Yellow Turban Rebellion: Encyclopedia - Yellow Turban Rebellion

Yellow Turban Rebellion

The Yellow Turban Rebellion, sometimes also translated as the Yellow Scarves Rebellion, (Simplified: 黄巾之乱; Traditional: 黃巾之亂; Hanyu Pinyin: Huáng Jīn Zhī Luàn) was a 184 AD peasant rebellion against Emperor Lingdi of the Han Dynasty of China. It is named for the color of the scarves which the rebels wore around their heads. The rebels were associated with secret Taiping Taoist societies and the rebellion marked an important point in the history of Taoism. The rebellion is the opening event in the Chinese literary classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Yellow Turban Rebellion - Causes

A major cause of the Yellow Turban Rebellion was an agrarian crisis, in which famine forced many farmers and former military settlers in the north to seek employment in the south, where large landowners took advantage of the labor surplus and amassed large fortunes. The situation was further aggravated by smaller floods along the lower course of the Yellow River. Further pressure was added on the peasants by high taxes imposed on them in order to build fortifications along the Silk Road and garrisons against foreign infiltrations and invasions. In this situation, landless peasants banded together in gangs (around 170 AD) and the landowners set up militias, setting the stage for an armed conflict.

At the same time, the Han Dynasty showed internal weakness. The power of the landowners had been a problem of for a long time already (s. Wang Mang), but in the run-up to the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the court eunuchs in particular gained considerably in influence on the emperor, which they abused to enrich themselves. Ten of the most powerful eunuchs formed a group known as The Ten Regular Attendants and the emperor referred to one of them (Zhang Rang) as his "foster father". Consequently, the government was widely regarded as corrupt and incapable and against this backdrop, the famines and floods were seen as an indication that a decadent emperor had lost his mandate of heaven.

Yellow Turban Rebellion - The rebels

The Yellow Turban Rebellion was led by Zhang Jiao (who is referred to as Zhang Jue in the Robert Moss' English translation of theRomance of the Three Kingdoms) and his two younger brothers Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang, who were born in the Ju Lu district of the Ye Prefecture. The brothers had founded a taoist religious sect in Shandong Province. They considered themselves followers of the "Way of Supreme Peace" (Tai Ping Dao) and venerated the deity Huang-lao, who according to Zhang Jiao had given him a sacred book called the Crucial Keys to the Way of Peace (Tai Ping Yao Shu). Zhang Jue was said to be a sorcerer and styled himself as the "Great Teacher". The sect propagated the principles of equal rights of all peoples and equal distribution of land; when the rebellion was proclaimed, the sixteen-word slogan was created by Zhang Jiao: 苍天已死，黄天当立，岁在甲子，天下大吉 ("The Blue Sky (ie. the Han Dynasty) has perished, the Yellow Sky (ie. the rebellion) will soon rise; in this year of Jia Zi, let there be prosperity in the world!")

Yellow Turban Rebellion - Military action

In 184 AD, the Yellow Turban Rebellion started in the provinces Shandong and Henan. At this time the rebel force consisted of approximately 360,000 fighters. He Jin, the half-brother of the empress, was placed in charge of putting the rebellion down. The rebels were defeated in February 185 AD, but only two months later, the rebellion broke out again. In 185 AD, it spread to the Taihang Mountain Range on the western border of Hebei Province and in 186 it reached Shaanxi, Hebei, and Liaoning, in 188 it reached Shanxi. In the same year, a second independent uprising took place in Sichuan, but it was not coordinated with the Yellow Turban Rebellion in other parts of the country. In December 188 and early in 189, the rebels threatened Luoyang, which was the capital city of the Han Dynasty at the time. As a reaction, imperial troops were sent both west and south to confront the rebels. Although the southern detachment was able to score a victory, its commander, Lu Zhi, was arrested for not keeping on the offensive against the rebels. In 192, Cao Cao was able to defeat the rebels again after they marched into Yanzhou, who eventually ceased to pose a military challenge by the year 205.

Yellow Turban Rebellion - Aftermath

While the Yellow rebellion was defeated eventually, the military leaders and local administrators gained self-governing powers in the process. This hastened the collapse of the Han Dynasty in 220 AD. After emperor Lingdi died in 189 AD, a power struggle between He Jin and the eunuchs ensued in which He Jin was assassinated on September 22, 189. He Jin's chief ally Yuan Shao retaliated by setting the emperor's palace on fire and slaughtering the eunuchs. Finally, the warlord Dong Zhuo was able to gain control over the underaged heir to the throne which he used as a legitimation for occupying the capital, which was ransacked on the occasion. Because of his cruelty, Dong Zhuo was murdered in 192, which set the stage for Cao Cao's rise to power.

Yellow Turban Rebellion - Literary Impact

The Yellow Scarves Rebellion is the opening event in the Chinese literary classic "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". The video game Dynasty Warriors is loosely based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and also contains the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Earlier version of the video game used the name Yellow Scarves Rebellion, but in later versions this was changed it to Yellow Turban Rebellion.

Categories: Chinese rebellions | Han Dynasty

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Yellow Turban Rebellion", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki