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Entry 62 of 240War

The Founding of the Han Dynasty

202 BCE/East Asia/Han China
Today China (capital Chang'an, modern Xi'an)Span Han dynasty · 202 BCE – 220 CE

When the harsh Qin dynasty collapsed, a commoner named Liu Bang — a minor village official, not a noble — rose through the chaos to found the Han. The Han softened Qin's brutal legalism with Confucian ethics and ruled China, on and off, for four centuries, so defining the civilization that its majority people still call themselves 'Han' today. Its founding set the template for the Chinese dynastic cycle: a corrupt regime loses the Mandate of Heaven, rebellion topples it, and a new dynasty claims the mandate to begin again.

◆ Worth knowingChina's majority ethnic group — over a billion people — still calls itself 'Han' after this dynasty, founded by a former village constable who once freed the prisoners he was escorting and fled to become a rebel.
◆ The mechanismRevolution from hardship

Hardship plus a sudden opening (weak state, lost war, fiscal collapse) lets those who bear it overthrow the order — usually installing a new elite.

Also: State formation & institutional founding · Legitimating-narrative collapse

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