Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (31 page)

Chinese Reunification and Imperial Expansion

In 589 the period known variously as the Sixteen Dynasties or the Northern and Southern Dynasties came to an end with reunification by the Sui (581–617). Much like the Ch’in Dynasty 700 years earlier, the Sui reunification was a bloody affair accompanied by prodigious public works, in this case by the building of the Grand Canal, which for the first time provided a reliable means of transportation between southern and northern China and also tied the provinces along the eastern coast together. China was never to stay divided for long again.

Like the Ch’in, the Sui was also a short-lived dynasty. It was brought down by a number of factors, the most important of which were the disastrous campaigns of the second ruler Yang-ti (r. 604–617)
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against the Koguryo Kingdom, which stretched from the Liao River east to the Sea of Japan and southward halfway down the Korean Peninsula. But again like the Ch’in, the Sui laid firm foundations for the stable, strong, long-lasting dynasty that followed.

The T’ang Dynasty (618–906) was founded in 618 by Kao-tsu (Li Yüan, r. 618–626), the Duke of T’ang, who was the Sui garrison commander of T’ai-yüan (in the northern part of what is now Shansi Province), six months after he led anti-Sui rebel forces into the Sui capital in 617.
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The Li family was from the north and was related to the royal families of both the Northern Chou Dynasty (557–581) and the Sui Dynasty and had intermarried with members of the *Taghbač aristocracy of the Northern Wei Dynasty. They were acquainted with and intensely interested in things Central Eurasian. The very foundation of the T’ang Dynasty owed part of its success to an alliance Kao-tsu had made with the ruler of the Eastern Türk, Shih-pi Kaghan (r. 609–619), who provided horses and five hundred Türk warriors to assist the T’ang forces in defeating the Sui.
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The myth that the Türk were a threat to China at this time is based on their involvement with one or another rebel in the civil war that ended the Sui Dynasty; in support of their allies, Türk forces entered the Sui frontier on several occasions. The idea that there was a “threat of an attack by the Eastern Turks and their allies”
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and that their ruler *Hellig (*Ellig, Hsieh-li) Kaghan (r. 620–630) “made himself a thorough nuisance and a menace,”
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necessitating the destruction of the Eastern Türk Empire, is not correct. It is true that the Türk still supported various rebels against the barely established dynasty throughout its first years, but again, they were invited in—they did not invade China. It took most of the reign of the first emperor to eliminate rebels throughout the Chinese domain in general, including areas very far from the northern frontier. The carefully crafted stories about supposed Türk invasions are ultimately disinformation intended to justify the subsequent massive aggression by the T’ang against the Türk and everyone else on the existing frontiers of China. The sources tell us little about the Türk except that they “raided the frontier” in such and such a place and time; no actual historical reasons are given other than the standard stereotypes that the Türk were greedy or violent. When more historical information is available, it is clear that they were not raids, and there was usually a good reason for the Türk actions.
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The T’ang, like earlier Chinese dynasties, intended to build the biggest empire in history. The Türk were no different in their desire to enlarge their empire, but the “Chinese” areas they tried to expand into were parts of the Central Eurasian steppe zone that had been occupied, garrisoned, fortified, and walled off by the Chinese, whose declared intention was to continue expanding in all directions to conquer “the peoples of the four directions” until they ruled all of Central Eurasia as well as China. In short, the idea that the T’ang experience with the Türk in their early years made the Chinese realize the danger of allowing a strong foreign nation to exist so close to their power base is almost the opposite of the truth. The T’ang were also keenly aware of the history of the great Classical period dynasty, the Han, and openly expressed their desire to emulate the Chinese conquests of the Classical period. According to the official histories, the Han Dynasty had succeeded in defeating the Hsiung-nu, conquering the cities of the Tarim Basin, and capturing Korea as well. Although none of this was completely true, the T’ang rulers saw themselves as the heirs of the Han and wanted not only to restore the Classical age but even to outdo the Han Dynasty.

T’ai-tsung (Li Shih-min, r. 626–649), Kao-tsu’s son, took power in a dynastic coup d’état. In the process, two of his brothers were killed—he personally decapitated the crown prince—and Kao-tsu was forced to hand over power.
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T’ai-tsung immediately turned his attention to the Türk.

The traditional Chinese policy toward foreign peoples outside their territory was “divide, dominate, and destroy.” To this end, the T’ang actively fomented unrest and internal division in both the Eastern and Western Türk empires. T’ai-tsung was given his casus belli by the attack of Liang Shih-tu, the last remaining rebel from the period of the fall of the Sui, whose base was in the northern Ordos. Liang called a large Türk force in to attack the fledgling T’ang Dynasty on his behalf. The Türk reached the Wei River only ten miles west of the capital, Ch’ang-an, in 626. T’ai-tsung had no choice but to pay *Hellig Kaghan to withdraw.

Fate was not kind to *Hellig after this, however. In 627 several Central Eurasian peoples subject to the Eastern Türk, including the Uighurs, Ba-yarku, and Hsüeh-yen-t’o, revolted, and late in the year the weather turned bad too—unusually deep snowfall caused the death of so many animals that there was a famine on the steppe. Deprived of Türk assistance, Liang Shih-tu was vulnerable, and T’ai-tsung jumped at the opportunity. Early in 628 the T’ang forces attacked his camp and Liang was killed by one of his own men. The T’ang also strongly supported a new kaghan chosen by the peoples who had revolted against the Türk. In 629 *Hellig Kaghan requested permission to submit to China. T’ai-tsung refused and instead sent an enormous army against him. They attacked his camp on the south side of the Gobi Desert and slaughtered great numbers of the Türk. *Hellig was taken alive in 630 and brought to Ch’ang-an. He died in captivity there in 634.

The Chinese Empire grew in all directions in the early T’ang, with few setbacks, reaching its greatest extent during the rule of Emperor Hsüan-tsung (685–756 [r. 712–756]).
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In the first half of the eighth century, China—especially the western capital, Ch’ang-an—enjoyed the most cosmopolitan period in its entire history before the late twentieth century. The city was the largest, most populous, and wealthiest anywhere in the world at the time, with perhaps a million residents, including a large population of foreigners either residing permanently or visiting in various capacities. Hsüan-tsung patronized Western music and the poetry influenced by it, as well as the new Western-influenced painting style that had been introduced from Khotan in the early T’ang period. This was the greatest age of Chinese poetry, when many major poets lived, including the two most brilliant Chinese poets,
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Li Po and Tu Fu, who were famous in their own lifetimes. Li Po was born in Central Asia and may have been only partly Chinese. He was an outsider socially and “remained, in a profound way, a solitary and unique figure,” probably due to his “foreign” behavior and to some extent to the rather un-Chinese image of himself he projected in his poetry,
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which is characterized by a love of the exotic in general.

Yet the T’ang hunger for territorial expansion at all costs, especially under Hsüan-tsung, was such that the great Chinese historian Ssu-ma Kuang later accused the T’ang house of trying to “swallow the peoples of the four directions.”
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The internal devastation of northern China by unending conscription and ruthless taxation, remarked on by poets and historians, would have to be paid for.

The Tibetan Empire

The economic, cultural, diplomatic, and other motivations behind the appearance of a great new power, which are known in other historical cases, have not been identified in the case of the rise of the Tibetan Empire. The only known motivations are the sociopolitical features of a culture with the Central Eurasian Culture Complex.
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In the early seventh century a group of clan chiefs in southern Tibet swore an oath of fealty to the leading power among them, calling him
btsanpo
‘emperor’. Together they plotted to overthrow Zingporje, their oppressive alien overlord, who was apparently a vassal of the shadowy Zhangzhung realm that ruled much of the Tibetan Plateau at the time. The conspirators carried out their plan successfully and were rewarded by the emperor, whom they also refer to as Spurgyal.
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The emperor rewarded them with fiefs, and young noblemen from each of the clans joined his comitatus to cement the clans’ relationship to him. After having established themselves in their home territory, the new people defeated the lord of Rtsang and Bod, the areas—now Central Tibet—that lay directly to their north. They adopted the ancient name
Bod
for their country, but to the outside world it became known by the foreign name
Tibet.
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The circumstances in which the Tibetans first
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came into conflict with the Chinese are known. In 634 the T’ang sent a huge expeditionary force against the T’u-yü-hun Kingdom in the Kokonor region. The T’u-yü-hun, a Hsien-pei Mongolic people, had occupied the pasturelands around the Kokonor in the third century
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and expanded via Kansu into the eastern part of East Turkistan so as to control the southern trade routes between China and Central Asia. The T’ang campaign was successful, but it brought the Chinese into conflict with the Tibetans, who considered the T’u-yü-hun to be their vassals. After being rebuffed politically by the Chinese, Khri Srong Rtsan (’Srong Btsan Sgampo’, r. ca. 618–649), the first historically well-known Tibetan emperor, defeated a T’ang force sent against him in 638. When the T’ang inflicted a minor defeat on them in turn, the Tibetans requested a marriage treaty with the T’ang. T’ai-tsung agreed and made peace with the Tibetans with the marriage of a T’ang princess to the son or younger brother of the Tibetan emperor.
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The T’ang did not succeed in gaining firm control over the T’u-yü-hun and effectively accepted the Tibetans’ claims to their territory except for the Kansu corridor, which the T’ang needed in order for Chinese forces to be able to attack the cities of the Tarim Basin.

After thus securing his left flank, T’ai-tsung expanded westward into the Tarim Basin, conquering the city-states there one by one: Qocho or Kaoch’ang (640), the chief city of the East Tokharians,
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in the Turfan oasis; and Agni or Karashahr (648) and Kucha (648), the chief cities of the West Tokharians and centers both of commerce and of Sarvâstivâdin Buddhism. Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan,
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the chief cities of the Sakas or Eastern Iranians in the western Tarim Basin, voluntarily submitted to Chinese overlordship between 632 and 635. Against the advice of his leading ministers, T’ai-tsung then established a colonial government over the region, the Protectorate General of the Pacified West,
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known for short as An-hsi ‘the Pacified West’ and also as ‘the Four Garrisons of An-hsi’. Its seat was moved from Qocho west to Kucha in 649. The T’ang now controlled most of eastern Central Eurasia.

The death of both Khri Srong Rtsan and T’ai-tsung in 649 was followed by a gradual chilling of relations between their empires.

In 657 the armies of T’ai-tsung’s son and successor, Kao-tsung (r. 649–683), broke the power of the Western Turks. Ho-lu Kaghan was captured alive and taken to the Chinese capital. With the Chinese defeat of the Western Turks in the Tarim Basin and Jungharia, the area—which was already called Turkistan by other Central Eurasian peoples—theoretically then came under T’ang rule. But the Western Turks as a whole did not come under actual Chinese control.
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Instead, with the removal of the ruling clan, a great power struggle ensued.