How did the han dynasty make money
It is normally divided into three periods: The Xin regime, established by the former regent Wang Mang , formed a brief interregnum between lengthy periods of Han rule. Following the fall of Wang Mang, the Han capital was moved eastward from Chang'an to Luoyang. In consequence, historians have named the succeeding eras Western Han and Eastern Han respectively.
The Han economy was defined by significant population growth , increasing urbanization, unprecedented growth of industry and trade, and government experimentation with nationalization. In this era, the levels of minting and circulation of coin currency grew significantly, forming the foundation of a stable monetary system. The Silk Road facilitated the establishment of trade and tributary exchanges with foreign countries across Eurasia , many of which were previously unknown to the people of ancient China.
The imperial capitals of both Western Han Chang'an and Eastern Han Luoyang were among the largest cities in the world at the time, in both population and area. Here, government workshops manufactured furnishings for the palaces of the emperor and produced goods for the common people.
The government oversaw the construction of roads and bridges, which facilitated official government business and encouraged commercial growth. Under Han rule, industrialists, wholesalers, and merchants—from minor shopkeepers to wealthy businessmen—could engage in a wide range of enterprises and trade in the domestic, public, and even military spheres. In the early Han period, rural peasant farmers were largely self-sufficient, but they began to rely heavily upon commercial exchanges with the wealthy landowners of large agricultural estates.
Many peasants fell into debt and were forced to become either hired laborers or rent-paying tenants of the land-owning classes. The Han government continually strove to provide economic aid to poor farmers, who had to compete with powerful and influential nobles, landowners, and merchants.
The government tried to limit the power of these wealthy groups through heavy taxation and bureaucratic regulation. Increasing government intervention in the private economy during the late 2nd century BC severely weakened the commercial merchant class. This allowed wealthy landowners to increase their power and to ensure the continuation of an agrarian-dominated economy. The wealthy landlords eventually dominated commercial activities as well, maintaining control over the rural peasants—upon whom the government relied for tax revenues—military manpower, and public works labor.
By the s AD, economic and political crises had caused the Han government to become heavily decentralized, while the great landowners became increasingly independent and powerful in their communities. During the Warring States period — BC , the development of private commerce, new trade routes, handicraft industries, and a money economy led to the growth of new urban centers. These centers were markedly different from the older cities, which had merely served as power bases for the nobility.
The total urban area of Eastern-Han Luoyang—including the extensions outside the walls—was During the early Western Han period, founding Emperor Gaozu of Han r. She first issued a government-minted bronze coin weighing 5.
Despite this, the 2. Token money notes made of embroidered white deerskin, with a face value of , coins, were used to collect government revenues. These new units including bronze knife money , gold, silver, tortoise, and cowry shell currencies often had a market price unequal to their weight and debased the value of coin currency.
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Gary Lee Todd Ph. A coin issued during the reign of Emperor Wen of Han r. A coin issued during the early reign of Emperor Wu of Han r. A wushu coin issued during the reign of Emperor Xuan of Han r.
A knife-shaped coin issued during the reign of Wang Mang 9—23 AD. A spade-shaped coin issued during the reign of Wang Mang 9—23 AD. Merchants and peasant farmers paid property and poll taxes in coin cash and land taxes with a portion of their crop yield. From BC to 5 AD, the government minted over 28,,, coins, with an annual average of ,, coins minted or , strings of 1, coins.
The government's efforts to circulate cash had empowered the very social class which it actively tried to suppress through heavy taxes, fines, confiscations, and price regulation schemes. After Shang Yang d. Officials at the court of Emperor Ai of Han r.
This was a variation of the well-field system, where the government owned the land and assured every peasant an equal share to cultivate. Many of their government officials also became wealthy landowners. By the late Eastern Han period, the peasantry had become largely landless and served wealthy landowners. This cost the government significant tax revenue. The government soon relied upon local administrations to conduct relief efforts.
The Yellow Turban Rebellion of AD, the slaughter of the eunuchs in AD, and the campaign against Dong Zhuo in AD destabilized the central government, and Luoyang was burnt to the ground. The Han Chancellor and King of Wei Cao Cao — AD made the final significant attempt to limit the power of wealthy landowners.
Cao Cao established government-managed agricultural colonies for landless commoners; in exchange for land and cheap equipment, the farmers paid a portion of their crop yield.
Many scholars claim that Han farmers were generally living at subsistence levels, relying primarily on two documents from the Hanshu Book of Han. Li Kui and Chao Cuo both emphasize the extreme precariousness of Han agricultural life, a view summed up by Cho-yun Hsu, who writes that Han and pre-Han farmers had only "a relatively small margin left to meet other expenses": According to Hans Bielenstein, the physical requirements of subsistence in grain can also be calculated from the Hanshu: This comes to about Based on these tables, he derives a conversion between cash and hu: We can also estimate the amount of land needed to produce this amount of grain, thanks to Wolfram Eberhard who "estimates the average yield as being 1.
Other scholars give other numbers, however. Hsu claims that 50 mu about 5. Because small landowning families represented the mainstay of the Han tax base, the Han government attempted to aid and protect small landowners and to limit the power of wealthy landlords and merchants. However, the tax was reinstated in BC at a rate of one-thirtieth. Towards the end of the Han dynasty, the land tax rate was reduced to one-hundredth, with lost revenue recouped by increasing the poll and property tax rates.
The lower taxable threshold age for minors increased to seven years during the reign of Emperor Yuan of Han r. Though requiring additional revenue to fund the Han—Xiongnu War , the government during Emperor Wu of Han 's reign —87 BC sought to avoid heavy taxation of small landowners. To increase revenue, the government imposed heavier taxes on merchants, confiscated land from nobles, sold offices and titles, and established government monopolies over the minting of coins, iron manufacture and salt mining.
The overall property tax for merchants was raised in BC from coins for every 10, coins-worth of property owned to coins for every 2, coins-worth of property owned. After the government monopoly on liquor was abolished in 81 BC, a property tax of 2 coins for every 0.
The sale of certain offices and titles was reintroduced in Eastern Han by Empress Dowager Deng Sui —who reigned as regent from — AD—to raise government revenues in times of severe natural disasters and the widespread rebellion of the Qiang people in western China. Two forms of mass conscription existed during the Han period. In addition to paying their monetary and crop taxes, all peasants of the Western Han period aged between fifteen and fifty-six were required to undertake mandatory conscription duties for one month of each year.
These duties were usually fulfilled by work on construction projects. At the age of twenty-three years male peasants were drafted to serve in the military, where they were assigned to infantry , cavalry , or navy service.
This development went hand in hand with the increasing use of hired labor by the government. There were two categories of Han merchants: Itinerant merchants were often wealthy and did not have to register. In contrast, registered marketplace merchants had a very low social status and were often subject to additional restrictions. These laws were difficult to enforce. While registered merchants were not allowed to own land, if they broke this law their land and slaves would be confiscated.
At the beginning of the Han dynasty, China's salt and iron enterprises were privately owned by a number of wealthy merchants and subordinate regional kings. The profits of these industries rivaled the funds of the imperial court. The government also instituted a liquor monopoly in 98 BC. However, this was repealed in 81 BC in an effort to reduce government intervention in the private economy.
The Reformist Party supported privatization, opposing the Modernist Party, which had dominated politics during the reign of Emperor Wu and the subsequent regency of Huo Guang d. Wang Mang preserved these central government monopolies. When Eastern Han began, they were once again repealed, the industries given to local commandery governments and private entrepreneurs. After Emperor Zhang, the Han never returned the salt and iron industries to government ownership.
The grain trade was a profitable private enterprise during the early Western Han, yet Emperor Wu's government intervened in the grain trade when it established the equable marketing system also known as the ever-normal granary system in BC.
Sang Hongyang was criticized by merchants for placing government officials in market stalls. Emperor Ming also abolished the system in 68 AD, when he believed that the government's storage of grain increased prices and made wealthy landowners richer. Ebrey argues that although most of Emperor Wu's fiscal policies were repealed during Eastern Han, their damage to the merchant class and the subsequent laissez-faire policies of Eastern Han allowed the wealthiest landowners to dominate society, ensuring that China's economy would remain firmly agrarian-based for centuries.
However, this loss of revenue was often compensated by higher taxes levied on the merchants. Han government workshops produced common, luxury, and even artistic funerary items, such as the ceramic figurines and tomb tiles which adorned the walls of underground tombs. The Office of Arts and Crafts , subordinate to the Minister Steward, produced weapons, bronze mirrors , vessel wares, and other goods.
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Workshops located in the commanderies made silks and embroidered fabrics, silver and gold luxury items, and weapons. One workshop, in modern Anhui province, had a shipyard where battle ships were built. Han lacquerwares were privately made as well as being manufactured in government workshops. Others were inscribed with the titles of the owner, the specific type of the vessels, their capacities, the precise day, month, and year of manufacture according to Chinese era names and their lunisolar calendar , the names of the floor managers who oversaw the items' production and the names of the workers who made them.
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The Court Architect was charged by central government with overseeing all imperial construction and public works projects , including the building of palaces and tombs. During the Western Han period, conscripted peasants were organized into work teams consisting of over a hundred thousand laborers. About , conscripted workers, serving in consecutive periods of thirty days each over a total of five years, worked on the massive defensive walls of Chang'an, which were completed in BC.
Nineteen stone inscriptions survive commemorating the building of new roads and bridges by the Eastern Han government. For example, during his campaign against the Xiongnu in the Ordos Desert in BC, the general Wei Qing d.
There were, of course, numerous reasons for maintaining roads. A unified political system could be maintained only as long as the government had the means of quickly dispatching officials, troops, or messengers as needed. Such a system of transportation, once established, facilitated commerce. At the local level, road and bridge projects seem to have been initiated as much for the sake of traveling merchants as for officials.
Han-era historians like Sima Qian —86 BC and Ban Gu 32—92 AD , as well as the later historian Fan Ye — AD , recorded details of the business transactions and products traded by Han merchants. Evidence of these products has also emerged from archaeological investigations. The main agricultural staple foods during the Han dynasty were foxtail millet, proso millet, rice including glutinous rice , wheat, beans, and barley.
The production of silk through sericulture was profitable for both small-time farmers and large-scale producers.
Silk clothing was too expensive for the poor, who wore clothes most commonly made of hemp. Common bronze items included domestic wares like oil lamps, incense burners, tables, irons, stoves, and dripping jars. Iron goods were often used for construction and farmwork, such as plowshares, pickaxes, spades, shovels, hoes, sickles, axes, adze , hammers, chisels, knives, saws, scratch awls , and nails. Other common goods included: In addition to general commodities, Han historians list the goods of specific regions.
Common trade items from the region of modern Shanxi included bamboo, timber, grain, and gemstones; Shandong had fish, salt, liquor, and silk; Jiangnan had camphor , catalpa, ginger, cinnamon, gold, tin, lead, cinnabar, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shell, pearls, ivory, and leather.
In the early Eastern Han, Emperor Ming passed laws which prohibited those involved in agriculture from simultaneously engaging in mercantile trade. His fellow gentry criticized him, claiming the practice was immoral, but not illegal.
Cui Shi's book also provides detailed instructions on which months were the most profitable times to buy and sell certain types of farm-produced goods. The following table is modelled on Ebrey's "Estate and Family Management in the Later Han as Seen in the Monthly Instructions for the Four Classes of People" The rationale for this is very clearly financial: There was mass unemployment among landless peasants during the Eastern Han period.
However, archaeological and literary evidence shows that those managing wealthy agricultural estates enjoyed great prosperity and lived comfortably.
He mentions grain fields, ponds filled with fish, and estate gardens and orchards filled with bamboo shoots, autumn leeks, winter rape-turnips, perilla , evodia , and purple ginger.
Bricks lining the walls of the tombs of wealthy Han were adorned with carved or molded reliefs and painted murals; these often showed scenes of the tomb occupant's estate, halls, wells, carriage sheds, pens for cattle, sheep, chickens, and pigs, stables for horses, and employed workers picking mulberry leaves , plowing crop fields, and hoeing vegetable patches.
Small and medium-sized estates were managed by single families. The father acted as the head manager, the sons as field workers. Wives and daughters worked with female servants to weave cloth and produce silk.
Under this system, peasants would receive land, tools, oxen, and a house in exchange for a third or a half of their crop yield. Prior to the Han dynasty, markets close to China's northern border engaged in trade with the nomadic tribes of the eastern Eurasian Steppe. The exact amount of annual tribute sent to the Xiongnu in the 2nd century BC is unknown.
The Han established a diplomatic presence in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia during Emperor Wu of Han 's reign —87 BC. Han envoys brought gifts of sheep, gold, and silk to the urban oasis city-states. These envoys were required to send tributary items of furs, precious stones, and delicacies such as Central Asian raisins to the Han court. Huhanye's tribute, exchange of hostages, and presence at Chang'an in the New Year of 51 BC were rewarded with the following gifts from the emperor: The establishment of the Silk Road occurred during Wu's reign, owing to the efforts of the diplomat Zhang Qian.
The increased demand for silk from the Roman Empire stimulated commercial traffic in both Central Asia and across the Indian Ocean. Roman merchants sailed to Barbarikon near present-day Karachi , Pakistan , and Barygaza in present-day Gujarat , India to purchase Chinese silks see Roman trade with India. The Book of Later Han states that Roman envoys sent by Emperor Marcus Aurelius r. Gan Ying was delayed at the Persian Gulf , by Arsacid authorities, and could only make a report on Rome based on oral accounts.
Tributary missions from vassal states were commonly allowed to include traders, who thus gained opportunities to do business in the capital markets. No doubt a large proportion of what the Chinese court chose to call tributary missions were in fact shrewdly organized commercial ventures by foreign merchants with no diplomatic status at all. This was unquestionably the case, most notably, with a group of traders who appeared on the south coast in AD claiming to be envoys from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
The main trade route leading into Han China passed first through Kashgar , yet Hellenized Bactria further west was the central node of international trade. Indian merchants brought various goods to China, including tortoise shell, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, fine cloth, woolen textiles, perfume and incense, crystal sugar, pepper, ginger, salt, coral, pearls, glass items, and Roman wares.
Roman glasswares have been found in Chinese tombs dating to the early 1st century BC, with the earliest specimen found at the southern Chinese seaport of Guangzhou. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A Western Han BC — 9 AD covered jade cup with gilt bronze fittings, Sackler Museum. An Eastern Han 25— AD golden belt hook , hammered and chiseled with designs of mythical animals and birds.
Society and culture of the Han dynasty and Science and technology of the Han dynasty. History of the Han dynasty and Government of the Han dynasty. Society and culture of the Han dynasty. Government of the Han dynasty. Foreign relations of Imperial China , Silk Road , Serica , Daqin , and Sino-Roman relations. Minerva on a Roman gilt -silver plate, 1st century BC; a similar Roman gilt-silver plate found in Jingyuan County, Gansu province, China, dated 2nd or 3rd century AD had a raised relief image of the Greco-Roman god Dionysos.
A Western-Han blue-glass bowl; although the Chinese had been making glass bead items since the Spring and Autumn period — BC , the first Chinese glasswares such as bowls and bottles appeared during Western Han.
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