The Collapse of China’s Later Han Dynasty, 25-220 CE: The Northwest Borderlands and the Edge of Empire

Content introduction: This book focuses on Liangzhou, a northwest region during the Han Dynasty, and analyzes how its natural and human geography created the region’s culture of advocating force and militarization, and integrated the characteristics of the local multi-ethnic groups to produce its unique regional culture and identity. With the changes in political culture and national strategy between the Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty, the position of Liangzhou and its military elites in the strategic order of the empire also rose and fell, and thus formed a tense relationship between the northwest warriors and the Luoyang court of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The contradictions and conflicts between the northwest region and the Luoyang court were certainly not the only reason for the collapse of the Eastern Han Empire, but the subtle impact of this was repeatedly emphasized in this book.

Really like the case studies and historical trend judgments in the book. In the cases, we can see the struggles of individuals in the torrent of history, especially Chapter 3, which discusses the reasons why the Northwest warriors were marginalized in the Eastern Han Dynasty through Zhang Huan, and Chapter 4, which uses Wang Fu’s description of the Han-Qiang War and the criticism of the Han Dynasty to show the Northwest’s dissatisfaction with the indifference of the imperial center. The “prejudice” of the Northwest is also a truth. The emotional confrontation really exists, and it ultimately caused the militarized Northwest to deal a fatal blow to the collapse of the Eastern Han Dynasty.