Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard

Content warning for discussion of genocide and mention of suicide.

Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 6 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 5 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we’re going to, finally, be stepping outside of the Western sphere of influence and migrating over towards Jin Dynasty China to learn about an event that is sometimes known as the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians. This refers to the genocide of many non-Han tribes from China that took place in the beginning of the 4th century CE.

As always, we will start with that most important of set dressings, context. The thing that, without, all of history would just be one shot DnD stories told around a table. But before even that, let’s talk about the word barbarian. Etymologically the word barbarian comes to us from the Greek word barbar, meaning a non-Greek person or someone who didn’t speak ancient Greek. Meaning that, technically, we are all barbarians. In a more modern context the word has a far more pejorative connotation. It’s used in the same contexts as words like savages or uncivilized. It becomes an inherently stigmatizing term. One designed to make the people being referred to by it inherently lesser than those using it.

The is one of our first instances of dehumanization being used in a historic genocide. The Romans didn’t see the Carthaginians as animals or subhuman, merely as a threat to the Roman way of life and to Roman hegemony over the Mediterranean. Pontus didn’t see the Romans as barbarians or savages, merely a threat to Pontus’s control over Asia Minor. But the Five Barbarian Tribes? They were inherently less. They were, to be sure, a threat to Jin dynastic control over China, but more than that, they weren’t Han Chinese, and so they were ethnically inferior.

The Jin Dynasty emerged from the chaos and turmoil of the Three Kingdoms Period. Following the end of the Han Dynasty the Three Kingdoms of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu dominated China from 220 to 280 CE. The Sima clan from the Cao Wei kingdom rose to prominence in 249 CE after staging a coup against the Cao clan. By 263 Sima Yi had conquered both the kingdom of Cao Wei and the Kingdom of Shu Han. Sima Yi would die in 265 CE, but his son Sima Yan would go on to conquer the kingdom of Eastern Wu in 280 CE, uniting China once again and declaring himself the first emperor of the Jin Dynasty. Sima Yan would die 10 years later, in 290 CE and would be called Emperor Wu, the Martial Emperor of Jin, posthumously.

The death of Emperor Wu would spark a succession war that would come to be known as the War of the Eight Princes, and it would be within the context of this war that the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians would occur. See, after Emperor Wu died he was succeeded by his son, Sima Zhong, also known as Emperor Hui. Hui was developmentally disabled. We don’t know the exact nature of his disability, but records show that, while he could read and write just fine, he was unable to make traditionally logical decisions on his own. So, despite ruling as emperor for 17 years, Emperor Hui never exercised any real authority on his own, instead coming under the control of 9 different regents over the course of his reign.
It was because of Emperor Hui’s disabilities and the relative ease with which he could be controlled by a regent that the War of the Eight Princes began in earnest. The War of the Eight Princes, which lasted from 290 until 306 CE is somewhat akin to the Hundred YEars War in that it was not an extended period of continuous fighting. It was stretches of relative peace, interspersed with massive amounts of lethal violence that saw shifts in power each time.

First, after Emperor Wu died he named his father in law Yang Jun, and the Prince of Ru’nan, Sima Liang, as coregents of his second son, Sima Zhong. Yang Jun though didn’t want to share power and managed to get Sima Liang sent away from court to Xucheng, leaving himself in sole control over the imperial court. Yang Jun, however, was wildly unpopular and was soon deposed by Jia Nanfeng, the new Empress of Jin and Sima Liang, who became the first of the Eight Princes in this war.

The rest were Sima Wei, Sima Lun, SIma Jiong, Sima Ai (sometimes written as Sima Yi), Sima Ying, Sima Yong, and Sima Yue. All of these men were rulers over certain administrative zones within the control of the Jin Dynasty and some of them, like Sima Wei, ruled for just days before being captured and killed by other princes.

The third prince, Sima Lun, was the tutor of the crown prince, son of Sima Zhong, Sima Yu. Empress Jia, fearing a loss of her own power should Sima Yu come of age and inherit the throne had him arrested. This led some Chinese government officials to reach out to Sima Lun to gain his aid in overthrowing the Empress, who had been ruling as regent since Sima Wei had been executed. Lun not only captured the Empress, but also forced her to commit suicide by making her drink gold powdered wine.

Sima Lun gaining control of the regency caused many of the other princes to join forces Sima Jiong, who had been discontented by his position in the government following the overthrow of Empress Jia and sent to Xuchang, Sima Ying, and Sima Yong. Sima Ying joined with Sima Jiong after the latter declared rebellion against Sima Lun, and Sima Yong was originally on the side of Sima Lun, but defected to the other side once he realized that Sima Jiong and Ying had a larger and more powerful army. Sima Lun was defeated in relatively short order, and much like Empress Jia, was forced to commit suicide. Once Emperor Hui was reinstated on the throne he declared a grand celebration in the form of a five day, non stop, drinking binge. The emperor’s drink of choice was likely wine or a fermented spirit called baijiu which is made from sorghum.

SIma Jiong was eventually betrayed by his allies Sima Ying and Yong and was killed by his own troops. It was actually Sima Ai who captured the capital after Sima Jiong death, but he elected to share authority with his brother, Sima Ying. Ying wasn’t happy about this though and colluded with Sima Yong to try and have Sima Ai assassinated, though this plot would fail. War would once again break out between SIma Ai and Sima Ying and Yong, only this time SIma Ai would ultimately fall to his brother and Sima Yong.

Sima Yue, the Prince of Donghai, eventually rebelled against SIma Ying, and though being defeated was appointed to the preposition ot Grand Tutor to try and make peace between the two sides. This peace wouldn’t last as in 305 SIma Yue would raise troops against SIma Yong. Yue would ultimately be victorious over both Ying and Yong and would rule as the last regent before Emperor Hui died on January 8, 307 CE after eating poisoned bread. There is some debate over whether or not Sima Yue was responsible for the Emperor’s death. But, after Emperor Hui died he was succeeded by his brother, Sima Chi, known as Emperor Huai. Huai needed no regent, and so ruled in his own right. Though he would oversee the loss of much of the Jin Dynasty’s territory following the Upheaval.

Now, so far we’ve talked a lot about princes, but very little about Barbarians. So now it’s time to shift our focus. Both of these events happened roughly concurrently, and while there was certainly some overlap between them, they were two different events.

The Five Barbarians was a name applied to various nomadic tribes later in history. Those tribes being the Xiongnu, the Jie, the Xianbei, the Qiang, and the Di. All of these tribes (although the Xiongnu is technically a tribal confederation) are also often referred to under the exonym Hu.

Now, various tribes and tribal confederacies had been immigrating into China since the later days of the Han Dynasty, and while relations between these tribes and the people of China wasn’t always sunshine and roses it was good enough that these peoples could live together. With China being thrown into chaos by the Three Kingdoms Period and the War of the Eight Princes many of the tribes went into rebellion. And so in 304 CE, before the War of the Eight Princes even ended, China entered the Sixteen Kingdoms period as various, often short lived, dynastic kingdoms were founded in the northern parts of China.

As one might expect, the Jin Dynasty refused to accept these new kingdoms as distinct from it, and it also refused to accept them as political equals. For example, envoys from the Shi Zhao dynasty, an ethnically Jie dynasty ruled over by Shi Le, a man who had once been an indentured farmer before rising to power during Liu Yuan’s rebellion that established the Han Zhao dynasty, were expelled and all of their gifts they brought for Sima Chi were burnt.

You might be wondering what all of the 16 kingdoms were, well The term "Sixteen Kingdoms" was first used by the 6th-century historian Cui Hong in the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms and refers to the five Liangs (Former, Later, Northern, Southern and Western), four Yans (Former, Later, Northern, and Southern), three Qins (Former, Later and Western), two Zhaos (Han/Former and Later), Cheng-Han and Xia. There was even a brief period between 376 and 383 when the Former Qin dynasty reunited all of northern China.

In 386 Northern China would be fully reunited under the Northern Wei dynasty and by 420 southern China was fully reunited under the Liu Song dynasty, but to find our genocide we actually need to go a little further back in time. We’ve drifted too far forward.

We now find ourselves in the Later Zhao dynasty, also known as the Shi Zhao dynasty. Remember that Shi Le was part of one of the Five Barbarian tribes. He was of Jie ethnicity. Shi Le and his adoptive brother Shi Hu had long standing habits and traditions of adopting other people into their clans. Bringing into the family through law, if not necessarily by blood. One such man was Ran Zhan, an ethnically Han man who would be adopted under the name Shi Min. Shi Min gained power over the Shi Zhao dynasty through the methods you might expected after listening to everything else in this episode. He lied, cheated, and staged a coup.

While in control of the Shi Zhao dynasty, Shi Min survived no fewer than three assassination attempts in the first year of his rule. This lead Shi Min to conclude that he couldn’t trust any of his followers, but he was especially wary of the Jie and the various other tribes as they were refusing to fall in line with his edicts. See, Shi Min, in his paranoia ordered that all Hu people be disarmed and be banned from carrying weapons (disarmament of a particular segment of the population is often an initial step towards genocide as it prevents them from being able to fight back when you ultimately decide to kill them.)

When non-Chinese tribes began to flee the capital city of Ye, Shi Min realized that he would not be able to use the Hu, so he issued an order (this is generally referred to as a culling order) to the ethnic Chinese according to which each civil servant who killed one Hu and brought his head to him would be promoted in rank by three degrees, and a military officer would be transferred to the service at his Supreme Command. Shi Min himself led Chinese in killing the Hu people without regard for sex or age; during the day tens of thousands of heads were severed. In total over 200 thousand people were killed; their bodies were dumped outside the city. Troop commanders in various parts of the state received a rescript from Shi Min to kill the Hus; as a result half of the people with high noses and bushy beards were killed. Among the 200,000 people who died in the massacre many were in fact ethnic Chinese who had high big noses, deep-set eyes and thick full beards, which in combination were considered to be the indicators of non-Hanness.

This brings us an important point when talking about genocides which is, how do perpetrators identify their victim groups? Well, the simple answer is, they don’t. In most cases the identifying features or characteristics that perpetrators use are arbitrary and are not particular to one group of people. The Nazis misidentified thousands of people as Jewish based solely on the size and shape of their nose or whether or not they were circumcised. I, myself, have been misidentified as Jewish by neo Nazis on the internet because of the size of my nose. Shi Min chose a big nose and a full beard as distinctly “barbarian” features, completely ignoring that many ethnically Han people would share those features. There is no logic in how genocidal regimes operate. Never was, never will be.

Another thing I want to highlight is the use of the word cull when referring to the orders Shi Min gave in 349 CE. Words like cull or purge can be seen often when discussing genocide. You will find euphemism in all aspects of genocide. Now, obviously the word genocide didn’t exist in 349 CE, so there was no way to call it that, but words like purge or cull are designed to be clinical and detached from the act of killing. There’s no direct call to murder, or slaughter, or massacre. There’s a call to cull the divisive, lesser, elements from our society. This allows people to remove themselves by one step from the violence they are about to commit. It doesn’t change facts, it doesn’t make something any less of a genocide, but it does make it easier for people to be convinced to carry one out.

That’s it for this week folks. Thanks so much for tuning in and sticking around. We have some more reviews to read this week, so let’s get right to that.

Thank you all so much, and now for the outro

Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. If you want to see/hear more of me you can find me on Tiktok @thehistorywizard or on Instagram @the_history_wizard. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day