Founding of the Han Dynasty (206 BC): Liu Bang's Rise to Power

The founding of the Han dynasty followed the collapse of China’s first empire, the Qin. Between 206 and 202 BC, Liu Bang, a former village official of humble birth, outlasted the brilliant general Xiang Yu in a bitter civil war and proclaimed himself emperor. The dynasty he founded ruled China, with one interruption, until AD 220, and gave its name to the Han Chinese people.

Background: the fall of Qin

The Qin had unified China in 221 BC, but its heavy labour demands and harsh laws made it deeply unpopular. After the First Emperor died in 210 BC, a court plot put his younger son on the throne. In 209 BC the Dazexiang Uprising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang set off rebellions across the east.

Among the rebels were Xiang Liang, a member of a noble family of the former state of Chu, and his nephew Xiang Yu. In the same year, a minor official named Liu Bang led a revolt in Pei County, in modern Jiangsu, and became known as the Lord of Pei.

Liu Bang’s early career

Liu Bang came from a farming family in Feng, in Pei County. His birth year is uncertain; sources give either 256 or 247 BC. He served as a tingzhang, a local official in charge of a small police and postal station. Sima Qian portrays him as fond of wine and women, careless with money and disdainful of scholars, but generous and able to attract loyal followers.

According to the Shiji, when he was ordered to escort convict labourers to Mount Li and many escaped on the way, he freed the rest and became an outlaw. When the rebellions began, the people of Pei made him their leader.

The race to Guanzhong

Xiang Liang set up a descendant of the old Chu royal house as King Huai of Chu, to give the rebellion legitimacy. After Xiang Liang was killed by the Qin general Zhang Han at Dingtao in 208 BC, King Huai promised that whoever first entered Guanzhong, the Qin heartland in the Wei River valley, would be made its king.

Xiang Yu went north to confront the main Qin army. At Julu in 207 BC he won a famous victory, and Zhang Han later surrendered with his army. Meanwhile Liu Bang took a southern route, passed through the Wu Pass and defeated Qin forces near Lantian.

In the tenth month of the first Han year, late in 207 BC by modern reckoning, the last Qin ruler, Ziying, surrendered to Liu Bang near Xianyang. Liu Bang sealed the treasuries, withdrew his army to Bashang and replaced the harsh Qin laws with a simple code of three articles, punishing only murder, injury and theft. This won him wide support among the local people.

The Hongmen Banquet and the division of the empire

Xiang Yu arrived soon afterwards with a much larger army and was angry that Liu Bang had taken Guanzhong first. At the Hongmen Banquet in 206 BC, Xiang Yu’s adviser Fan Zeng urged him to kill Liu Bang, but Liu Bang apologised and escaped.

Xiang Yu then entered Xianyang, killed Ziying and burned the Qin palaces. He divided the empire into eighteen kingdoms and took the title Hegemon-King of Western Chu, ruling from Pengcheng (modern Xuzhou). Instead of Guanzhong, Liu Bang was given the remote lands of Hanzhong, Ba and Shu in the south-west and the title King of Han. Guanzhong was split among three surrendered Qin generals, including Zhang Han.

Liu Bang’s new title gave the future dynasty its name, taken from the Han River that flows through Hanzhong. Han reign years were later counted from 206 BC.

The Chu-Han Contention (206–202 BC)

The settlement did not last. On the advice of his minister Xiao He, Liu Bang appointed Han Xin, a former junior officer of Xiang Yu, as his chief general. In the eighth month of 206 BC Han forces marched out of Hanzhong, reportedly by way of Chencang, and quickly took Guanzhong from the three Qin kings.

In 205 BC, while Xiang Yu was fighting in Qi, Liu Bang led a large coalition army and captured Pengcheng. Sima Qian gives its size as 560,000 men. Xiang Yu returned with a small, elite cavalry force and routed the coalition, killing many Han soldiers. Liu Bang barely escaped, and his father and wife were captured.

For the next two years the main armies faced each other around Xingyang and Chenggao, near the Yellow River. Xiang Yu repeatedly won battles but could not destroy Liu Bang, whose base in Guanzhong, managed by Xiao He, kept sending troops and grain.

Meanwhile Han Xin campaigned in the north. He conquered Wei, then Zhao at the Battle of Jingxing in 204 BC, where he famously placed his troops with their backs to a river so they had to fight. In 203 BC he conquered Qi and defeated a Chu army at the Wei River. Liu Bang also won over Peng Yue, who raided Chu supply lines, and Ying Bu, a former ally of Xiang Yu.

In 203 BC the two sides agreed to divide China along the Hong Canal, and Xiang Yu released Liu Bang’s family. On the advice of Zhang Liang and Chen Ping, Liu Bang broke the truce and pursued Xiang Yu. At the Battle of Gaixia in 202 BC, Xiang Yu’s army was surrounded. He broke out with a few hundred horsemen but, cornered at the Wu River, he took his own life.

Key people

• Liu Bang (Emperor Gaozu) (r. 202–195 BC): founder of the Han dynasty.
• Xiang Yu (232–202 BC): Hegemon-King of Western Chu and Liu Bang’s great rival.
• Han Xin (died 196 BC): Han’s most successful general, later executed on charges of treason.
• Xiao He (died 193 BC): Liu Bang’s chief minister, who ran the administration and supply base.
• Zhang Liang (died c. 186 BC): Liu Bang’s leading strategist.
• Empress Lü (died 180 BC): Liu Bang’s wife, who later dominated the court as empress dowager.

Proclamation and consolidation

In the second month of 202 BC Liu Bang was proclaimed emperor north of the Si River near Dingtao. He is known to history by his temple name, Gaozu, “High Ancestor”. He first planned to rule from Luoyang, but on the advice of Lou Jing and Zhang Liang moved the capital to Guanzhong, where a new city, Chang’an, was built near the old Qin capital.

Chang’an grew into one of the great cities of the ancient world. The Changle Palace was completed around 200 BC, and the city walls were built in the following reign. The new government kept detailed registers of land and households, many inherited from Qin archives that Xiao He had seized when Liu Bang first entered Xianyang. These records gave the Han a decisive advantage in taxing and governing the empire.

Liu Bang kept much of the Qin administrative system of commanderies and counties, but in the east he granted kingdoms to allies and relatives. Over the next few years he eliminated most non-Liu kings, including Han Xin and Peng Yue, executed in 196 BC, and Ying Bu, defeated in 195 BC. He then ruled that only members of the Liu family could be kings.

He also faced the Xiongnu in the north. In 200 BC his army was surrounded at Baideng, near Pingcheng, and he escaped only after negotiations. The Han then adopted the heqin policy of marriage alliances and gifts. Liu Bang died in 195 BC, after being wounded by an arrow during the campaign against Ying Bu.

Myths and facts

Myth: Liu Bang was an illiterate peasant. He came from a farming family but served as a minor government official, a post that probably required at least basic literacy. His humble origins were real but often exaggerated.

Legend: the son of the Red Emperor. Sima Qian records stories that Liu Bang’s mother conceived him after meeting a dragon, and that he killed a great white serpent, revealed as the son of the White Emperor, while he himself was the son of the Red Emperor. These are legends meant to show heavenly approval for his rule.

Timeline

• 209 BC: Liu Bang rebels in Pei; Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu rise in the south.
• 208 BC: Xiang Liang is killed at Dingtao.
• 207 BC: Xiang Yu wins at Julu; late in the year, Ziying surrenders to Liu Bang.
• 206 BC: Hongmen Banquet; Liu Bang becomes King of Han.
• 206 BC, eighth month: Han forces retake Guanzhong.
• 205 BC: Liu Bang is routed at Pengcheng.
• 204–203 BC: Han Xin conquers Zhao and Qi.
• 202 BC: Xiang Yu dies after Gaixia; Liu Bang is proclaimed emperor.
• 200 BC: Liu Bang is besieged by the Xiongnu at Baideng.
• 195 BC: Liu Bang dies.

Why it matters

The Han dynasty became one of the defining periods of Chinese history. Its rulers combined Qin-style central administration with a softer image, later adopted Confucian learning as state ideology, and expanded China into Central Asia under rulers such as Emperor Wu. Liu Bang’s rise from village official to emperor also became a lasting example that a commoner could found a dynasty.