which Wang paid attention to a
comprehensive denunciation of his policies and followed one part of its
recommendations. The monopolies were abolished, but at the end of 22,
much too late. [MOF, 88]
Ban Zhao
c. 48-120
A classical education was supposed to be a preparation for a moral
life, but especially for service as a minister of the emperor. Since
women did not serve in the bureaucracy, the incentives to give girls
such an education were not so strong. But it seems likely that Ban Zhao
received almost as good an education as her brothers. In an age when
the importance of good order and good example within a great family was
widely acknowledged, such an education of an upper-class girl may have
been more common than it was later. But the Ban family had an
exceptional heritage...and there cannot have been very many women who
got such a thorough classical and literary education. It began under
her father’s direction, and after his death her much older brothers
probably helped to teach her and find teachers for her. [MOF, 92-93]
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Needle and Thread
Ban Zhao
Chill autumn gleam of steel,
Fine, straight, and sharp,
You thrust your way in and gradually advance,
So that things far apart are all strung into one.
Needle and thread, your orderly traces
Seem to have no beginning, but join far and wide
Going back, twisting, flaws are mended,
As smooth as the fine coat of a lamb.
How can we measure your work?
All of it makes your memorial stone.
You’re found in the village home,
And in the great noble hall.
[MOF, 95] |
In 96 or 97 Ban Zhao was back in the capital, beginning
the golden years of her influence and prestige at court....She was a
well-educated young woman with an excellent reputation for virtuous
conduct, diligence, and filial piety. Her entry into the palace, or her
later rise in the hierarchy of palace women, may have resulted from the
emperor’s efforts to work out a respectable and controllable set of
relations to his ladies and their relatives....She taught the Classics,
astronomy, and mathematics. She also was commanded to compose poems on
unusual gifts and other special occasions....
The emperor also ordered Ban Zhao to
come to the imperial library and use its documents to complete her
brother’s history. The sections left unfinished at his untimely death
included the table of high officials and the essay on astronomy. Ban
Zhao completed these very difficult sections. She explained them and
the rest of the history to court scholars who found parts of it hard to
understand; one of them assisted her in the final editing work. She
seems to have been a full participant in the literary and intellectual
activity of the court, discussing texts and issues with men and women
and teaching their sons and daughters. [MOF, 96-97]
Ban Zhao had made of her life a fine embroidery of
scholarship, personal integrity, and a political astuteness that owed
much to her reading of history and all that she heard from her brother
and other participants in capital politics. But she also was the
product of a long tradition of ideals of feminine behavior and of her
own experiences as a daughter-in-law. Women should be modest, retiring,
diligent in their household duties. It is up to them to keep peace in
the household, winning the acceptance of the mother-in-law by modesty
and diligence in waiting on her, earning the respect and friendship of
brothers- and sisters-in-law. A good name is more important than
anything else. Frivolity, gossip, loud chatter with women friends are
to be avoided.
Ban Zhao embodied and taught, especially to
Dowager Empress Deng, a pattern of integrity, of modesty and yielding
in inter-personal relations, of not overreaching or wanting too much
power, that was rooted in these feminine virtues and that served her
and her imperial pupil very well. she also wrote, for the younger
generation and for generations yet to come, a famous statement of these
principles called the Nü Jie
(Admonitions to Women)....In it she brought up one issue on which she
found herself out of step with her own time and on which later
generations heeded her much too seldom:
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| Now look at the gentlemen of the present age. They only know
that wives must be controlled and that [the husband’s] rules and
precedence must be established. They therefore teach their boys to read
texts and commentaries. But they do not understand that husbands and
masters must also be served, and that proper relationships and
ceremonies should be maintained. But if one only teaches men and does
not teach women, is that not ignoring the essential relation between
them? According to the Ceremonies,
children are taught to read beginning at the age of eight, and by the
age of fifteen they should be ready for thoughtful study of the
Classics. Why should [the education of girls as well as boys] not be
according to this rule? [MOF, 98-99] |
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