Abstract

This study attempted to more objectively investigate the military thought of the Later Han(後漢) through analysis of the view of war and way of conducting war, using the latter era as the main scope. The rule of Letters(文治), which focuses on studying abroad in Gwangmu(光武帝), helped to implement a gentle foreign policy, and domestic policies such as reducing taxes by avoiding war contributed to stabilizing the people. However, the fundamentally his war-hating Confucian ideas weakened the frontier’s military power along with the change in the military system, such as eliminating the standing army of local forces, resulting in his successors failing to adequately cope with external invasions. Later Han, whose local military power weakened, failed to respond appropriately to the rebellion of the Qiang people (羌族), and the prolonged war led to the deterioration of the rod, armaments, and finances, leading to generous self-decline. The Qianfulun(『潛夫論』) severely criticizes the rulers of the generosity, and shows the characteristics of military thought that the importance of force is dominated by Confucian ideas. In particular, it is legal to find the essence of war victory or defeat in the importance of general and military capabilities, or to find desirable general in military expertise rather than virtue(德). In the Later Han period, Confucian political ideology dominated society, but in the reality that the invasion of the immigrants continued, some Confucian scholars were arguing for military ideas that value force. If the Earlier Han(前漢) was an era of introducing Confucian governance on the legacy of Jin’s legal governance, it could be said that the Later Han was rather an era of supplementing the Confucian governance with the legal governance method.(National Defense University)

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