Lesson 17 The short-term unification of the Western Jin Dynasty and the inward

Establishment of Western Jin

In the late Three Kingdoms period, Wei became stronger and Wu and Shu were declining. In 263, Wei destroyed Shu.

After the death of Cao Pi, Sima Yi, the First Lieutenant, became involved in assisting the newly crowned young emperor. Soon, Sima Yi gradually took control of the military and political power of Wei. In 266, Sima Yan, Sima Yi's grandson, made himself emperor and changed the name of the state to Jin, with Luoyang as the capital, known as the Western Jin. In 280, the Western Jin Dynasty destroyed Wu and unified the country.

The royal family and many ministers of the Western Jin Dynasty were big landowners and noblemen. The Western Jin Dynasty formulated a series of policies that favored the great landowners and nobles in order to protect their interests: many of the great nobles and landowners at that time often lacked ambition in their strategies of governance, but mostly defended the power of their own families, and took pride in their luxurious and extravagant lives and pursued pleasures.

Rebellion of the Eight Kings

In the early years of the Western Jin Dynasty, Emperor Wu of Jin thought that Cao Wei had weakened the power of the kings he had enfeoffed and led to the death of the kings in isolation, so he enfeoffed kings with the same surname. Later on, Emperor Wu of Jin sent kings to guard the important towns in the states and counties one after another. The kings of the clans who went to these towns were in charge of both the military and civil affairs, and became increasingly powerful.

The Western Jin Dynasty ruled corruptly, imposing heavy taxes on the migrant peoples, conscripting soldiers and even selling them as slaves. These tyrannies aroused strong resistance from the migrant peoples.

Emperor Wu's son, Emperor Hui of Jin, was incompetent. During his reign, eight feudal kings, who held heavy armies, fought for central power, and then fought against each other, which was called the "Eight Kings' Rebellion".

The Eight Kings' Rebellion was mainly fought in the area of Luoyang. This civil war caused a great disaster to the society, and the price of rice soared to 10,000 yuan per stone, and the people suffered a lot. "The Eight Kings' Rebellion lasted for 16 years, and the Western Jin Dynasty declined from then on.

A large number of people died in the Central Plains, and the survivors fled, including hundreds of thousands of people to the south, forming the first large-scale population migration in the ancient history of China.

Internal migration of the nomadic peoples of the north

The vast grasslands in the north of China have nurtured the nomadic peoples of the north. They live a nomadic life of herding horses, cattle, sheep and other livestock in the lush grasslands, living by water and grass. "The sky is pale, the wild is vast, the wind blows the grass low to see the cattle and sheep" is a vivid depiction of their life.

During the Eastern Han, Wei and Jin Dynasties, the nomads in the north of China moved inward continuously. The Xiongnu and Qiang, who lived in the northwest, moved from west to east to Guanzhong in Shaanxi; the Xiongnu and Capricorn, who were distributed in the Mongolian grassland, moved from north to south to Shanxi; and the Xianbei, who moved partly to Liaoning and partly to Shaanxi and the Hetao area. During the Western Jin Dynasty, the population of the various ethnic groups in Shanxi and Shaanxi had already accounted for half of the total population of the region.

Some leaders of minority groups took the opportunity to rise against Jin. After the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty, from the beginning of the 4th century to the beginning of the 5th century, the rulers of various ethnic groups in the north established many regimes, and the 15 major regimes in the north, together with Cheng Han in Younan, are called the Sixteen Kingdoms.

In the late 4th century, the former Qin Dynasty, founded by the Fu clan, grew strong and unified the Yellow River basin. The nobles were deeply influenced by Han civilization, and the emperor Fu Jian was highly educated in Han culture. Fu Jian appointed Wang Meng, a Han Chinese, as his prime minister and was keen on reform. They reorganized officials, enforced the rule of law, strengthened centralized power, recruited exiles, reduced taxes and banned extravagance, and set up schools and promoted Confucianism. At that time, the confrontation and conflict between the Hu and Han in the former Qin territory was also eased.（786words）