Over 2 140 years

Liu Che, Emperor of the Han Dynasty, reigned from 140 BC to 37 BC. During his reign, China experienced a prosperous period of 50 years.

At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang made some children with the same surname king of the country, hoping to ensure the Liu family's world. The blocked vassal has great power. They can own an army, collect taxes, coin coins, and appoint and dismiss officials under their jurisdiction. Later, the influence of the governors was too great, which seriously affected the rule of the central government.

After the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, princes were allowed to redistribute their fiefs to their descendants and establish vassal states. This is the "Act of Grace". When a kingdom splits many Hou Yaozong countries, the territory under its direct jurisdiction will be very small, and there will be no force against the central government. Later, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty successively cancelled a large number of titles of kings and marquis. In this way, after a long struggle, the threat of the kingdom to the central government was finally lifted and centralization was strengthened.

During the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Confucian scholar Dong Zhongshu developed Confucianism in order to meet the needs of authoritarian and centralized politics.

First, it is advocated that heaven is the master of all things, and the emperor is the son of heaven, that is, the son of heaven, ruling the people on behalf of heaven. Therefore, the people of the whole country should obey the emperor's rule, and the governors should also obey the emperor. This is called "great unification".

Secondly, it puts forward the suggestion of "ousting a hundred schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone". It is advocated that only Confucianism is advocated and all other theories are forbidden to spread, so as to achieve ideological unity and consolidate political unity.

Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty adopted Dong Zhongshu's theory, and many people who believed in Confucianism became big officials in the Han Dynasty. Confucianism gradually became the dominant ideology in feudal society.

Emperor Wu was born in 156 BC, and his father was Liu Qi, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. It happened that this year was the year when King Jing ascended the throne. When he was born, he was already a prince. Emperor Wu's mother is Wang Meiren, and Meiren is a concubine of the same rank. Later, it was said that when Emperor Wu's mother was pregnant, she dreamed that the sun was drilling into her arms. Emperor Xian of Han was very happy when he heard about it, and thought it was an auspicious dream, which indicated that the child would make great achievements in the future.

However, Liu Che's mother was not a queen, so according to feudal regulations, her son could not inherit the throne. However, he finally became a prince as he wished and finally ascended the throne.

At the age of four, Jingdi named him King of Jiaodong, and his brother Liu Rong was the Crown Prince. Later, the fate of Emperor Wu turned to the help of Jingdi's sister princess royal. The Royal Princess has a daughter named Chen Ajiao. At first, princess royal wanted to marry her daughter to Rong. In the future, when the prince ascended the throne, her daughter will become a queen. But the prince's mother, Li Ji, was ungrateful, which made princess royal very angry and turned against Li Ji. This made Emperor Wu a profitable fisherman.

Princess royal turned his attention to Emperor Wu, who liked him very much at ordinary times, but his father Jingdi didn't support him very much. Princess royal tried to make this happen: once, she deliberately asked Emperor Wu whether he would like Gillian to be his wife in front of Emperor Jing. Emperor Wu also likes Gillian very much. When his aunt asked, he generously said, "If I can marry Gillian in the future, I will personally build a golden house for her." Seeing that Emperor Wudi and Gillian were also well matched, Jingdi's father agreed to this marriage.

Fate became a prince.

Princess royal is no ordinary princess. She was a very important person when she was in Jingdi, and her influence on Jingdi could not be ignored. Thanks to her great planning and help, as well as the performance of Emperor Wu himself, Jingdi finally chose his talented son, Emperor Wu, as the prince, and promoted his mother, Wang Meiren, as the queen. At this time, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty had just turned seven.

After Emperor Wu became a prince, he studied harder. Emperor Jing invited Wei Wan, who was very knowledgeable, to be his teacher. Emperor Wu studied a wide range, including horseback riding, archery, Confucian classics and literature.

Reform is blocked.

By 140 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, who was 16 years old, officially succeeded to the throne. He was ambitious to continue the prosperity of Wenjing rule, but met with resistance in the early days. This was mainly Dou Taihou at that time, the empress of Emperor Wendi, the grandfather of Emperor Wudi of Han Dynasty. She has been a queen for 40 years, and our family has a great influence in the imperial court. According to the regulations, some princes who were enfeoffed wanted to go to their fiefs in various places, but Dou's relatives did not want to go to those remote places and stayed in the capital. Collusion between officials and businessmen and violations of laws and regulations occur from time to time. For Dou, her thought of governing the country is also very different from that of Emperor Wu.

What Dou likes best is the thought of Huang Lao, which was very popular in the early Han Dynasty, that is, the thought of ancient Huangdi and modern Laozi, mainly "governing by doing nothing", which was the basic thought of governing the country in the policy of "sharing interest with the people" in the early Han Dynasty, which restored and developed the country's economy and contributed to the emergence of the prosperous scene of "governing the literary scene". However, in the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, due to the opposition of feudal princes to the central government, it was urgent to strengthen the power of the central government to suppress local forces. This is the ideological difference between Emperor Wu and Dou Taihou.

After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty ascended the throne, he began to implement his own political strategy: arranging people he trusted to take charge of the power in the DPRK, such as making his uncle Tian Fen a captain and mastering the military power. At the same time, many Confucian scholars were valued by him. In order to select more talents, Liang Wudi also ordered national officials to recommend talents to the Central Committee, which was called "virtuous and upright" at that time. The famous Dong Zhongshu won the first place in this recommended exam. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty summoned him and asked about the good policy of governing the country. Dong Zhongshu told Emperor Wu his own set of developed Confucian thoughts on governing the country, and Emperor Wu appreciated it very much.

However, at this time, Emperor Wu was unable to compete with his grandmother Dou Shi. When Zhao Wan, an important official appointed by him, advised Dou Shi not to interfere in state affairs, he angered Dou Shi. Dou forced Emperor Wu to abolish a series of reform measures that had just been implemented, and his appointed prime minister and Qiu were also forced to be dismissed, and some ministers were forced to die in prison. Then, Dou's favorite people take over these important positions and obey Dou's orders. This is a blow to Emperor Wu, but Emperor Wu has an age advantage. He was not depressed, but saved his strength and bided his time.

Four years later, in 135 BC, Dou Shi died, and this moment finally came. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty immediately dismissed all the people in Dou Shi and made Tian Fen the prime minister. The concept of governing the country also adopted Confucianism and began to strengthen centralization to deal with local strongmen.

Expel a hundred schools of thought from Confucianism

Dong Zhongshu's Confucianism has greatly developed the original Confucius thought, and merged the thoughts of Legalists, Yin and Yang schools and other schools. The first is the ideological unity, that is, the theory of exclusive respect for Confucianism. Others advocate that sovereignty comes from God-given, deify imperial power, implement benevolent policies, and emphasize the rule of law, that is, "morality is the mainstay, supplemented by punishment", and educate the people first, and then suppress them with punishment if education fails. This is a policy of governing the country by combining rigidity with softness, which was adopted by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and became the legal guiding ideology of the Han Dynasty.

Emperor Wu's impressive achievements

The achievements of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty mainly include strengthening centralization, bureaucratic system reform, economic system and foreign relations.

Strengthen centralization

In strengthening centralization, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty did a lot of work.

At that time, the prime minister was in charge of the administration of civil and military officials and had great power, so the emperor sometimes had less power than the prime minister, which the emperor could not bear. Therefore, after Emperor Wu ascended the throne, he mainly weakened the relative power in strengthening centralization.

There is also a very favorable condition for Emperor Wu to weaken the power of the prime minister, that is, the former prime ministers were all heroes of the founding of the country, and now they are basically old or dead. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty took advantage of this favorable opportunity to let many Confucian scholars take the place of their elders to master state power, and at the same time strengthened their power by cracking down on the prime minister. In 124 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty made Gongsun Hong, a Confucian scholar from a common family, as prime minister, which changed the previous practice that nobles were always prime ministers.

Another well-known measure is the promulgation of the "favor order". During the reign of Emperor Gaozu and Liu Bang, many kings surnamed Liu were named Wang with the same surname. But later, the descendants of these kings with the same surname ran roughshod over the countryside, rebelled against the central authorities and disobeyed their orders. In order to completely weaken the influence of the captaincy, Liang Wudi issued this order. Its main content is that the throne of the captaincy can be inherited by the eldest son, and other sons can be enfeoffed in this country in the form of "pushing favors" (that is, spreading favors to let more people enjoy privileges). The new Marquis State broke away from the restrictions of the original kingdom, was geographically independent, and was basically deprived of political power and was under the jurisdiction of local county officials. In this way, the original independent local kingdom automatically handed over power to the state. After that, local kings and princes only enjoyed material privileges, that is, they enjoyed the tax on their fiefs. But without the previous political privileges.

In order to further strengthen the power of the monarch, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent an imperial censor to supervise local strongmen and officials. In BC 106, Liang Wudi divided the whole country into thirteen prisons, each called the Ministry, each sent a secretariat, the central secretariat was called a captain of Li Si, and the other twelve states were called the secretariat. The secretariat supervises the local government from six aspects, that is, "six questions and six rules": First, the mighty men occupy more land and dominate the city; Second, the county magistrate does not abide by imperial edicts and decrees, oppresses the people, runs amok and corrupts; Third, the county magistrate is not sympathetic to the people when trying cases, and ignores human life and rewards and punishments at will, which is hated by the people; Fourth, the selection of officials is unfair, excluding talents and appointing villains as officials; Fifth, the officer's children bully others, and the officer also intercedes with his subordinates for his children, making them bend the law; Sixth, the county magistrate was disloyal to the emperor, colluded with local strongmen and engaged in power and money transactions, which harmed the national interests.

The function of the secretariat is mainly to prevent the county chief from colluding with local strongmen, confronting the central authorities and repeating the situation of insurrection with the same surname Wang. At the same time, the secretariat should also be responsible for recommending officials who are considered to be better to the central authorities, and can also recall officials with poor performance.

At that time, the position of the secretariat was quite high, equivalent to an imperial envoy, and he was away all the year round and had his own office in the local area. As far as the name "historical secretariat" itself is concerned, it already has this feature. "Stabbing" means stabbing to death, that is, investigating illegal acts, and "history" refers to the envoys sent by the emperor.