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Entry 99 of 240War

The An Lushan Rebellion

755–763 CE/East Asia/Tang China
Today Tang China (capital Chang'an, modern Xi'an)Span Tang dynasty · 618–907 CE

At the height of the brilliant Tang dynasty — China's cosmopolitan golden age of poetry and trade — an over-mighty frontier general named An Lushan turned his armies on the capital, igniting a civil war that broke the dynasty's power for good. The chaos and census collapse that followed were so vast that some counts rank it among the deadliest events in all of history.

◆ Worth knowingBy one reading of the census, the An Lushan rebellion and its aftermath cost tens of millions of lives — a toll that, as a share of the world's population then, would dwarf even the World Wars.
◆ The mechanismDemographic shock & recovery

A sudden collapse in population (plague, famine, mass violence) creates labor scarcity that reorders economy and society.

Also: Elite overproduction · Institutional sclerosis

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