correct answers: the roman empire constructed significantly more roads and developed inland economic resources more extensively than its predecessors the roman empire integrated many Greek and Phoenician trade routes, regional products and trade cities into its own economic system Wu Zetian's collected writings include official edicts, essays, and poetry, in addition to a treatise to instruct her subjects on moral statecraft. With a heart like a serpent and a nature like that of a wolf, one contemporary summed up, she favored evil sycophants and destroyed good and loyal officials. A small sampling of the empresss other crimes followed: She killed her sister, butchered her elder brothers, murdered the ruler, poisoned her mother. "Empress Wu and the Historians: A Tyrant and Saint of Classical China," in Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross, eds., Unspoken Worlds: Religious Lives of Women. By 666, the annals state, Wu was permitted to make offerings to the gods beside Gaozong and even to sit in audience with himbehind a screen, admittedly, but on a throne that was equal in elevation to his own. Examination System. Neither of these boys was a threat to Lady Wang or Lady Xiao because Gaozong had already chosen a successor; his chancellor Liu Shi was Lady Wang's uncle, and Gaozong appointed Liu Shi's son, Li Zhong, as heir. Character Overview Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca.1500 BC till 1644 AD. Naples: Institute Universitario Orientale, 1976. Wu also reformed the military by mandating military exams for commanders to show competency, which were patterned on her imperial exams given to civil service workers. In the reign of Empress Wu, persons who entered government through the examinations were able for the first time to occupy the highest positions, even that of chief minister. Cite This Work The spirit road causeway to Wus still-unopened tomb lies between two low rises, tipped by watchtowers, known as the nipple hills.. These monumental statues, like the one carved into the mountain at Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which was destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, alerted the populous to the dominance of Buddhism. Although the function of the concubine in China is almost always associated with sex, a woman in this position could have a number of non-sexual responsibilities, from daily tasks like taking care of the laundry to more specialized skills like conversation, poetry reading, and playing music. Luoyang was favorably located on the last stop of the river routes from the South, which greatly reduced the cost of shipping grains from the Southeast to the imperial capital. Under the administration of Empress Wu, Tang territory expanded through constant fighting with other peoples, particularly the Tibetans. Chu Hsi (1130-1200) was one of the greatest Chinese scholars and philosophers. The court followed Empress Wus example by creating an enormous statue of the Vairocana Buddha in gold and copper at the Todaiji monastery in Nara, Japans capital. Fitzgeraldwho reminds us that Tang China emerged from 400 years of discord and civil warwrites, Without Wu there would have been no long enduring Tang dynasty and perhaps no lasting unity of China, while in a generally favorable portrayal, Guisso argues that Wu was not so different from most emperors: The empress was a woman of her times. A huge stele was erected outside the tomb, as was customary, which later historians were supposed to inscribe with Empress Wu's great deeds but the marker remains blank. When a mountain seemed to appear following the earthquake, this was also interpreted as nature itself revolting against the reign of Wu. This spy system served her well in giving her early warning of any plots in the making and enabled her to take care of threats to her reign before they became actual problems. Abdication. So much for the supposed facts; what about the interpretation? However, when Li Zhi became emperor and took the name Gaozong, one of the first things he did was send for Wu and have her brought back to court as the first of his concubines, even though he had others and also a wife. 2231). For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. The reversal of gender roles was nowhere more objectionable than Wu Zetian's sexuality, in the eyes of the traditional historians. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. The political success of Wu Zetian indicates that the attributes needed in diplomacy and rulership were not restricted to men. Empress Wu is the only female to have ever ruled in her own name in China. Your Majesty may take this as 'Mount Felicity', but your subject feels there is nothing to celebrate. If so, their hopes were in vain; Empress Wu Zetian is remembered today as one of the greatest rulers in China's history. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. . Empress Wu Zetian (Empress Consort Wu, Wu Hou, Wu Mei Niang, Mei-Niang, and Wu Zhao, l. 624-705 CE, r. 690-704 CE) was the only female emperor of Imperial China. She not only created many different cultural and political policies, but she displayed what a women could do in government. Her upright Confucian minister, Di Renjie (d. 700, the protagonist of Robert van Gulik's popular Judge Dee detective novels), convinced her to bring back her son, the deposed emperor Zhongzong, to be appointed as her successor. These historians claim that Wu ordered Lady Wang and Lady Xiao murdered in a terrible way: she had their hands and feet cut off and they were then thrown into a vat of wine to drown. Even today, Wu remains infamous for the spectacularly ruthless way in which she supposedly disposed of Gaozongs first wife, the empress Wang, and a senior and more favored consort known as the Pure Concubine. 242289. Determining the truth about this welter of innuendo is all but impossible, and matters are complicated by the fact that little is known of Wus earliest years. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. A woman in the most powerful position in government threatened the traditional patriarchy and the court counselors, ministers, and historians claimed Wu had upset the balance of nature by assuming a power which belonged to a man. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. . 1996-2021 When she saw she would not be able to control the court as her mother did, she killed herself and Xuanzong decreed that no member of Wu's family would be allowed to hold public office because of their ruthless scheming and underhanded politics. When her mother was distressed about losing her to an uncertain life fraught with intrigues in the emperor's harem, she firmly reassured her: "Isn't it a fortune to attend the emperor! Her name was Wu Zetian, and in the seventh century A.D. she became the only woman in more than 3,000 years of Chinese history to rule in her own right. Historians have documented Wu Zetian's resort to slander, torture, and murders to reinforce the propaganda of omens. Map: Wikicommons. According to Wu's own account, they conspired against her but, according to other historians, Wu started and finished the problems she had with them. She worked against the Confucian dictum that women must restrict their activities to the home and in the wildest imagination could not become emperors. Although she gave political clout to some women, such as her capable secretary, she did not go as far as challenging the Confucian tradition of excluding women from participating in the civil service examinations. Empress Wu Zetian ruled as Chinas only female emperor. In sum, within the social and political context of her time, Wu Zetian was a leader who went beyond the traditional roles of submissive wife and home-bound mother to emerge as ruler, lawmaker, and head of state and society while her second husband, lovers, and sons were relegated to less powerful positions than traditionally expected. When Gaozong died in 683, she became empress dowager and ruled on behalf of two adult sons, emperors Zhongzong (r. 684, 705710) and Ruizong (r. 685689, 710712). World History Encyclopedia, 22 Feb 2016. Although this system opened government positions to a wider group than ever before, in the final stages of the process candidates continued to be judged on their appearance and speech. Su, Tong. T.H. It is a challenge to recover real people from this morass of bias. McMullen, David. To legitimize her position, Empress Wu turned mainly to Buddhism, proclaiming herself an incarnation of Maitreya (Mi-le), the Buddhist savior. China during Wu Zetian's ReignIan Kiu (CC BY-SA). Her overall rule, in spite of the change of dynasty, did not result in a radical break from Tang domestic prosperity and foreign prestige. Add to . ." She attracted the attention of many of the young men at court and one of these was the Prince Li Zhi, son of Taizong, who would become the next emperor, Gaozong. But if she is observed in the context of the sexuality of male rulers, then the number of her favorites is insignificant. In 705, Wu Zetian's grandson, the later Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712756), slaughtered the Zhang brothers in spite of Wu Zetian's protest and forced her to return the Li-Tang imperial family to power. Retrieved February 23, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wu-zetian-624-705. When Gaozong died in 683 CE, Wu took control of the government as empress dowager, placing two of her sons on the throne and removing them almost as quickly. Nevertheless, the legitimation was not without problems, and there was continued resistance from among the high officials who collaborated with the Li-Tang crown princes, princes, and princesses to get her dismissed as empress in 674 and dethroned as de facto ruler in 684, but both events failed. Not the United States, of course, but one thinks readily enough of Hatshepsut of ancient Egypt, Russias astonishing Catherine the Great, or Trung Tracof Vietnam. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007; Dora Shu-Fang Dien, Empress Wu Zetian in Fiction and in History: Female Defiance in Confucian China. At one point, to the horror of her generals, Wu proposed raising a military corps from among Chinas numerous eunuchs. But she changed the composition of the ruling class by removing the entrenched aristocrats from the court and gradually expanding the civil service examination to recruit men of merit to serve in the government. According to Anderson, servants. Why should you weep for me?" The military exams were intended to measure intelligence and decision making and candidates were personally interviewed instead of just being appointed because of family connections or their family's name. "Empress Wu (Wu Zhao) Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. But several years later, she returned to the palace as Gaozong's concubine and gave birth to sons. Cookie Settings, I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too., as we have already had cause to note in this blog, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. She began her life at court as a concubine of the emperor Taizong. Liu, Xu. On a similar tone, she ordered that the mother of the Daoist sage Laozi (Lao Tzu, c. 600 bce) be honored. Wu was forced to abdicate in favor of her exiled son Zhongzong and his wife Wei. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. The China that Wu Zetian was born in was the Tang Dynasty (618906), a strong and unified empire after four centuries of political discord and foreign interaction. The empress even promoted what might loosely be termed womens rights, publishing (albeit as part of her own legitimation campaign)Biographies of Famous Women and requiring children to mourn both parents, rather than merely their father, as had been the practice hitherto. Although these characters were removed after her reign they still exist as a Chinese dialect in written form. World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. Wu was given the privileged position of first concubine even though by law she should have been left in the temple as a nun. In spite of all of her reforms and the prosperity she brought to the country, Wu was remembered mainly for her crimes against friends and family members - especially the murder of her daughter - and people did not think she was worthy of an inscription. Buddhism was carried into East Asia by merchants and Buddhist monks traveling the Silk Road from Northern India, Persia, Kashmir and Inner Asia. One of the most powerful champions of Buddhism in China was the Empress Wu Zetian. Wu Zetian is the only legitimatized Empress in Chinese history. Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. It is the only known uncarved memorial tablet in more than 2,000 years of imperial history, its muteness chillingly reminiscent of the attempts made by Hatshepsuts successors toobliterate her namefrom the stone records of pharaonic Egypt. Wu could have murdered her daughter but her position as a female in a male role brought her many enemies who would have been happy to pass on a rumor as truth to discredit her. The odds that a girl of this low rank would ever come to an emperors attention were slim. Image taken from An 18th-century album of portraits of 86 emperors of China, with Chinese historical notes. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/empress-wu-wu-zhao, "Empress Wu (Wu Zhao) New Haven: YUP, 2008; Jonathan Clements. Her supposed method, moreoveramputating her victims hands and feet and leaving them to drownsuspiciously resembles that adopted by her most notorious predecessor, the Han-era empress Lu Zhia woman portrayed by Chinese historians as the epitome of all that was evil. After rising to power, Wu tried to remove from power the representatives of the northwestern aristocracy, who had controlled the government from the beginning of the dynasty through the medium of the imperial chancellery. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Born to a newly emerging merchant family in the Northeast, Wu Zhao had been a concubine of Li Shimin, or Taizong, founder of the Tang dynasty (618-907). speckle park bull sales 2021 847-461-9794; empress wu primary sources. This opposition was formidable; the annals of the period contain numerous examples of criticisms leveled by civil servants mortified by the empresss innovations. Princess Taiping had shielded Li Longji from her mother when he was young and supported him in his efforts to take the throne. The famed imperial mosaics in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna depict the sixth-century Byzantine empress. Theodora. This institution became a political weapon in the hands of Empress Wu when she usurped the throne in 690. Uploaded by Ibolya Horvath, published on 22 February 2016. Meanwhile, the Turks invaded Gansu, and the Tibetans posed a threat to Chinese possessions in Central Asia. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984. One of the most powerful champions of Buddhism in China was the Empress Wu Zetian. Wu Zetian. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. On the question of succession after her death, Wu Zetian entertained notions of an heir from a Wu and Li marriage. Empress Wu Zetian and the Spread of Buddhism (625-705 C.E.) In promoting Buddhism over Confucianism and Daoism as the favored state religion, the Empress countered strongly held Confucian beliefs against female rule. C.P. The woman who believed she was as capable as any man to lead the country continues to be vilified, even if writers now qualify their criticisms, but there is no arguing with the fact that, under Wu Zetian, China experienced an affluence and stability it had never known before. Not until 705, when she was more than 80 years old, was Wu finally overthrown by yet another sonone whom she had banished years before. Sunzi/Sun Wu, Eastern Zhou Period (770-221 BCE) Selections from the Sunzi: Art of War [PDF] Agriculture, Han Period. Before Smithsonian.com, Dash authored the award-winning blog A Blast From the Past. Wu disposed of her enemies, first the former empress and then the high-ranking officials, who had strongly opposed her rise. Running a website with millions of readers every month is expensive. The Turkic chieftain was insulted by the fact that the groom did not come from the Li-Tang imperial family but descended from what he perceived to be the inferior Wu clan, so he promptly imprisoned the unlucky groom and in 698 returned him to China. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Thus the Wu family was now elevated to the imperial house. "Wu Zetian (624705) Although Carlton's observation is accurate, the box also did provide Wu with a number of ideas for reform which came directly from the people, not government officials who would have profited from them, and which Wu implemented efficiently. Traders from the Mediterranean and Persia also came from both the overland and maritime trade routes, where Buddhism and Central Asian culture, dress, and music reached China. Some historians have viewed her as blazing the trail for the women who came after her, and indeed her daughter, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter aspired to emulate her success, but they failed and even died violently in the process. . She wanted to make it clear that a new kind of ruler had taken the throne of China and a new order had arrived. Lady Wang's uncle, the chancellor Liu Shi, was removed from his post which meant his son was cut off as Gaozong's heir. World History Publishing is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. Her one mistake had been to marry this boy to a concubine nearly as ruthless and ambitious as herself. While serving as his concubine, she risked a death penalty in engaging in an incestuous affair with the crown prince and her stepson, the later Emperor Gaozong (r. 649683). Web. World Eras. The Tang emperor Taizong was the first to promote Wu, whom he gave the nickname Fair Flatterera reference not to her personal qualities but to the lyrics of a popular song of the day. Wu is said to have potentially killed her own. Rothschild describes a confrontation which reflects the feelings of majority of those at court. Palace ladies of the Tang dynasty, from a contemporary wall painting in an imperial tomb in Shaanxi. Guisso says, that empowered informers of any social class to travel at public expense. She also maintained an efficient secret police and instituted a reign of terror among the imperial bureaucracy. Empress Wu Zetian. Her reign witnessed a healthy growth in the population; when she died in 705 her centralized bureaucracy regulated the social life and economic well-being of the 60 million people in the empire. Mutsuhito Her last name, "Wu" is associated with the words for 'weapon' and 'military force' and she chose the name 'Zeitan' which means 'Ruler of the Heavens'. The emperor believed her story, and Wang was demoted and imprisoned in a distant part of the palace, soon to be joined by the Pure Concubine. In 690 C.E., Zetian forced Li Dan to abdicate the throne to her, and declared herself the founding empress of the Zhou dynasty. To ensure the security of her new reign she had any members of the Tang Dynasty royal family imprisoned (including the future emperor Xuanzong) and proclaimed herself an incarnation of the Maitreya Buddha, calling herself Empress Shengsen which means 'Holy Spirit'. Under the older regimes, a suggestion or complaint had to go through a number of different offices before it ever reached anyone who could do something about it. Complete List of Included Worksheets Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document. The emperor's concubines could not be passed on to be used by others but were forced to end their time at court and start a new life of chastity in a religious order. I always think that's the most interesting things about primary sources - the bias. For example, at the statues eye opening ceremony which dedicated the monument, the ruler was ritualistically seen to have been given the right to rule through the divine mandate of the Buddha icon. The most serious charges against Wu are handily summarized in Mary Andersons collection of imperial scuttlebutt, Hidden Power, which reports that she wiped out twelve collateral branches of the Tang clan and had the heads of two rebellious princes hacked off and brought to her in her palace. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms. One of the most powerful champions of Buddhism in China was the Empress Wu Zetian. Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty (The Greenwood Press Wu: The Chinese Empress who schemed, seduced and murdered her way to Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Ouyang, Xiu. Having been raised by her father to believe she was the equal of men, Wu saw no reason why women could not carry out the same practices and hold the same positions men could. If it still won't be tamed, I'll cut its throat with the knife. ." Emily Mark studied history and philosophy at Tianjin University, China and English at SUNY New Paltz, NY. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. One of the brothers, she declared, had a face as beautiful as a lotus flower, while it is said she valued the other for his talents in the bedchamber. However, despite establishing an autocratic and centralised state, Emperor Wu adopted the principles of Confucianism as the state philosophy and code of ethics for his empire and started a school to teach future administrators the Confucian classics. To ensure imperial male progeny, the Chinese emperor's harem was an elaborate organization of eunuchs who attended to hundreds of concubines, of whom one was appointed empress, the principal wife of the emperor. This was considered scandalous because of her advanced age and how young the Zhang brothers were but would not have even been commented on if Wu had been a man sleeping with much younger women. Although she was not able to control the newly unified state, relations continued to be friendly during her reign. . She changed the compulsory mourning period for mothers who predeceased fathers from the traditional one year to three yearsthe same length as the mourning for fathers who predeceased mothers. In death, as in life, then, Wu remains controversial. Among a raft of other allegations are the suggestions that she ordered the suicides of a grandson and granddaughter who had dared to criticize her and later poisoned her husband, whovery unusually for a Chinese emperordied unobserved and alone, even though tradition held that the entire family should assemble around the imperial death bed to attest to any last words. Lineage The Tang Dynasty also witnessed significant military, political, and social changes, as reflected in the transformation of an aristocracy into a meritocracy from the 7th to the 10th centuries. Mike Dash "Wu Zetian (624705) How to evaluate such an unprecedented figure today? Empress Wu was buried in a tomb in Qian County, Shanxi Province, alongside Gaozong. Agricultural production under Wu's reign increased to an all-time high. You're hard-pressed to find any historical documents that don't have some sort of bias, especially when dealing with a controversial figure like Wu Zetian. (British Library, Shelfmark Or. To consolidate her power, in 657 Wu designated Luoyang as a second capital. She organized teams to survey the land and build irrigation ditches to help grow crops and redistributed the land so that everyone had an equal share to farm. Unknown, . Setting up a new dynasty meant installing a new imperial family to replace the Li-Tang imperial house, from which she had married two emperors who were father and son, Taizong and Gaozong. Anyone she suspected of disloyalty, for any reason, was banished or executed. Original image by Unknown. Wu began her life at court taking care of the royal laundry but one day dared to speak to the emperor when they were alone and talked about Chinese history. Forte, Antonino. Japanese modern statue of Kannon commemorating Hailing from the Tang dynasty, Empress Wu made some great positive strives for the Tang dynasty, but also got caught up in scandals - a couple even involving murder! Historian Kelly Carlton writes: Wu had a petition box made, which originally contained four slots: one for men to recommend themselves as officials; one where citizens might openly and anonymously criticize court decisions; one to report the supernatural, strange omens, and secret plots, and one to file accusations and grievances. Rise to Power. The term Confucianism is derived from Confucius, the convention. The Chinese Bell Murders. Her significance as an emperor and founder of a new dynasty lies in her redefining of the gender-specific concepts of the emperorship and the Confucian state. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Based on Wikipedia content that has been reviewed, edited, and republished. She improved the public education system by hiring dedicated teachers and reorganizing the bureaucracy and teaching methods. When Taizong died, Gaozong became emperor, and Wu Zetian joined a Buddhist nunnery, as required of concubines of deceased emperors. Taizong was so impressed at her intellectual abilities, he took her out of the laundry and made her his secretary. It seems possible that the fate ascribed to Wang and the Pure Concubine was a chroniclers invention, intended to link Wu to the worst monster in Chinas history. Before coming to power, she was presented with three petitions containing sixty thousand names and urging her to ascend to the throne, which suggested that she had some popular support. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Cambridge History of China. Mark, Emily. After Wu's death, Zhongzong reigned but only in name; real power was held by Lady Wei who used Wu Zetian as a role model to manipulate her husband and the court. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. In Chinese mythology , Huang-Di (pronounced hoo-arng-DEE), also k, Ho-shen She shocked the Chinese officialdom by arranging to send male grooms to the daughters and aunts of the tribal chieftains at the empire's borders, although it was customary to send female brides. In 654 CE, Wu had a daughter who died soon after birth. She also dealt ruthlessly with a succession of rivals, promoted members of her own family to high office, succumbed repeatedly to favoritism, and, in her old age, maintained what amounted to a harem of virile young men. Empress Wu, or Wu Zhao, challenged the patriarchal system by advocating women's intellectual development and sexual freedom. Became concubine to Emperor Taizong (640); entered Buddhist nunnery (649); returned to the palace as concubine (654), then as empress (657) to Taizong's son Emperor Gaozong; became empress dowager and regent to her two sons (68489); founded a dynasty (Zhou, 690705) and ruled as emperor for 15 years. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. And while Chinas imperial chronicles were too rigidly run and too highly developed for Wus name to be simply wiped from their pages, the stern disapproval of the Confucian mandarins who compiled the records can still be read 1,500 years later. After suppressing this revolt, the empress dowager began to purge her opponents at court. Modern popular novels and plays, in Chinese, Japanese, and English, also exaggerate the sexual aspect of her rule. The critical Anderson concedes that, under Wu, military expenses were reduced, taxes cut, salaries of deserving officials raised, retirees given a viable pension, and vast royal lands near the capital turned over to husbandry.. The founding emperor of a dynasty and his descendants constituted the imperial family, which through male succession produced emperors who were normally the eldest son born to the empress. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. ." But is the empress unfairly maligned? "Empress Wu Zetian." Cold, ruthless, and ambitious, the Han dynasty dowager murdered her rival,. Wu also learned to play music, write poetry, and speak well in public. At a nunnery she established, Empress Komyo sponsored the creation of a statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon which, like Wu Zetians statue at Longmen, was felt to be done in her likeness. After this event Wu became Empress and shared Imperial power equally with her emperor.