Timeline of Western Han Dynasty history

Posted: April 24th, 2009 | Author: xiaochong | Filed under: history of china timeline | Tags: | No Comments »
Date Emperor Events Other people/events
206 BC Chu-Han contention begins, a civil war between the forces of Liu Bang and Xiang Yu after the fall of Qin that lasts until 202 BC Feast at Hong Gate
205 BC Battle of Jingxing
202 BC Gaozu Battle of Gaixia
200 BC Battle of Baideng Sometime in the 2nd century BC, the multi-tube seed drill is invented and increases agricultural yields as seeds are carefully planted in rows instead of being cast out onto the crop field.
193 BC Death of Xiao He, the Prime Minister of Han
195 BC
190 BC Hui Chang’an becomes the eastern terminus of the Silk Road connecting to Europe
189 BC Death of Zhang Liang, a former marquis of the State of Han and key advisor to Liu Bang who helped found the Han Dynasty.
180 BC Wen Rule of Wen and Jing Lü Clan Disturbance
168 BC Mawangdui Silk Texts are interred at the tombs of Mawangdui, containing some of the oldest known textual versions of the Book of Changes.
157 BC Jing
141 BC Wu
140 BC Persuaded by Dong Zhongshu’s essay in a literary competition, Emperor Wu, or his Prime Minister Wei Wan, adopts Confucianism at court.
139 BC Under the patronage of Prince Liu An, the scholars known as the Eight Immortals of Huainan publish the Huainanzi, a philosophical text that also covered subjects of military strategy as well as geography and cartography.
133 BC Sino-Xiongnu War Battle of Mayi
130 BC Sino-Roman relations
125 BC Zhang Qian returns to China to report on his travels and the kingdoms of Dayuan (Fergana), Kangju (Sogdiana), Daxia (Greco-Bactrian Kingdom), Shendu (Indo-Greek Kingdom), Anxi (Parthia), and Taozhi (Mesopotamia).
119 BC Battle of Mobei
108 BC Battle of Loulan Wiman Joseon in Korea falls to Han forces.
102 BC Emperor Wu’s forces besiege Kokand in the Fergana Valley
100 BC Steel in China.
94 BC Zhao
91 BC Sima Qian completes the Records of the Grand Historian, a groundbreaking work in Chinese historiography.
86 BC Death of Jin Midi, an official of Xiongnu ethnicity who became a regent of the Han Dynasty during the early reign of Zhao.
74 BC Xuan
67 BC Battle of Jushi
60 BC Protectorate of the Western Regions is established.
48 BC Yuan Consort Ban, a famous female poet, is born around this time.
40 BC The Ji Jiu Pian dictionary records China’s first known use of the treadle-operated tilt hammer, while the later book Xinlun by Huan Tan (d. 28 AD) described the first hydrualic-powered trip hammer which would have been operated by a waterwheel.
37 BC Death of Jing Fang, who was the first in music theory to note that 53 just fifths approximates 31 octaves. Like the later Zhang Heng, he was also a proponent of the ‘radiating influence’ theory, which stated that the light of the moon was merely the reflected light of the sun.
36 BC Battle of Zhizhi
30 BC First mention of the wheelbarrow in history.
18 BC Lienü zhuan, a book about exemplary women in Chinese history, is compiled by the scholar Liu Xiang.
32 BC Cheng
6 BC Ai
1 BC Ping
1 AD Sometime from this year until the end of the century, the earliest representation of a stern-mounted rudder for steering ships is made in China, on a tomb model of a sailing junk.
2 Han government census counts 59 million people in the empire.
3 Emperor Ping establishes a nationwide school system on the central, prefectural, and county levels.
6 Ruzi
8 Liu Xin completes his star catalogue of 1080 stars, as well as fixing the year at 365.25016 days long (11 minutes longer than the modern year) by calculating the synodic month to be 29 43/81 days long, with a total of 235 synodic months adding up to 19 years. He is also the first Chinese to attempt a more accurate calculation of pi at 3.154, as the Chinese before him simply approximated it to 3. Zhang Heng and Liu Hui would later improve upon Liu’s calculation in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, respectively.
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