State and society: bureaucracy and social orders under the Han Empire

Abstract

Although the Han elites portrayed themselves as the ideological opponents of the Qin Empire, there can be no doubt that much of Han’s glory was owed to the foundation already built in Qin. By modifying Qin elements, the Han Empire created institutions and cultural patterns that were to exercise long-lasting impact on China. The Han Empire had a population of 59,594,978 men and women in the year of 8 BC as reported in the official history of the Western Han Dynasty, and quite a few of its most populated commanderies exceeded 1 million. In order to mobilize human and material resources to support operations by its armies and the various colonist groups in the vast space from southern Manchuria in the east to the Pamir Mountains in the west, stretching south to the southeastern China coasts, the Han constructed a huge bureaucratic machine, often regarded by historians as one of the most fully developed pre-modern bureaucracies in the world. The Han society can be described as a typical rank society with its elite population divided into twenty ranks that enjoyed different degrees of privilege. The long process of expansion afforded tremendous opportunities for the young people of the empire to win military or civil merits and hence join the ranks of social elites. The rank system provided the basic social order of Han society which was enforced through the Han legal system. However, as time went on families of the upper ranks, which were usually hereditarily held, tended to consume an ever-increasing portion of social resources in competition with the imperial state. This in the long run inevitably served to undermine the economic foundation of the imperial state as the Han Empire was at the same time being weakened politically by a struggle between the imperial in-laws and the eunuchs surrounding the emperor.