The History of China - #3 - Xia 1: The Xia, China's First Dynasty

Episode Date: November 26, 2013

This week we move into the beginnings of China’s dynastic period where rulers began favoring birthright over merit – and the consequences will be almost immediately apparent. Beginning with the triumphant reign of the heroic Yu the Great, the Xia’s semi-accidental trip into dynastic succession will swiftly spiral downward, eventually leaving a usurping general in power, and the House of Xia all but exterminated after decades in exile. Rebooted as of 09/06/2016 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history.

Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 3, The Xia, China's First Dynasty Last week we concluded China's prehistoric origins mythos, known as the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors period, finishing out with Yu the Great's mastery over the flooding rivers of China and subsequent promotion to imperial air. Today, we step into the first supposed dynastic period of China, the Xia. Now, prior to now, I have said that we are stepping out of mythology and into history with the Xia dynasty, but having said that, I'm going to need to immediately walk it right back and say, no, no, we're not quite out of the woods yet. As we'll be going over today,

the Xia Dynasty is still largely a fictionalized accounting of a preliterate society, and there's a big question mark hanging over it about whether we should take it as mythos or history. So before we launch into the story itself, then, we ought to take a bit of a longer look at what we mean when we talk about the Xia, both in terms of pure historiographical evidence, but also in terms of what it means in a cultural sense. Historian Kuang Chiu-chang writes in the Cambridge History of Ancient China, quote, Was there indeed a Xia dynasty at the head of Chinese history?

In a traditional Chinese historiography, this could not be questioned, because the sequence of the Three Augustones a traditional Chinese historiography, this could not be questioned, because the sequence of the Three Augustones, the Five Emperors, and the Three Dynasties lay at the root of every educated Chinese person's idea of the beginning of Chinese history, end quote. That conception only actually began to change starting in the 1920s, when a somewhat renegade segment of Chinese historians began to, gasp, question the historical basis of these ancient supposed histories. This, in fact, led to the formation of an organization which called itself the rather scandalous name Yigu Pai, meaning the School of Doubting Antiquity. Their very first target, in fact, was the subject of our story today, Yu the Great,

whom they proceeded to tear down as a work of absolute mythological fantasy. For a while, there was even a sub-school within the doubting antiquarians that pressed that the whole idea of the Xia and Shang were pure flights of fantasy and completely ahistorical. Unlike the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors period, however, there are distinct archaeological findings consistent with this period that show distinct urbanization, bronze tools and weapons, tombs suggesting ritual burial practices, and even large palaces uncovered in the western Henan province. This ancient culture is known as the Arlitoa civilization, and there are strong indicators that these may have been the people on whom the story of the Xia Dynasty would later be based.

Both the period of the Arlituo civilization, radiocarbon dated as existing between 2100 and 1800 BCE, as well as its location in China physically, centered as it was on the Yellow River Valley, are consistent with the accounts of the Xia dynasty. Moreover, as Chang puts it, Nevertheless, in spite of the basic acceptance of the premise of there being a Xia, the traditional idea of the Xia, Xiang, and Zhou as being sequential,

as in one after the other after the other, is increasingly viewed by many scholars as inappropriate. A broad consensus has been reached that in all likelihood the three ancient quote-unquote dynasties were to at least some extent overlapping and co-existent civilizations, perhaps the three most powerful of the so-called 10,000 states of the ancient past. The idea of this collection of semi-verifiable myths and legends being given the same cultural credence as the verifiably historical Shang and Zhou dynasties yet to come, in fact stems back as far as our written histories will take us, namely to the very first historical work to come out of China, or at least survive the rigors of

the ages, the Shiji, meaning simply historical records, but more commonly called the records of the grand historian, the aforementioned historian being the Han Dynasty-era scholar Sima Qian. In the second chapter of his Bamboo Scroll work, he titled it the Xia Benji, or Basic Annals of the Xia, thus giving it the same historical weight as his later chapters on subsequent dynastic lines. As such, even though the Xia cannot be accurately described as a true dynasty in the normal sense, it's nevertheless customary to call it one. Once again, from Chang,

Present evidence suggests that there was indeed a Xia dynasty. That Sima Qian selected Xia from among many contemporary polities was probably because during the earliest part of the Chinese Bronze Age, or the Three Dynasties period, Xia was the most powerful. If Arlituo can be identified with Xia, this is indeed true. Okay, did I lose you yet? Because as fascinating as it all is, I fully acknowledge a good narrative it does not make. I just wanted to get it out there in the open right off the bat. From this point on, we're going to primarily stick with the traditional narrative accounting of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou, even as we acknowledge that much of what we're offered is a goodly blend of fact and fiction.

After all, in the words of historian Pierre Briant, translating Leo Ferre, quote, even if it is not true, you need to believe in ancient history. When last we saw Yu the Great, he was riding high after emerging victorious in his decade-long struggle to control the yearly floodwaters that had inundated the Yellow River valleys. Just four days before he had been called away to replace his father and save the empire, Yu had married a young woman named Lady Tushan, who took her name from her home region. Newly wedded though they were, Yu had no choice but to heed the emperor's summons, and so bid his bride goodbye, saying he did not know when he would be able to return, but that he would do so. In fact, it would be more than 13 years before he would set foot inside his own house again, although he passed by it three times.

The first time, his wife Tushan was in labor with his son, Qi. By the time he passed by again, Qi was old enough to call out for his father. And the third time, Qi was a boy of more than ten. Each time he passed, his family would beg him to come home to them, but Yu refused each time, stating that while the country suffered and rendered so many without food or shelter, he could not in good conscience partake in such luxuries himself. Yu's battle against the flood ravaged his body, callousing his hands and feet entirely.

But his ultimate success saw his Xia tribe's prominence greatly expanded, and it came to control the surrounding clans. One might think that having spent 13 years away from his family, Yu would be entitled to take a break, but a hero's work is never done. Having barely crossed the threshold of his home, Emperor Shun once again called upon Lord Yu, this time to raise an army to suppress a host of barbarian raiders known as the San Miao, which had been using the empire's preoccupation with its natural disaster situation to raid and pillage the border tribes with near impunity.

With the rivers once again under control, though, consequence was about to catch up with the San Miao. Used to undefended border towns and at most untrained militia opposing them, they stood no chance at all facing a force like the one Yu brought to bear against them. In short order, Yu had shattered the Sanyao host and drove their remnants south of the River Han. Legacy and reputation now beyond compare, Yu the Great accepted the Emperor's decision to appoint him the heir to the throne. After a good and proper showing of declining the offer

and insisting that someone better must be available, surely. appoint him the heir to the throne, after a good and proper showing of declining the offer and insisting that someone better must be available, surely. No? Oh, well, okay then. Yu succeeded Shen in the year 2197 BCE, at the age of 53. He then established his capital at the city of Anyi in modern Shanxi, what's today north-central China. After taking office, one of Emperor Yu's first undertakings was a bit of housecleaning. You may recall that as Emperor, Shen had adroitly divided the emperor into 12 administrative provinces, or Zhou. These had served their intended purpose well enough, namely as an emergency measure to maintain local order as normal lines of communication had become impossible during the Great Flood. Now that the land was at peace and dried out, though,

Yu deemed these emergency delineations inefficient, and having become intimately acquainted with all corners of the empire during the course of his travails, no one knew the lay of the land better than its new emperor. Rather than 12 provinces, Yu whittled it down to just nine, namely Ji, Yan, Qing, Shu, Yang, Jing, Yu, Liang, and Yong. But don't worry, you don't need to remember that. Although I will say that if you go to our website, thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com, you will find maps of everything we've been talking about so far, so I suggest you do so. His land thus efficiently reapportioned, you then went on to the next logical step, taxation. The tribute demanded

was paid in the omni-useful metal of the day, used in everything from coinage to tools, weapons, armor, and as we'll soon see, ritual vessels as well. I'm talking about copper. And if one had tin, it and that pliable copper could be smelted together into the titanium of its day, bronze. The Arlito culture, as mentioned before, is known to have used and been capable of producing bronze, though the relative scarcity of tin at this time made the alloy a rather uncommon commodity until later on. Nevertheless, we can thus safely place the Xia slash Arlituo as being well within its own Bronze Age. From the nine provinces, Emperor Yu received nine tributes of copper, and he soon put them all to work, having them forged into the first

nine tripod cauldrons, or jioding. Now when I say cauldron, you may think of something along the weird systems bubbling potion pot in Macbeth, but these were no soup cookers. Each of the jioding weighed upwards of 30,000 jin, or roughly seven and a half tons, and were intricately engraved with ritual symbols. Which means, all told, Yu had an excess of 67 tons of copper arriving at his doorstep. The tripod cauldrons were used in ceremonial affairs of state as vessels in which to offer ritual sacrifices to the ancestors of both heaven and earth, as well as the gods themselves. Given enough time, the cauldrons would work their way into a central position in the ceremonies, and stand as direct symbols of dynastic authority and individual power within

the empire. To wit, scholars from among the nobility were granted access to the use of between one and three cauldrons depending on their rank. Ministers of state were entitled to use as many as five in their ceremonies, while the vassal kings were granted use of as many as seven. Only the son of heaven himself, of course, the emperor, would ever have the right to use all nine. At this point, I would like to take a moment to discuss the concept of what a dynasty is. Now, for some of you, this might be obvious, even simplistic, but we're on the cusp of China's shift into a dynastic state, versus its until-now meritocratic autocracy. A dynasty is, most simply, a sequence of rulers in which

each successive ruler is of the same family as the previous one. Though each of the emperors in our story up through now has indeed been the blood of Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, you'll remember that the unstated rule had been to seek out the most qualified candidate from among the nobility, regardless of his station. Though it will not be Yu's fault, this meritocratic system is about to go by the wayside permanently, and with Augusto. Like his predecessors, as the Emperor Yu aged and began to feel the ravages of time, he would begin seeking out a suitable heir to take his place, someone worthy enough to carry on his august legacy. His first choice was very much in line with the abdication system set out by his ancestors,

his eminently able minister of justice named Gao Yao. Gao Yao is best remembered for being one of the grandfathers of a concept so central to the Chinese theory of governance that it is still widely accepted today, that of the Mandate of Heaven. Now, we'll get into the Mandate more later, once we get to the Shang Dynasty, but for now, I'll let Gao Yao's words speak for themselves. Quote, If this sounds oddly Lockean, like a 4,000-year-old consent of the governed treatise, fear not, it is no such thing.

Rather, the musings of Gao Yao and their ultimate form of this concept as the Mandate of Heaven will serve merely, though repeatedly, as a last-ditch check against unrestrained tyranny. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Unfortunately for the designs of Yu the Great, Minister Gaoyao would die well before his liege lord. Thus robbed of his successor,

Yu designated his close friend and minister of domestication, Yi, as his next heir. Yi and Yu were all but inseparable, their bond forged while struggling alongside one another for the full 13-year campaign to control the Great Flood. With his affairs now seemingly in order, after a reign of 45 years, Yu the Great succumbed to an illness in 2154 BCE. It was at this point, however, that things would start to get a little hairy. Though Yi was the designated successor, there are two stories which help to explain what would happen next. The first tells of Yu the Great's fame and popularity being so vast that

it transferred to everything associated with the late emperor as well. First and foremost, his son Qi, as surely Yu's greatness had rubbed off on the boy. Never mind that during his formative years he saw his father all of twice. As such, the local leaders of the Xia clan clamored for Qi to succeed his father instead of Yi. The popular pressure to raise Qi to the throne grew so intense that Minister Yi eventually bowed to the demand, likely fearing the potential consequences of refusing the powerful Xia leaders, and passed the throne to young Qi. The second account, however, paints a far darker portrait of the soon-to-be first

dynastic leader of Xia. The Bamboo Annals tells of Yi ascending to the throne and assuming rule, but before he could even warm the seat, Qi either ordered his rival's assassination or perhaps even carried out the deed himself. Whether it was through acclaim or murder, Yu the Great's son took command of the Huaxia Empire in 2146 BCE. Looking back from the period, it's likely that Emperor Qi did not realize the enormity of his actions. Who can ever really know, after all, the rippling effects of their decisions for the future? Indeed, there wasn't really anything overtly novel about his seizure of power. 200 years earlier, King Ku had named his own son Yao as heir, and Yao had then been temporarily supplanted by his own brother Zhi. Nevertheless, through the lens of hindsight,

we can definitively say that Qi's accession to the throne marked the end of meritocratic succession of Chinese leaders for the next four millennia. As you can imagine, not everyone was pleased with such a state of affairs. One such man was Lord Youhu, who found the opportunity to express his displeasure when Emperor Qi announced a grand feast to celebrate his ascension. Lord Yo-Hu flatly refused to attend the festivities, an unmistakable message and unignorable insult to the prestige of the new emperor. Tarantino fans out there, this situation rings of nothing so much as the scene from Kill Bill when the distraught Yakuza boss Tanaka made known his displeasure with Lucy Liu's seizing control of the syndicate. And just like boss Tanaka, Lord Yo-Hu was about to serve as an abject lesson on the price of crossing the sovereign. Enraged at this subordinate's rank in subordination, Qi directed the army of Gan to mete out punishment

to his wayward vassal. Youhu stood absolutely no chance and was crushed by the might of Gan's army. I like to think that Emperor Qi then stood on a table and declared, Now if anyone else has something to say, now's the time. Undeniably badass as his reign was, Emperor Qi would have a middling tenure on the throne, with accounts ranging from a 10 to 29 year period of rule. Qi had five sons, but the only one we're really going to care about for now is his eldest, Tai Kang, who would succeed his father in 2117. Though Qi's abandonment of the abdication system,

which had served his predecessors so well, surely must have seemed like a good idea at the time. With his death in 2117, it became immediately apparent what an ordeal tipping over this particular apple cart was shaping up to be. Sure, a familial struggle for power was nothing new in ancient China. The past had had its fair share of competing claimants to power, and even the occasional coup d'etat and assassination. But Qi's five sons set a new high-water mark for interregnal strife. The power of designation still proved the deciding factor, however, and it was Taikong in the end who would emerge victorious and crowned later the same year. Taikong is best remembered for his hunting prowess,

and that right there should tell you something about our new emperor's priorities in life. As hard as he'd fought to retain his claim to the imperial throne, one gets the distinct impression that it was the fight itself that drove him into action rather than the expectations of the office. He certainly seems to have had no love for its trappings or responsibilities, and instead of attending to his expected duties, spent much of his reign attending to the all-important tasks of hunting animals, stalking liquor, and chasing tail. Yes, yes, it is good to be the king, but only if you actually try to do some kingly things,

you know? As it stood, the weight of Taikong's hedonism bent the already weakened imperial system to its breaking point. It was just a matter of time before the one final push shattered the artifice entirely. The straw that broke that camel's back was named Huoyi, backed by his Youchong tribe of the Eastern Empire. An alternate telling is that Huoyi was in fact the god of archery, much like Greece's Apollo, and married to the goddess of the moon, Chang'e.

Now, if by any chance that name, Chang'e, rings a bell for you, that's because it's the name of the ongoing Chinese lunar probe program. The Chang'e space program has already provided the most detailed 3D map of the lunar surface ever, and initiated a deep space exploration mission. In fact, the Chang'e 3 mission, when it touched down on the lunar surface on the 2nd of December 2013, was the first man-made object to set down on the moon since the end of the American Apollo program in 1973. Back to our story though, divine or not, Huiyi seized the opportunity presented when Taikang was, as usual, away on some hunting expedition. With almost casual ease, his Yongchou forces slipped into the capital of Anyi,

occupied it, and declared that Huiyi was the new ruler of the Huasha Empire, thanks very much. Taken very much by surprise, Emperor Taikong abruptly found himself in what was to become a permanent exile. He would spend the rest of his life, at least those periods that hunting did not take up, fighting to regain the throne that he had so disdained while on it, but would eventually meet his death by drowning in the middle of a pitched battle. In the capital city, there may have been, in fact, a collective sigh of relief that Taikong, the absentee emperor, had received the boot from the capital. But if that had been the case, it was certainly a short-lived one. In fact, the usurper, Huoyi, quickly proved himself to be much the same as the man he had just kicked out, except this time even worse. He was a great hunter, he was a great drinker, he was a

great womanizer, he just so happened to be a terrible leader. In a twist of fate that one could see coming almost a mile away, the usurper himself would find himself usurped, this time by his own general, Hao Zhuo. While General Hao wasn't about to leave loose ends lying around that could swing around and bite him in the butt, Taikang's refusal to fade gracefully into obscurity, his stubborn refusal to call it quits, had proven the ineffectiveness of any such leniency. And so, General Hao had Huoyiyi executed. Back out in the wilds of the borderlands with the remnants of the Xia dynasty, with Taikang now holding court over the bottom of a river,

his younger brother, Zhongkang, assumed the ever-so-lofty title of Emperor of China in Exile. And he would fill that placeholder position to a T by doing little more than keeping the House of Xia's head just barely above water by remaining alive, having a son to replace him, and uselessly twiddling his thumbs in the hopes of finding some way back from banishment. His eldest son, Xiang of Xia, would himself take up the mantle of placeholder-in-chief after his father gave up the ghost, following some 13 years of carrying the torch. Now, Xiang of Xiao is credited with employing the haha jokes on you this was totally our plan the whole time strategy by officially redesignating the backwater camp they were holed up in as the new new imperial capital, Xiangqiu. It seems like something that anyone would just roll their eyes at and say, oh yeah, okay, Xiang, that's the new capital. Right, yeah, go rub two sticks together or something.

Yet somehow, inexplicably, the gambit seems to have at least in part kind of stuck, at least in the long run. Apparently some hint of imperial majesty did manage to rub off on the village, since we will be returning there in a few episodes' time when the Shang dynasty decides to affirm Shangqiu as their own capital. Go figure. In order to look like he was doing something, well, anything at all, really, Shang wisely chose to campaign against the enemies that he was sure to defeat, that is, the local barbarian tribes called the Huai, Fei, Feng, and Huang, respectively. They, as it turned out, made for just about the perfect punching bag for the depleted might of the Xia to buff up against,

obnoxious enough that their frequent raids against the border peoples made for an easily justifiable target, yet small enough to be able to safely engage each in turn with virtually no risk of further defeat. The subsequent string of victories both emboldened the loyalist Xia forces and began attracting some new allies. Perhaps, they thought, the ember of the Xia hadn't burned out yet completely. Back in the quote-unquote former capital of Anyi, the usurper general Han Zhuo did not take the news of a resurgent Xia element lying down. Now, it's one thing when an outcast dreg of a former imperial house continues to call itself a dynasty from out in a hunting camp in the middle of nowhere.

But it's another thing entirely when that same has-been family begins attracting a force significant enough to maybe possibly, you know, do something about it. Thus, Han Zhuo finally got around to ordering the coup you know, do something about it. Thus, Han Jue finally got around to ordering the Ku De Gra to the House of Xia, and a mere half century after their initial exile. I guess better late than never, right? Han Jue charged his two sons, Han Jiao and Han Yi, with marching their armies into the wild and against the Xia encampment to snuff them out once and for all. And make no mistake, while the Xia element had proved itself to be more than a match for disunited bands of tribal barbarians, facing down the fully modern professional fighting force that

was the Hua Xia Imperial Army was light years beyond their capabilities. In 2047 BCE, Han Jiao and Han Yi carried out their order of extermination with a brutal efficiency and annihilated the Xia defenders with extreme prejudice. Xiang of Xiao was slain on the field, having conducted his people in exile for some 28 years. With the city of Xiangqiu in flames, the exiled emperor slain, and the population put to the sword, the brothers Han were satisfied that they had carried out their orders to completion, and that the legacy of Xia was now nothing more than food for the crows circling overhead and piles of ash still smoking. Duly victorious, they turned their armies around and headed back towards civilization and the capital city, Anyi.

As it would turn out, though, their extermination of Shangqiu and the Xia Dynasty hadn't been quite as thorough as the Han brothers had assumed. You see, Shang's young wife, Empress Ji, had managed to escape the carnage by clambering under the city wall and making her way on foot to her family's headquarters, a town called Yoren. Within her, she carried a child, the last of the Xiaolang, a boy who history would remember as Shao Kang. And so next time, Han Zhao and Han Yi will discover what happens when you assume, and Shao Kong, once he's all grown up, will go on nothing less than a roaring rampage of revenge to take back his family's rightful throne. Thanks for listening. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such.

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