i
The Han Empire at its greatest extent, 2nd century BC
Chinese name	漢朝 (Hàn cháo)
Duration	206 BC – 220 AD (~400 years)
Periods	Western Han (206 BC – 9 AD) Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) Eastern Han (25–220 AD)
Capitals	Chang'an (Western Han) Luoyang (Eastern Han)
Founder	Liu Bang (Emperor Gaozu)
Last ruler	Emperor Xian
Population	~57.7 million (2 AD census)
State ideology	Confucianism
Preceded by	Qin dynasty (221–206 BC)
Succeeded by	Three Kingdoms (220–280 AD)

The Han dynasty (Chinese: 漢朝; 206 BC – 220 AD) was the second imperial dynasty of China, succeeding the short-lived Qin dynasty. Founded by the commoner Liu Bang, who took the throne name Emperor Gaozu, the Han lasted over four centuries — interrupted only briefly by the usurper Wang Mang's Xin dynasty (9–23 AD). So thoroughly did the Han establish what was thereafter considered Chinese culture that the word "Han" (漢) became the standard term for ethnically Chinese people, a usage that continues today.

The Han is divided into two periods: the Western Han (206 BC – 9 AD), with its capital at Chang'an (modern Xi'an), and the Eastern Han (25–220 AD), with its capital at Luoyang. During this era, China's population grew to nearly 58 million, Confucianism became the state ideology, the Silk Road opened China to the wider world, and innovations like paper transformed the storage and transmission of knowledge.

China's first imperial dynasty, the Qin (221–206 BC), had unified the Warring States by conquest under the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. However, the Qin regime's harsh legalism — forced labor, book burnings, and severe punishments — made it deeply unpopular. After Qin Shi Huang's death in 210 BC, rebellions erupted across the empire.

Liu Bang, a man of humble origins who had served as a minor Qin official, emerged as one of the rebel leaders. After the Qin collapsed, he fought a four-year civil war against the rival warlord Xiang Yu of Chu — a conflict known as the Chu–Han Contention (206–202 BC). Liu Bang's victory at the Battle of Gaixia in 202 BC made him the undisputed ruler of China. He established his capital at Chang'an and took the throne name Gaozu.

Gaozu learned from the Qin's mistakes. He kept the Qin's efficient centralized bureaucracy but softened its harshest policies, reducing taxes, easing punishments, and allowing greater personal freedoms. He also granted semi-autonomous kingdoms to his allies and family members in the eastern half of the empire — a compromise that created tension for decades until these kingdoms were brought under tighter central control following the Rebellion of the Seven States.

The early Western Han emperors followed a philosophy of cautious, light-touch governance influenced by Daoist and Huang-Lao thought. This approach allowed the empire to recover economically from the devastation of the Qin era and the civil wars. Agriculture flourished, trade expanded, and the population grew steadily.

The most consequential Western Han ruler was Emperor Wu (ruled 141–87 BC), whose long reign transformed China. Wu adopted Confucianism as the official state ideology, establishing an imperial university to train officials in the Confucian classics and creating a civil service examination system based on merit — a system that, in various forms, would endure for over two thousand years.

Emperor Wu also pursued aggressive military expansion. His most significant campaigns were against the Xiongnu, a powerful nomadic confederacy on China's northern frontier that had menaced the empire since its founding. After decades of appeasement through tribute payments and marriage alliances, Wu launched a series of offensives that pushed the Xiongnu out of the Hexi Corridor and the Tarim Basin in Central Asia.

To find allies against the Xiongnu, Wu sent the explorer Zhang Qian on a diplomatic mission westward in 138 BC. Although Zhang Qian failed to secure an alliance, his 13-year journey opened Chinese awareness of Central and Western Asian civilizations and mapped the routes that would develop into the Silk Road — the transcontinental trade network connecting China to Persia, India, and the Mediterranean world.

Wu also expanded southward, annexing the kingdoms of Nanyue (in modern southern China and northern Vietnam) and Dian (in modern Yunnan). By the end of his reign, the Han Empire was one of the largest states in the world.

The Han economy was primarily agricultural, based on the cultivation of millet in the north and rice in the south. The government maintained state monopolies on salt, iron, and liquor during Emperor Wu's reign, though these monopolies were controversial and did not all survive into the Eastern Han period. The standardized bronze wuzhu coin, introduced in 119 BC, remained China's standard currency until the Tang dynasty over seven centuries later.

Trade expanded dramatically during the Han period, both domestically — enabled by a growing network of roads and canals — and internationally through the Silk Road. Chinese silk, lacquerware, and iron goods were exchanged for horses, jade, glassware, and other luxuries from Central and Western Asia.

After Emperor Wu's reign, the Western Han gradually weakened. Power increasingly fell to the families of imperial consorts — the mothers and wives of emperors — who used their access to court to dominate politics. A succession of young or ineffective emperors accelerated this trend.

In 9 AD, the regent Wang Mang, a member of one such consort family, declared the Han dynasty finished and proclaimed himself emperor of a new Xin dynasty. Wang Mang attempted radical reforms — nationalizing land, abolishing slavery, and reorganizing coinage — but his changes were poorly implemented and widely resented. Flooding along the Yellow River and widespread famine triggered massive uprisings, including the Red Eyebrow rebellion. Wang Mang was killed in 23 AD.

A distant relative of the Liu royal family named Liu Xiu rallied loyalist forces, defeated the rebels and rival claimants, and restored the Han dynasty in 25 AD. Taking the throne name Emperor Guangwu, he moved the capital east to Luoyang — hence the period's name, the Eastern Han.

Under Guangwu and his immediate successors, the empire recovered and stabilized. The Eastern Han reasserted control over Central Asia and the Silk Road, with the general Ban Chao conducting campaigns as far west as the Caspian Sea over a period of three decades.

The Eastern Han was a period of remarkable cultural and technological achievement. Paper was developed around 105 AD by the court official Cai Lun — one of the most consequential inventions in human history. Buddhism was introduced to China via the Silk Road, arriving from the Kushan Empire and Parthia, and began its slow transformation into a major Chinese religion. The polymath Zhang Heng invented an early seismoscope and made advances in astronomy and mathematics. Medical knowledge advanced with texts like the Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage), which remains influential in traditional Chinese medicine.

From the late 1st century AD onward, the Eastern Han was crippled by the same pattern that had weakened its predecessor: boy emperors dominated by consort families and palace eunuchs. The two factions engaged in increasingly violent power struggles. Emperors Huan and Ling spent their reigns indulging in luxury while eunuchs ran the government, and the dynasty's legitimacy eroded.

A series of natural disasters — Yellow River floods, locust plagues, and epidemics in the 150s through 180s AD — devastated the countryside. In 184 AD, the Yellow Turban Rebellion, a massive peasant uprising fueled by famine and millenarian religious fervor, engulfed the empire. The central government was too weak to suppress the revolt on its own and turned to regional warlords for help. These warlords defeated the rebels but then refused to relinquish their military power.

The most powerful warlord, Cao Cao, effectively controlled the Han court and its puppet emperor from 196 AD. After Cao Cao's death, his son Cao Pi forced the last Han emperor to abdicate in 220 AD, ending the dynasty and beginning the Three Kingdoms period.

Han society was hierarchical. The emperor stood at the apex, followed by the imperial family, the aristocracy, scholars and officials, farmers, artisans, and merchants — in that order of prestige, though not necessarily wealth. Below all free people were slaves, though slavery was less prevalent than in the contemporary Mediterranean world.

Confucianism was the dominant intellectual framework, emphasizing filial piety, social harmony, respect for learning, and the moral responsibility of rulers. However, Daoism remained influential at court and among the populace, and Buddhism gained a growing following from the 1st century AD onward. Folk religion, ancestor worship, and belief in spirits and omens permeated daily life across all social classes.

Women in Han China were generally subordinate to men within the Confucian social order, but some wielded significant political power as empress dowagers, and women of the imperial court could influence successions and policy. The historian Ban Zhao, sister of Ban Gu, was one of the most accomplished scholars of the Eastern Han.

Han art is known primarily through tomb artifacts — bronze vessels, jade ornaments, lacquerware, pottery figurines, and painted tiles — which reveal a society of considerable sophistication. Literature flourished, with the fu (rhapsody) becoming the dominant literary form, and the great historical works of the era — Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian and Ban Gu's Book of Han — established a tradition of dynastic history-writing that continued for the next two millennia.

The Han dynasty's influence on Chinese civilization is immense. The Confucian-trained civil service, the centralized bureaucratic model, the standard coinage, and the cultural identity established during the Han persisted — with modifications — through every subsequent dynasty until the fall of the Qing in 1912.

The invention of paper transformed the storage and transmission of knowledge across the world. The Silk Road connections forged during Emperor Wu's reign linked East and West for centuries. The historical records of the Han period established the Chinese tradition of dynastic history-writing that would produce one of the world's most continuous written records.

The word "Han" itself became inseparable from Chinese identity. The majority ethnic group of China — over 90% of the population — is called the Han Chinese (漢族), and the standard Chinese writing system is called Hanzi (漢字, "Han characters").