Tang Civilisation
The Tang epoch was China’s golden age. If we care to look for points of comparison with the Roman empire that allow us at least to understand better this faraway world, we can say that the Tang were the equivalent of the Antonines. Whilst it was the Han (call it the Julian dynasty) that founded the empire, the Tang was the dynasty that, having reconstituted it (which the Antonines did not have to do), brought it to its height, consolidated it, and managed it. [13]
During the three centuries of the Tang, Chinese industry and commerce developed with ever-increasing prosperity; during that period the two basic Chinese industries – silk and porcelain – reached their highest degree of perfection. It was during this period also that printing became highly developed. The first mention of printing using wood block characters relates to the time of the first Sui monarch; [14] the first reference to it using stone relates to the year 837, during the Tang’s last century. [15]
It was also under the Tang, during the seventh century, that the Chinese introduced the stirrup in the harnessing of horse saddles, a considerable improvement, and one that only reached Western Europe through the intermediary of the Arabs some two centuries later.
It was also under the Tang, during the seventh century, that the Chinese introduced the stirrup in the harnessing of horse saddles, a considerable improvement, and one that only reached Western Europe through the intermediary of the Arabs some two centuries later.
More important than all that, and what remains as the great work of the time, was the completion of the colonisation of the south. It was, in fact, only starting from the Tang period that the Chinese fully occupied this vast region and brought it completely into use; it is for this reason that the inhabitants of it still today describe themselves as ‘the sons of Tang’, and not as ‘the sons of Han’, as do the northern Chinese.
From the economic point of view, this complete sinicisation of the south had two important consequences, which are reflected in the ethnic character of the Chinese people.
The first consisted of the addition of a new cultivation to China’s traditional crops; that of tea. It was only, in fact, during the eighth century that this began to take on any importance. The tea plant is cultivated on the sinewy hills extending from Hangzhou to Canton at some distance from the coast. In contrast with other Chinese crops, tea is thus not a crop of the plain, but a crop of the slopes; from that comes a new technique, and a new type of man: alongside the cereal grower we now have a cultivator of trees. [
The second consequence, an even more important one, is that thanks to the south, the Chinese were to become sailors, and were to add to their commerce on the land the much more far-flung commerce of the sea. Just as the northern coasts of China were unsuitable for navigation, the southern coasts just as much invited it. Take a look at a map of China! To the north, the Great Plain borders on a seacoast (the ‘Yellow Sea’) which the Yellow River, constantly bringing fresh alluvial deposits, provides with deltas; flat, without any inlets, ports, or any sheltered places. On the other hand, to the south of the Yellow River we have a typical ria coast (with numerous inlets). At high tide, the sea enters the valleys, which then become openings in the shore, each of them providing some sort of shelter. Furthermore, the peaks that previously rose on dry land in front of what is now the coast and were later half-submerged and surrounded by sea water, now emerge like a chain of islets forming a real protective curtain, behind which, cut off from the high seas, a whole region of calm water extends.
That is why the effective control of the southern coast by the Chinese provided the signal for their maritime vocation. Very quickly, great centres of navigation and business were established along this coast, and there they prospered. First of all, two great emporia are found there at either end: Hangzhou at its northern extremity, close to the mouth of the Blue River, and Canton at its southern extremity near the outlet of the Zhu Jiang. Between these two giants were ports of lesser but nevertheless of considerable importance – such as those of Wenzhou, Fuzhou and Guangzhou, some of which, notably the last-named, at certain times even rivalled the ports of Hangzhou and Canton.
Moreover, the Chinese merchants did not make these ports a closely-guarded preserve. They were in fact freely used by the merchant ships of all the maritime nations. The Arabs notably were assiduous in frequenting them. It was through them that the great centres of world luxury – Baghdad, the capital cities of India and the court of China – found the means of establishing their mutual commercial relations.
he Tang were also great builders. To them is due the credit for the greater part of China’s public works. Their chief preoccupation appears to have been concerned with lessening the perils to which Chinese ships navigating the northern coasts were exposed, and so by artificial means extending the Chinese maritime commerce of the south as far north as possible.
The most notable of these works, comparable in its magnitude with the Great Wall, was the Grand Canal, which was dug in the seventh century. [17] This canal is over 1000 kilometres in length, and passing from Hangzhou to Tianjin, it enables goods unloaded in the latter port to reach the northern extremity of the country without having to face the dangers of the Yellow Sea.
There can be no doubt that navigation around the peninsula of Shandong must have been extremely perilous at the time, for shortly after the Tang period another canal was constructed, which cut off Shandong at its base, going from Jiaozhou Bay to the Gulf of Jilin.
Finally, amongst the other spectacular works of this period we must mention the great dyke of 144 kilometres which lines the whole sea front south of the Bay of Hangzhou, and which at the same time serves as a towpath for a canal dug alongside the dyke and as a protection for the cultivated lands situated below the sea level.
Side by side with these public utility works, in order to set the tone of the time, we must mention purely luxury constructions, such as the park made by the last of the Sui at Luoyang with a 120 kilometres perimeter, decorated with a lake of nine kilometres circumference. Luoyang thus became a kind of ‘Versailles’. [19]
The administration of the empire on its part had become fixed. The system that made examination the sole means of access to public office was everywhere rigorously applied.
As for the rest, all the arts – architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, etc. – now reached their classical period. The Tang style can be summed up by what underlies the classical form; a vigour in simplicity. The artist now enjoyed complete mastery over his means of expression, and was not yet merely searching for complexity.
Mercenaries and Pacifists
It is not difficult to show, however, that despite its outward appearance of splendour, the Tang empire, like that of the Roman Antonines, was steadily approaching its eclipse. In both cases, the cause was the same – the same which had also led to the destruction of the Han empire – in other words, the pressure of the barbarians, which was becoming increasingly persistent. It was not now pressure from faraway barbarians like the western Turks, whose Islamisation had set up an insuperable barrier to any further expansion of the Chinese empire, but this time it was pressure from barbarians much closer at hand, those who for the most part were themselves already three-quarters Chinese – those, in fact, whom China had taken into its service.
The policy that the Han had inaugurated of winning over the Huns to defend China’s frontiers was strongly extended and intensified under the Tang. It was not enough to install several tribes along the interior of the Great Wall merely as auxiliary troops, because it was the eastern Turks who now constituted the main part of the Chinese army; it was they who formed the shock troops who had been used to reconquer the empire. The difference between the Han and the Tang was that whilst the Han created the Chinese empire using Chinese troops, the Tang reconstituted the empire and maintained it using mercenary Turks under the command of Turkish generals.
There were still, of course, Chinese troops in use, but they were nothing more than a militia raised by conscription, and their rôle was mainly that of auxiliary troops. They did the job quite reluctantly, because the Chinese preferred not to be soldiers at all. It seems, indeed, that this was the era when Chinese pacifism first made its appearance. One of the chief poets in the most brilliant period of the Tang era, Du Fu, who lived in the middle of the eighth century under Xuan Zong, [20] one of the two greatest emperors of the dynasty, in fact wrote:
In the border lands blood flows in streams,
Yet still ambition fires the Emperor’s dreams!
In truth, ‘tis but misfortune to have sons,
Only to fall in combat with the Huns!
Surely you see that round the Koko Nor
Yet still ambition fires the Emperor’s dreams!
In truth, ‘tis but misfortune to have sons,
Only to fall in combat with the Huns!
Surely you see that round the Koko Nor
Only blanched skeletons remain of yore!
Or again:
Our sovereign wields a mighty empire,
To what more can he now aspire?
To what more can he now aspire?
And again:
Let the Wall guard us from the barbarian band,
And send our men back to their native land.
And send our men back to their native land.
A military empire and an anti-militarist population – such is the paradox that the China of the Tang era presents to us. It was a paradoxical situation that could only last through the presence of these foreign mercenaries, whose rôle increased in importance in proportion as the aversion to war developed amongst the citizens of China.
But those who possess arms possess power. Throughout these three centuries, the mercenary Turks were not slow to intervene in domestic quarrels. Indeed, the emperors themselves approached them when they found themselves in difficulty, and called for their aid to consolidate the throne.
Thus when the dowager empress Wu Zetian dethroned her son at the close of the seventh century in order to proclaim herself empress, it was a Turk who demanded the son’s restoration. [21] Half a century later, it was another mercenary Turk who compelled the great emperor Xuan Zong to abdicate, and it was only by begging the aid of other Turks (the Uighurs) that the latter’s son succeeded in entering the capital and ascending his father’s throne. [22] Finally, it was to the Turks again that the last of the Tang emperors appealed in their struggle against the great internal revolt which was at last to sweep them away.[23]
The Final Revolt
The social process which we have seen on two occasions under the Han Dynasty was once again reproduced under the Tang, periods of progress inevitably engendering the elements of social upheaval.
Up to now, we have seen two quite distinct systems of ownership in operation – one consisting of the distribution of land on an egalitarian basis between all the families of the village, each family having the right to cultivate its plot and enjoy the products, but without the right to dispose of the land; the other being the right of ownership pure and simple, including the owner’s right to bequeath and sell the land as he so desired.
It seems likely that following the convulsions of the Middle Ages, the system of tenure that had finally been established under the Tang was a mixed system, a compromise between the two previous systems. In effect, every male inhabitant of a village had a right of usage over a plot of between three and six hectares on the one hand, with the hereditary right to 1.5 hectares as a maximum, but this latter plot, just like the former, was inalienable.
Despite the legal inalienability of all peasant property, the concentration of property into fewer hands continued apace, because, as distinct from the peasants, the higher functionaries had obtained the right to unlimited ownership of land – unlimited alike in extent and duration. Then, notwithstanding all the precautions taken, the small peasant proprietor ended up becoming absorbed by the great patrician proprietor. From the end of the eighth century, the families of landowners represented only five per cent of the population, so strong had the forces of concentration become. The laws were just laughed at and were invariably evaded. As long as social peace continues, as long as ‘order’ reigns, as long as economic activity goes on apace, as long as accumulation grows in importance, so shall the process of concentration continue to operate, a concentration that leads to troubles, disorders, revolts and revolutions, and which can only end in having to start all over again.
Thus from the fact of the concentration of property, just as at the end of the Former and Later Han eras, we find at the end of the Tang era a great mass of famished and ravenous landless peasants, who at last felt themselves goaded into revolt.
As before, it was also in Shandong, or, more precisely, on the borders of Shandong and Jilin, that the revolt flared up in 874. It snowballed rapidly, and found a leader in one of the literati, Huang Chao. [24] Soon almost all China had fallen into the hands of the rebels: to begin with the south with Fuzhou and Canton, and then old China with its two capital cities, Chang'an and Luoyang.
To save himself, the emperor, who had taken refuge in Sichuan, appealed to his Senegalese, or I should say, his Turks. One of their groups based in Luoyang succeeded in defeating the Chinese peasants and reinstating the emperor in Chang'an, whilst Huang Chao was slain in Shandong.
Nonetheless, the days of the Tang were numbered, for one of the chiefs of the peasant revolt who had betrayed his brothers and had thereby received the governorship of a province as a reward contrived to have the emperor assassinated in 904, and shortly afterwards proclaimed himself emperor. [25]
He was an emperor without an empire, because during the turbulent 30 years that followed, those centrifugal forces that always take a free course whenever they are not firmly controlled had already broken China up into a number of independent states, so that we are now about to re-enter a new period of Middle Ages.
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Empire (618–907 AD) was the second largest and longest-enduring empire in the region after the Han Empire. The Tang Empire resembled the Western Han Empire (206 BC – 9 AD) in some ways such as the prominent role of trade with western countries and the way the empire began and ended.
Similarities With the Western Han Empire
The Tang Empire was like the Han Empire in foreign trade, land area, population, capital cities, and the beginning and end of the empires.
The land area of the Western Han Empire and the Tang Empire was about the same. However, the Tang Empire didn't include the southern regions aroundYunnan. This area was the territory of the Nanzhou Empire that had a capital near Dali. The Tang empire expanded westward into Central Asia.
Like the Western Han Empire, when the Tang Empire was at its height,Chang'an （today's Xi'an) was its capital city. In both eras, Chang'an was one of the largest cities in the world. Interestingly, the imperial courts of both empires sought refuge in Luoyang when Chang'an was attacked.
At its height, the Tang Empire had about the same size of population as the Western Han Empire did at its height, about 50 or 60 million people.
Like the Western Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty benefited from trade along the Silk Road trade routes and was influenced by contact with the West. They benefited from this trade and conquests in Central Asia in the early years, and the Tang Empire grew larger and more prosperous, and a new direction was set for religion and culture.
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