Sui Dynasty

隋 Sui ←   ← 581–618 → Capital Chang'an (Daxing) Language(s) Chinese Religion Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Chinese folk religion Government Monarchy Emperor  - 581 - 604 Emperor Wen of Sui  - 604 - 617 Emperor Yang of Sui History  - Established 581  - Disestablished 618 Population  - 609 est. est. 46,019,956a[›]  Currency Chinese coin, Chinese cash

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The Sui Dynasty (Chinese: 隋朝; pinyin: Suí cháo; IPA: [swěi tʂʰɑ̌ʊ]; 581-618 AD^[1]) was a short-lived Imperial Chinese dynasty which unified China in the 6th century. Preceded by the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes. It was followed by the Tang Dynasty.

The Sui Dynasty, founded by Sui Wendi, or Yang Jian, held its capital at Luoyang. It was marked by the reunification of Southern and Northern China and the construction of the Grand Canal. It saw various reforms by Emperors Wen and Yang: the Equal-field system, initiated to reduce the rich-poor social gap, resulted in enhanced agricultural productivity; governmental power was centralized and the Three Departments and Six Ministries system officially instituted; coinage was standardized and re-unified; defense was improved, and the Great Wall was expanded. Buddhism was also spread and encouraged throughout the empire, uniting the varied people and cultures of China.

This dynasty has often been compared to the earlier Qin Dynasty in tenor and in the ruthlessness of its accomplishments. The Sui dynasty's early demise was attributed to the government's tyrannical demands on the people, who bore the crushing burden of taxes and compulsory labor. These resources were overstrained in the completion of the Grand Canal—a monumental engineering feat—^[2] and in the undertaking of other construction projects, including the reconstruction of the Great Wall. Weakened by costly and disastrous military campaigns against Goguryeo which ended with the defeat of Sui in the early seventh century, the dynasty disintegrated through a combination of popular revolts, disloyalty, and assassination.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Yangdi 1.2 Goguryeo-Sui wars 1.3 Fall 1.4 Buddhism 2 Rulers of the Sui Dynasty 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

History

The Sui Dynasty began when Emperor Wen's daughter became the Empress Dowager of Northern Zhou, with her stepson as the new emperor. After crushing an army disused in the eastern provinces as the prime minister of Zhou, Wendi took the throne by force and claimed himself to be emperor. In a bloody purge, Wendi had fifty-nine princes of the Zhou royal family eliminated; nevertheless, he became known as the 'Cultured Emperor' (581 - 604 CE).^[3] He abolished the anti-Han policies of Zhou and reclaimed his Han surname of Yang. Having won the support of the Confucian scholars that had powered previous Han dynasties (abandoning the nepotism and corruption of the nine-rank system), Wendi initiated a series of reforms aimed at strengthening his empire for the war that would reunify China.

In his campaign for southern conquest, Wendi assembled thousands of boats to confront the naval forces of the Chen Dynasty on the Yangtze River. The largest of these ships were very tall, having five layered decks and capacity for 800 passengers, and were outfitted with six 50-foot-long booms that were used to swing and damage enemy ships, or to pin them down so that Sui marine troops could use act-and-board techniques.^[4] Besides employing Xianbei and Chinese ethnicities for the fight against Chen, Wendi also employed the service of aborigines from southeastern Sichuan, peoples that Sui had recently conquered.^[3]

In 588 CE, the Sui had amassed 518,000 troops along the northern bank of the Yangtze River, stretching from Sichuan to the Pacific Ocean.^[5] Meanwhile, the Chen Dynasty was collapsing, and could not withstand such an assault. By 589 CE, Sui troops entered Jiankang (Nanjing) and the last emperor of the southern Chen dynasty surrendered. The city was razed to the ground, while Sui troops escorted Chen nobles back north, where the northern aristocrats became fascinated with everything the south had to provide culturally and intellectually.

Although Wendi was famous for bankrupting the state treasury with warfare and construction projects, he made many improvements to infrastructure during his early reign. He established granaries as sources of food and as a means to regulate market prices from the taxation of crops, much like the earlier Han Dynasty.

Yangdi

Yangdi gained the throne after his father's death, possibly by murder. He further extended the empire, but, unlike his father, he did not seek to gain support from the nomads. Instead, he restored Confucian education and the Confucian examination system for bureaucrats. By supporting educational reforms, he lost the support of nomads. He also started many expensive construction projects such as the Grand Canal of China, and became embroiled in several costly wars. Between these policies, invasions into China from Turkic nomads, and his growing life of decadent luxury at the expense of the peasantry, he lost public support and was eventually assassinated by his own ministers.

Both Wendi and Yangdi sent military expeditions into Vietnam as well, as northern Vietnam had been incorporated into the Chinese empire over 600 years earlier during the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 CE). However, the ancient Kingdom of Champa in southern Vietnam became a major contestant to Chinese invasions to its north. These invasions became known as the Linyi-Champa Campaign (602-605 CE). According to Ebrey, Walthall, and Palais:

The Hanoi area [that the Han and Jin dynasties had held] was easily recovered from the local ruler in 602, and a few years later the Sui army pushed farther south. When the army was attacked by troops on war elephants from Champa (in southern Vietnam), Sui feigned retreat and dug pits to trap the elephants. The Sui army lured the Champan troops to attack, then used crossbows against the elephants, causing them to turn around and trample their own army. Although Sui troops were victorious, many succumbed to disease, as northern soldiers did not have immunity to tropical diseases such as malaria.^[6]

Goguryeo-Sui wars

Arguably, the biggest factor that led to the downfall of Sui Dynasty was the series of massive expeditions into the Korean Peninsula to invade Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. The war that conscripted the most soldiers was caused by Sui Yangdi. The army was so enormous it was actually recorded in historical texts that it took 30 days for all the armies to exit their last rallying point near Shanhaiguan before invading Korea; in one instance, the soldiers—both conscripted and paid—listed over 3000 warships, 1.15 million infantry, 50,000 cavalry, 5000 artillery, and more. There were just as many supporting laborers, and an exorbitant military budget that included mounds of equipment and rations (most of which never reached the Chinese vanguard, as they were captured by Goguryeo armies already). The army stretched to "1000 li (a Chinese unit of length, in modern translation one half-kilometer, though its precision in antiquity may be questioned), or about 410 kilometers, across rivers and valleys, over mountains and hills!"

In all four main campaigns, the military conquest ended in failure. Nearly all the Chinese soldiers were defeated by the prominent army leader Eulji Mundeok of Goguryeo. For example, of the 305,000 Chinese troops, only 2,700 returned to China, according to the Book of Tang records, soldiers in summer conquests would return several years later, barely living through the cold and famishing winter. Many died of frostbite and hunger.

Fall

Eventually the resentment for the emperor increased and the wars, coupled with revolts and assassinations, led to the fall of the Sui Dynasty. One great accomplishment was rebuilding the Great Wall of China, but this, along with other large projects, strained the economy and angered the resentful workforce employed. During the last few years of the Sui Dynasty, the rebellion that rose against it took many of China's able-bodied men from rural farms and other occupations, which damaged the agricultural base and the economy further.^[7] Men would deliberately break their limbs in order to avoid military conscription, calling the practice "propitious paws" and "fortunate feet."^[7] In the year 642, Emperor Taizong of Tang made an effort to eradicate this practice by issuing a decree of a stiffer punishment for those who were found to deliberately injure and heal themselves.^[7]

Although the Sui Dynasty was a fairly short one (581-618 A.D.), much was accomplished during its tenure. The Grand Canal was one of the main accomplishments. It was extended north from the Hangzhou region across the Yangzi to Yangzhou and then northwest to the region of Louyang. The eventual fall of the Sui dynasty was due to the many losses in Southern Manchuria and North Korea. It was after these defeats and losses that the country was left in ruins and rebels soon took control of the government. Emperor Yang was assassinated in 618. He had gone South after being defeated by Korea and was killed by his advisors. Meanwhile, in the North, aristocrat Li Yuan held an uprising where he ended up ascending the throne to become Emperor Tang Gao Zu. This was the start of the next dynasty, Tang, which was also one of the most famous dynasties.

Buddhism

Buddhism was popular during the Six Dynasties period that preceded the Sui dynasty, spreading from India through Kushan Afghanistan into China during the Late Han period. Buddhism gained prominence during the period, when central political control was limited. Buddhism created a unifying cultural force that uplifted the people out of war and into the Sui Dynasty. In many ways, Buddhism was responsible for the rebirth of culture in China under the Sui Dynasty.

The Emperor Wen and his empress had converted to Buddhism to legitimate imperial authority over China and the conquest of Chen. Wendi presented himself as a Cakravartin king, a Buddhist monarch that would use military force to defend the Buddhist faith. In the year 601 CE, Emperor Wen had relics of the Buddha distributed to temples throughout China, with edicts that expressed his goals, "all the people within the four seas may, without exception, develop enlightenment and together cultivate fortunate karma, bringing it to pass that present existences will lead to happy future lives, that the sustained creation of good causation will carry us one and all up to wondrous enlightenment".^[3] Ultimately, this act was an imitation of the ancient Mauryan Emperor Ashoka of India.^[3]

Rulers of the Sui Dynasty

Posthumous Name (Shi Hao 諡號) Convention: "Sui" + name	Birth Name	Period of Reign	Era Names (Nian Hao 年號) and their according range of years
Wéndì (文帝)	Yáng Jiān (楊堅)	581-604	Kāihuáng (開皇) 581-600 Rénshòu (仁壽) 601-604
Yángdì (煬帝) or Míngdì (明帝)	Yáng Guǎng (楊廣)	605-618[1]	Dàyè (大業) 605-617
Gōngdì (恭帝)	Yáng Yòu (楊侑)	617-618[1]	Yìníng (義寧) 617-618
Gōngdì (恭帝)	Yáng Tóng (楊侗)	618-619[1]	Huángtài (皇泰) 618-619

See also

• Chinese sovereign
• Grand Canal of China
• History of China
• List of tributaries of Imperial China

References

Further reading

• Bingham, Woodbridge. 1941. The Founding of the T'ang Dynasty: The Fall of the Sui and Rise of the T'ang. Baltimore: Waverly Press.
• Wright, Arthur F. 1978. The Sui Dynasty: The Unification of China. A.D. 581-617. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. ISBN 0-394-49187-4 ; 0-394-32332-7 (pbk).
• Ebrey, Walthall, Palais, (2006). East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Ebrey, Patricia. 1996. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge University Press, Hong Kong. ISBN 0-521-43519-6

External links

• http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/classical_imperial_china/sui.html
• History of China: A good catalogue of info

Preceded by Southern and Northern Dynasties

Dynasties in Chinese history 581 – 619

Succeeded by Tang Dynasty