Han Empire

Assembled from 24 blocks · 2 evidence · 17 related

1. Story
2. Chinese imperial dynasty, 206 BCE to 220 CE, with capitals at Chang'an and later Luoyang. Under Emperor Wu, who reigned 141 to 87 BCE, the Han pushed west through the Hexi Corridor against the Xiongnu, planted the frontier commanderies including Dunhuang, and in 60 BCE established the Protectorate of the Western Regions over the Tarim oases. The Han state paid its frontier garrisons and its Central Asian allies in bolts of silk, which is how large volumes of silk entered the western trade in the first place: as state expenditure, not as commercial export. An abstract polity, not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Taklamakan Desert
5. Han Empire
6. Silk
7. Connections
8. Taklamakan Desert
9. Silk
10. Zhang Qian
11. Zhang Qian is sent west by Emperor Wu
12. Han campaigns against Dayuan for the Ferghana horses
13. Han establishes the Protectorate of the Western Regions
14. Northern Tarim route
15. Southern Tarim route
16. Han Empire
17. Han establishes the Protectorate of the Western Regions
18. Han Empire
19. Sogdian merchant networks
20. Han establishes the Protectorate of the Western Regions
21. Silkworm cultivation reaches Byzantium
22. Evidence
23. The earliest and closest account of Zhang Qian's missions, the peoples and kingdoms he reported from Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia, and the Ferghana horses that prompted the Han campaigns of 104 to 101 BCE. Sima Qian was writing within living memory of the events.
24. Argues from excavated documents at seven Tarim and Central Asian sites that most recorded traffic was local and small-scale rather than long-distance luxury trade, and that Chinese government military expenditure was the dominant economic driver in the Tarim oases. A necessary corrective to the popular image of continuous caravans crossing the whole length.