A Concise History of China-Pangu to Puyi - Part 6

Laszlo Montgomery (0:00)

Welcome back, everyone. Laszlo Montgomery here with another China History Podcast episode, the sixth in this long overdue makeover of the history of Imperial China from stem to stern, that is, mythical times to our modern age, Pan Gu to Puyi. Last time in part five, we pretty much finished off the Three Kingdoms, the Sixteen Kingdoms, and the Jin Dynasty. Today, we're going to cover what happened after the fall of the Eastern Jin and the Sixteen Kingdoms. Next up was the Northern and Southern dynasties period. Today's story involves a disunited China, politically fragmented once again. Like we saw in the Sixteen Kingdoms, the Northern dynasties were ruled by what history books call Xianbei elites. The Xianbei are usually called Mongols. A lot of times, all these nomadic people who lived north of China, well, for convenience sake maybe are usually referred to as Mongols. Mongolists and all scholars of nomadic studies would beg to differ. The culture from Eastern Manchuria to modern-day Kazakhstan is like a microprocessor seen under a microscope. The more you zoom in, the more linguistic, cultural, methodological, and historiographical texture there is. And up to this point on the China history timeline, because they never got a chance to tell their own story, they became characters within the narrative of China's historians. Up till now, we've seen going back to the Si Yi, the four barbarians of the Shang, these nomadic tribes who all lived along China's periphery, were always a threat, a nuisance, and a people to fear. Now as the 16 kingdoms period becomes the Northern dynasties period, we see things take an interesting turn when these once-feared barbarians become, in many cases, even more cultured and consistent with Chinese traditional ways than the Han Chinese themselves. And lest we forget, they were the ones who spread Buddhism around China first. So keep that in mind as we all see these non-Han Chinese more and more integrate their millennia-old step culture with everything that had developed in China up to that point in its history.

The Xianbei, they weren't Mongols, but were first or second cousins, you might say. They played a starring role in the history of Northern China long before Chinggis Khan in the late 12th, early 13th century.

They were originally from the Northeastern Steppe, where the grasslands turned into forest land. This is around today's Eastern Mongolia, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. It's believed they were part of the so-called Donghu Confederation. With the demise of the Xiongnu in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the Xianbei began to organize into their own tribal federation. Like all nomads, they too wandered and didn't build cities.

Linguistically, they spoke what's believed to be a paramongolic language. Paramongolic is a label that scholars give the language of the Xianbei. It was closely related to Mongolic, but not an actual part of the Mongolic language family. In fact, it's not even part of the proto-Mongolic branch of languages. The Xianbei used a language that had some similarities to Mongolic, but not enough to be considered part of the language family. However, their step culture shared more similarities with others who roamed the step. The Xianbei are unique and special in one major aspect. The degree to which they took to Chinese culture stood out amongst all the non-Han people of the Northeast step. And when the Tuòbá clan rose to the top of Xianbei society, they turned their confederation into a Chinese model state. Like we'll see with all dynasties ruled by non-Han emperors all the way to the end with the Qing, not everyone was thrilled with this broad embrace of Chinese ways. The Xianbei military elites in particular were not on board with this transformation going on in their world. They preferred not to sell out and to continue to favor their northern nomadic ways. In other words, they were conservative, not looking to try new things that might affect change in ways they were not accustomed to.

With the defeat of the Northern Liang in 439, the Northern Wei united northern China and ended the 16 kingdoms period. Their adoption of Chinese style rule laid the foundation for something new that would later astound the world during the Sui and Tang dynasties. The Northern Wei doesn't make it to the list of the top dynasties in popular Chinese history, though not as celebrated as it should be. The Northern Wei not only unified the north of China, it totally reshaped Chinese civilization. If you vaguely recall from last time, the former Qin dynasty founded by Fú Jiān and his progeny almost but not quite were able to unify China. They almost did it in the north, but if you remember following their defeat at the historic battle of Fei River in 383, former Qin ended up having feet of clay and disintegrated so soon after this defeat.