Princess Taiping had shielded Li Longji from her mother when he was young and supported him in his efforts to take the throne. These characters were supposed to replace between 10 and 30 of the older characters and were Wu's attempt to change the way her people thought and wrote. You're hard-pressed to find any historical documents that don't have some sort of bias, especially when dealing with a controversial figure like Wu Zetian. 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. Your Majesty may take this as 'Mount Felicity', but your subject feels there is nothing to celebrate. Traditional historians grudgingly acknowledged that she surpassed her sons, the legitimate heirs, in both vision and statecraft. the empress, greatly weakened by infirmity and old age, would allow no one but the Zhang brothers by her side. Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century. Shanghai: Sibu congkan ed., 1929. Books disadvantages of food transportation. The World History Encyclopedia logo is a registered trademark. Complete List of Included Worksheets Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document. Wu's rise to power was ruthless and her reign no less so, as she continued to eliminate rivals and opponents using tactics that were sometimes brutal. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Japanese modern statue of Kannon commemorating Sima, Guang. However they rose, though, it has always been harder for a woman to rule effectively than it was for a manmore so in the earlier periods of history, when monarchs were first and foremost military leaders, and power was often seized by force. There was a sense of trying to keep up with ones rivals by building something bigger than they had. 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. She carefully eliminated any potential enemies from the court and had Lady Wang and Lady Xiao killed after they had gone into exile. Tang China during the 7th century was a period of military strength and cultural attainments, its empire stretching into Central Asia and Southwest Asia and ruled by the Li-Tang imperial family from the capital city of Xi'an (Xian), Shanxi province. Her mother ne Yang was of aristocratic birth with mixed Chinese and Turkic blood, the result of generations of intermarriage when five nomadic tribes overran north China and founded dynasties in the 4th to 6th centuries. 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. According to the histories of the period, Wu smothered her own week-old daughter by Gaozong and blamed the babys death on Wang, who was the last person to have held her. 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 Wu's account claims that Lady Wang murdered her daughter, later Chinese historians all agree that Wu was the murderer and she killed her child to frame Lady Wang. 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. Still, Xuanzong continued many of Wu's policies, including keeping her reforms in taxation, agriculture, and education. 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. 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. Five Historical Plays. Paul, Diana Y. World History Publishing is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. Jay, Jennifer W. "Vignettes of Chinese Women in Tang Xi'an (618906): Individualism in Wu Zetian, Yang Guifei, Yu Xuanji and Li Wa," in Chinese Culture. 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. The Empress Wu Zetian (690-704 CE) is the only female ruler in the history of China. Any historian who has written on Lady Wu has followed the story set down by the later Chinese historians without question, but these historians had their own agenda which did not include praising a woman who presumed to rule like a man. She wanted to make it clear that a new kind of ruler had taken the throne of China and a new order had arrived. The insurrections had received little popular support and in the years that she dominated politics as empress, empress dowager, and finally as emperor, there were no widespread military unrests. Empress Wu rose to power through ruthless tactics to move her from the emperor's concubine, to the emperor's consort, and eventually to the position of empress of China. Last modified February 22, 2016. 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. 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). 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. 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. Her reign was peaceful and prosperous; she introduced the meritocratic system of entrance examinations for the imperial bureaucracy that survived into the 20th century, avoided wars and welcomed ambassadors from as far away as the Byzantine Empire. According to Anderson, servants. Wu Zhao embarked on religious life as a nun in a convent after Li Shimins death in 649. Download Full Size Image. Under Wus rule the government was expanded, and many of the new positions were filled through the examination system. Although she was not able to control the newly unified state, relations continued to be friendly during her reign. 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. 3rd Series. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. T.H. and to pray for permanent world peace. Encyclopedia.com. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. Wu Zetian's SteleI, (GJGY.com) (CC BY-SA). According to almost all her biographers, she was extremely cruel in her personal life, murdering two sons, a daughter, sister, niece, grandchildren, and many Li and Wu princes and princesses who opposed her. . Cite This Work "Empress Wu Zetian." 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. Advertising Notice She installed a series of copper boxes in the capital in which citizens could post anonymous denunciations of one another, and passed legislation, R.W.L. 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. 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. Wu Zetian's first two sexual partners were emperors and related to each other as father and son. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977. Retrieved February 23, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wu-zetian-624-705. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Wu_Zetian/. and turned the, Wang Mang (45 B.C.-A.D. 23) was a Chinese statesman and emperor. She gave titles of royalty to her own Wu family: her brothers and nephews became princes while her sisters, aunts, and nieces became princesses. Wu placed her first son on the throne who took the royal title Zhongzong. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Of all these female rulers, though, none has aroused so much controversy, or wielded such great power, as a monarch whose real achievements and characterremain obscured behind layers of obloquy. ." 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. Empress Wu proved to be a wise monarch, and in her reign of twenty years she continued many policies and practices of her predecessors. 22 Feb. 2023 . One of these served as her new personal name, Zhao, which articulates the fundamental Buddhist notion of universal emptiness. So much for the supposed facts; what about the interpretation? Belmont: Wadsworth, 1989, pp. "Wu Zetian (624705) 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. 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. Under the administration of Empress Wu, Tang territory expanded through constant fighting with other peoples, particularly the Tibetans. Empress Wu Zetian (r. 683-704 CE) of the Tang Dynasty . But in 705, when she was 81 years old, the combined forces of the Li-Tang family took advantage of her weakening grip on the state and removed her from power. Wus later life was one long illustration of the exceptional influence she had come to wield. In her seventies, Wu showered special favor on two smooth-cheeked brothers, the Zhang brothers, former boy singers, the nature of whose private relationship with their imperial mistress has never been precisely determined. It could also be, like it was in Egypt after Queen Hatshepsut's reign, that no one in power wanted to record the reign of a woman and hoped that Empress Wu would be forgotten. Wu Zhao viewed the situation differently: she claimed the mountain was a good omen which reflected the Buddhist mountain of paradise, Sumeru. But if she is observed in the context of the sexuality of male rulers, then the number of her favorites is insignificant. Having risen to be empress in Wangs stead, Wu ordered that both womens hands and feet be lopped off and had their mutilated bodies tossed into a vat of wine, leaving them to drown with the comment: Now these two witches can get drunk to their bones., As if infanticide, torture and murder were not scandalous enough, Wu was also believed to have ended her reign by enjoying a succession of erotic encounters which the historians of the day portrayed as all the more shocking for being the indulgences of a woman of advanced age. Mark, E. (2016, March 17). One of the most powerful champions of Buddhism in China was the Empress Wu Zetian. Wei had her father appointed Chief Minister to her husband and tried to push through other measures favoring her family. Van Gulik, Robert. Empress Wu Zetian ruled as Chinas only female emperor. After this event Wu became Empress and shared Imperial power equally with her emperor. Kannon embodies compassion, and when seen as female is venerated as a patron of motherhood and fertility. She is hated by gods and men alike.. The earliest sources on Wu Zetian already contained rumors of sex scandals in her court. 1, 1993, pp. 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. Empress Dowager. Already in 674 she had drafted 12 policy directives ranging from encouraging agriculture to formulating social rules of conduct. To legitimize her position, Empress Wu turned mainly to Buddhism, proclaiming herself an incarnation of Maitreya (Mi-le), the Buddhist savior. She did not ask any man's permission to lead these women to Mount Tai; she felt she knew what was best and did it. Running a website with millions of readers every month is expensive. If so, their hopes were in vain; Empress Wu Zetian is remembered today as one of the greatest rulers in China's history. In 652 CE, Wu gave birth to a son, Li Hong, and in 653 CE had another son, Li Xian. "Empress Wu (Wu Zhao) Agricultural production under Wu's reign increased to an all-time high. Cookie Policy Most nations of note have had at least one great female leader. Buddhism was carried into East Asia by merchants and Buddhist monks traveling the Silk Road from Northern India, Persia, Kashmir and Inner Asia. She reformed the structure of the government and got rid of anyone she felt was not carrying out their duties and so reduced government spending and increased efficiency. In 697 CE, Wu's hold on power began to slip when she became more paranoid and began spending more time with her young lovers than on ruling China. Primary Sources with DBQsCHINA 4000 - 1000 BCE Ancestral Rites and Divination . By the fourth century CE, the Roman Empire was at the apex of its power and strength. One critic, the poet Luo Binwang, portrayed Wu as little short of an enchantressAll fell before her moth brows. 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. 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. Wu Zetian's father was a successful merchant and military official who reached ministerial ranks. She was the power behind the throne from Gaozong's death in 683 CE until she proclaimed herself openly in 690 CE and ruled as emperor of China until a year before her death in 705 CE, at the age of 81. 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. Zizhi tongjian [Comprehensive mirror as guide to history]. Empress Wu used the intelligence she gathered to pressure some high-ranking officials who were not performing well to resign; others she simply banished or had executed. Wu Zhao (624-705), also known as Empress Wu Zetian, was the first and only woman emperor of China. They also functioned as powerful reminders of imperial power. In the last three decades, Marxist historiography on Wu Zetian in Mainland China has yielded a positive but unreliable and ideologically charged reappraisal. Every Chinese emperor had concubines, and most had favorites; few came to power, or stayed there, without the use of violence. World Eras. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. Wu Zetian. . It was approached via a mile-long causeway running between two low hills topped with watchtowers, known today as the nipple hills because Chinese tradition holds that the spot was selected because the hills reminded Gaozong of the young Wus breasts. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Privacy Statement In 674 CE, Gaozong took the title Tian Huang (Emperor of Heaven) and Wu changed her own to Tian Hou (Empress of Heaven). Yet Wu has had a pretty bad press. Wu Zetian's politics can be considered as feminist initiatives to reinforce the legitimacy of women in the political arena. 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 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). Barrett. Wu Zetian is the only legitimatized Empress in Chinese history. Barretts recent book even suggests (on no firm evidence) that the empress was the most important early promoter of printing in the world. "Empress Wu and Proto-Feminist Sentiments in T'ang China," in Frederick P. Brandauer and Chn-chieh Huang, eds., Imperial Rulership and Cultural Change in Traditional China. Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca.1500 BC till 1644 AD. She established a policy so that informants could be paid to travel by public transportation to report to the court. 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. World History Encyclopedia. Web. 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. 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. Click for Author Information. 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. Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week: Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. The odds that a girl of this low rank would ever come to an emperors attention were slim. The political success of Wu Zetian indicates that the attributes needed in diplomacy and rulership were not restricted to men. The story of Wu's murder of her daughter and the framing of Lady Wang to gain power is the most infamous and most often repeated incident of her life but actually there is no way of knowing if it happened as the historians recorded it. Such killings were not uncommon among emperors before and after her. In 710 CE Zhongzong died after being poisoned by Wei who hid his body and concealed his death until her son Chong Mao could be made emperor. (British Library, Shelfmark Or. Wu also took back lands which had been invaded by the Goturks under the reign of Taizong and distributed them so that they were not all held by the aristocrats. She killed her sister, butchered her elder brothers, murdered the ruler, poisoned her mother, the chronicles say. Modern popular novels and plays, in Chinese, Japanese, and English, also exaggerate the sexual aspect of her rule. We would much rather spend this money on producing more free history content for the world. Carved in limestone, the colossal statue is reputed to have been carved in Wus own likeness. The Chinese Bell Murders. Wu decreed that the workmen sculpt the face of the largest of these statues to resemble her and also persuaded the monks of the sanctuary at Luoyang to forge the Big Cloud Book to substantiate her claim as Maitreya. One reason, as we have already had cause to note in this blog, is the official nature and lack of diversity among the sources that survive for early Chinese history; another is that imperial history was written to provide lessons for future rulers, and as such tended to be weighted heavily against usurpers (which Wu was) and anyone who offended the Confucian sensibilities of the scholars who labored over them (which Wu did simply by being a woman). At the end of this spirit road, the tomb itself lies in a remarkably inaccessible spot, set into a mountain at the end of a winding forest path. She also reformed the department of agriculture and the system of taxation by rewarding officials who produced the greatest amount of crops and taxed their people the least. No-one knows what secrets it holds, for like many of the tombs of the most celebrated Chinese rulers, including that of the First Emperor himself, it has never been plundered or opened by archaeologists. True, Taizongan old warrior-ruler so conscientious that he had official documents pasted onto his bedroom walls so that he would have something to work on if he woke in the nighthad lost his empress shortly before Wu entered the palace. To justify her rule, Wu used selected Buddhist scriptures and led the way in the creation of numerous visual representations of the Buddha. The historians always portray Wu as ruthless, conniving, scheming, and bloodthirsty, and she may have been all of these things, she may have even murdered her daughter to gain the throne, but any of these claims should only be accepted after considering their source. She graduated from SUNY Delhi in 2018. Wu Zetian's collected writings include official edicts, essays, and poetry, in addition to a treatise to instruct her subjects on moral statecraft. Even if she took full advantage, however, she must have possessed not only looks but remarkable intelligence and determination to emerge, as she did two decades later, as empress. Hauppauge : Nova Science Publishers, 2003; Richard Guisso, Wu Tse-Tien and the Politics of Legitimation in Tang China. Instead, it was left without any inscriptionthe only such example in more than 2,000 years of Chinese history. Jiu Tangshu [Old history of the Tang]. Replacing the dynasty and imperial house through Confucian ideology still could not legitimize a woman on the throne. unified China in 221 B.C. At the time of the murder, it was Lady Wu's word against Lady Wang's, and later historians decided to side with Lady Wang against Wu; but this does not mean they chose the right side. She had the mountain named Mount Felicity and claimed it had risen to honor her and her reign. A brother or a clan grandson at times ascended the throne during usurpation or when the emperor died without issue, but female succession through descent from a daughter was never permitted. She began her life at court as a concubine of the emperor Taizong. Encyclopedia.com. She also organized military campaigns against Korea in 668 CE which were so effective that they reduced Korea to the status of a vassal state. First emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Quin Shi Huang-di (259 B.C.-210 B.C.) Liu, Xu. She replaced Zhongzong with her second son, who became Emperor Ruizong. Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China. 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. Based on Wikipedia content that has been reviewed, edited, and republished. Hong Kong: Cosmos, 1994. Her daunting task was convincing the Confucian establishment about the legitimate succession of a woman who was the widow of the deceased emperor and the mother of the currently legitimate ruler. She was the daughter of a minor general called Duke Ding of Ying, and came to the palace as a concubine in about 636an honor that suggests that she was very beautiful, since, as Jonathan Clements remarks, admission to the ranks of palace concubines was equivalent to winning a beauty contest of the most gorgeous women in the medieval world. But mere beauty was not sufficient to elevate the poorly connected teenage Wu past the fifth rank of palace women, a menial position whose duties were those of a maid, not a temptress. Mark, Emily. So queens and empresses regnant were forced to rule like men, and yet roundly criticized when they did so. She commissioned statues of the Maitreya in the Longmen Caves outside Luoyang. By 655 she had consolidated her position after her son inherited the throne. The Woman Who Discovered Printing. Chu Hsi (1130-1200) was one of the greatest Chinese scholars and philosophers. She held power, in one guise or another, for more than half a century, first as consort of the ineffectual Gaozong Emperor, then as the power behind the throne held by her youngest son, and finally (from 690 until shortly before her death in 705) as monarch. Taizong was surprised that his latest concubine could read and write and became fascinated by her beauty and wit in conversation. 1996-2021 Last modified March 17, 2016. She was painted as a usurper who was both physically cruel and erotically wanton; she first came to prominence, it was hinted, because she was willing to gratify certain ofthe Taizong emperors more unusual sexual appetites. Since candidates normally tried to win favor with an examiner prior to the tests, some could use their family connections to send samples of their verse in an effort to impress the men who held the keys to government positions. Ruthless and decisive, she stabilized and consolidated the Tang dynasty at a time when it appeared to be crumblinga significant achievement, since the Tang period is reckoned the golden age of Chinese civilization. Pomacanthus imperator (emperor angelfish) See CHAETODONTIDAE. 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. "Empress Wu Zetian." Encyclopedia.com. On the Korean peninsula Empress Wu supported the unification movement under the state of Silla. In 704 CE, court officials could no longer tolerate Wu's behavior and had the Zhang brothers murdered. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. This opposition was formidable; the annals of the period contain numerous examples of criticisms leveled by civil servants mortified by the empresss innovations. 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. 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. Lu Zhi was an instantly recognizable villain to the people of China, and linking Wu with her through the murders worked to destroy Wu's reputation. 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.