Han Empire

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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.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.