Dynasties In China

Dynasties in China refer to the period of political reign headed by a king or emperor and his descendants. There have been more than thirty dynasties throughout Chinese history, from the legendary first Xia dynasty (c. 2205–1766 BCE) to the last dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911), which ended in revolution when the Republic of China was founded in 1912.

     The first emperor who unified China’s territory took “Qin” (pronounced “chin”) as his reign name. His dynasty lasted a relatively short time, from 221 to 207 BCE, during which he ruled with an iron fist, conscripting tens of thousands of poor Chinese farmers to leave their land and build the Great Wall along China’s northern border. In an act of extreme cruelty, these slaves were not allowed to return home even upon death and their bones were interred in the wall. This act violated traditional
religious beliefs of the period, which insisted that a person’s bones should be buried in his ancestral village or the soul of the deceased would become lost and wander the earth endlessly (for without the offerings of food and prayer and spirit money at the ancestral temple, the soul could not bribe the Judge of Hell and ensure future generations’ prosperity). In a particularly
poignant folktale, a farmer’s widow (sometimes it is his mother instead) comes to the Great Wall looking for the bones of her dead husband. She cannot find him and kneels on the stones, weeping. The Jade Emperor in Heaven takes pity on her and a lightning bolt bursts from the sky, splitting open a section of the wall, thus revealing her husband’s bones. She is able to carry them home to his village where he can be properly interred.


      Emperor Qin is most famous now for the army of terra-cotta warriors that he had buried in his tomb to protect him in the afterlife. A portion of the tomb has been excavated outside present-day Xi’an, and visitors are allowed to see the warriors in their original underground tomb as well as in local museums.


      One unusual feature of Chinese dynasties, which set them apart from European royalty, is the Mandate of Heaven. This concept meant that no emperor was allowed to rule simply because of his bloodline. Instead he was responsible for setting a moral example for his officials and for his people. If he grew corrupt and the people suffered, rebellion was a legitimate political and ethical recourse. Hence any peasant who could gather an army could overthrow an emperor and found a new dynasty. If the new emperor could bring prosperity to China, then he was considered to have successfully
gained the Mandate of Heaven. His sons or nephews were expected to succeed him politically, but again they could be overthrown if judged unfit to rule. There was no belief that only certain bloodlines, members of the nobility, or descendants of an erstwhile king should be the emperor. In this sense, Chinese dynastic rule was curiously democratic.


     On the other hand, there was no legal limitation on the power of the emperor no separate nobility (after the Tang dynasty, 618–907 CE) or separate religious clergy to challenge his power and hence the concept of the separation of powers did not take root in traditional China as it eventually
did in the West.

Women in Power

Empress Wu, who ruled from 9 to 23 CE, between the Western and Eastern Han dynasties, was the only female empress in Chinese history. However, recent archaeological finds have shown that there were females who wielded great power. Lady Fu Hao, who died around 1200 BCE, was a general who led an army of seventy-five thousand men in battle. Her tomb, discovered in the late 1970s, showed that she was buried with four bronze ax blades that had been used in beheadings.
The Empress Dowager Cixi ruled as regent in the last decades of the Qing dynasty, as the male heirs
mysteriously died before they could become of age. Pu Yi, the last emperor, came to power only after her death.