Liu Yan (emperor)

Liu Yan (劉龑; 889–942) was King of Nanhan, China (911–917) and later declared himself the emperor of the Southern Han Kingdom during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period in China.

Rise to power

The Tang Dynasty, which had controlled all of China, for about three centuries, fell in 907. Liu Yan’s brother, Liu Yin, had been named regional governor by the Tang court in 905, two years before its fall. He assumed the title Prince of Nanping in 909. After his brother’s death in 911, he succeeded him as king of Nanhai. Six years later, he declared himself emperor of Great Yuè (大越). He renamed the kingdom Southern Han two years later in 919.

Reign

Liu Yan reigned over the Southern Han kingdom until his death in 943. Due to the geographic location of the kingdom, not only did Liu have to deal with Chinese kingdoms such as Southern Tang, Min, and Chu, but non-Chinese peoples, most notably the Vietnamese, who only recently threw off the Chinese yoke. In 939, Liu Yan decided that it was time to bring the Vietnamese back into the Chinese orbit. However, despite the fact that the Vietnamese had yet to truly organize into a strong polity, the Southern Han forces were unsuccessful in subduing the Vietnamese.

While he reigned ably on the domestic front during his two and a half decades in power, his rule was unremarkable. He was not able to turn Guangzhou into one of the centers of Southern learning and culture that Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Chengdu had emerged into.

See also

• Ngo Quyen
• Battle of Bach Dang River (938)

References

• Mote, F.W. (1999). Imperial China (900-1800). Harvard University Press. pp. 11, 15. ISBN 0-674-01212-7. 
• Tarling, Nicholas, ed (1999). The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Volume One, Part One): From early times to c. 1500. Cambridge University Press. p. 139. ISBN 0-521-66369-5.