Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Factors of downfall (common factors between them (political corruption,…

- - - - The astonishing growth of the Han empire began when the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty, Emperor Wu (ruled 141–87 BCE), changed tactics. He replaced the previous stable foreign policy of establishing a treaty or tributary relationship with his neighbors. Instead, he put in place new and central governmental bodies which were designed to bring the frontier regions under imperial control. Subsequent emperors continued that expansion. Those were seeds of the eventual end.
        By the 180s CE, the Han court had grown weak and increasingly cut off from local society, with debauched or disinterested emperors who lived only for amusement. Court eunuchs vied for power with scholar-officials and army generals, and political intrigues were so vicious that they even led to wholesale massacres within the palace. In 189 CE, the warlord Dong Zhuo went so far as to assassinate the 13-year-old Emperor Shao, placing Shao's younger brother on the throne instead.
    - - Economically, by the latter part of the Eastern Han, the government experienced sharply decreasing tax revenue, limiting their ability to fund the court and to support the armies that defended China from external threats. The scholar-officials generally exempted themselves from taxes, and the peasants had a sort of early-warning system by which they could alert one another when the tax collectors came to a particular village. When the collectors were due, the peasants would scatter to the surrounding countryside, and wait until the tax men had gone. As a result, the central government was chronically short on money.
        One reason that the peasants fled at the rumor of tax collectors is that they were trying to survive on smaller and smaller plots of farmland. The population was growing quickly, and each son was supposed to inherit a piece of land when the father died. Thus, farms were quickly being carved into ever-tinier bits, and peasant families had trouble supporting themselves, even if they managed to avoid paying taxes.
- - - - The Praetorian Guard—the emperor’s personal bodyguards—assassinated and installed new sovereigns at will, and once even auctioned the spot off to the highest bidder.