The reason why the Han Empire, which Liu Bang established as a commoner, is important is that during the Han Empire, many foundations of later China were basically laid, and the core foundation was the territory.
Before the Qin Empire, China's territory was Guanxi and Guandong, that is, the three provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Gansu to the west of Hangu Pass, and Henan, Hebei, and Shandong to the east of Hangu Pass. After the unification of the Qin Empire, China included Jiangnan, Bashu, and Lingnan in its territory. However, with the Peasant War at the end of the Qin Dynasty, Lingnan quickly broke away from mainland China, and by the time the Han Empire was established, mainland China was still Guanxi and Guandong, Jiangnan and Bashu. Such a territorial pattern has basically not changed much in the period of nearly 3,000 years from the Three Emperors and Five Emperors to the Han Empire.
The vision of the Chinese only revolves around the two major rivers of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, and the world outside the mainland is referred to by us as Beidi, Dongyi, Nanban, and Xirong. Many kings' vision was limited to China itself, such as Qin Shi Huang, who only built the Great Wall in northern Xinjiang, just to protect China itself from invasion. There is no idea of expanding China's power outward.
Of course, it is easy to form the idea of the kingdom of heaven in China, and the surrounding barbarians, no matter what kind of regime they establish, as long as they can belong to the Chinese Empire and pay tribute, the leaders of the Chinese Empire generally have no idea of destroying each other. In the minds of the Chinese, it is only about the west and the Kanto, and the south of the Yangtze River and the Bashu are China.
However, the Xiongnu Khanate, which completed the unification at the same time as the Han Empire, not only became the most formidable enemy in the history of the Chinese, but also had no idea of surrendering, and even had the idea of replacing it.
This aggression forced the Chinese Empire to wage a century-long struggle to the death.
In the battle against this strong enemy of the Xiongnu, the Chinese slowly opened their horizons, and with the opening of their horizons, China's national strength supported the continuous expansion of China's territory, and finally in the Han Dynasty, the basic territory of later generations of China was laid. This was the greatest contribution of the Han Empire to the Chinese Empire.
The first place to enter the Chinese territory was the land of Hexi. The westernmost part of China's territory reaches the westernmost point of the Great Wall of Qin, Lintao, Longxi. Further west, China is unfamiliar, occupied by the Yueshi people in the past, and later became the pastures of the Xiongnu. In the Hexi War in 121 B.C., the young general Huo Qubing won two big victories a year, defeated the Xiongnu, and forced the Hun Hun evil king who occupied Hexi to surrender to China, and China began to incorporate the Hexi Corridor into the territory for the first time, and set up four counties of Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Zhangye and Wuwei, whose names have not been changed for thousands of years.
The occupation of the Hexi Corridor gave China a strategic place to attack the Xiongnu in the north, connect the Western Regions in the west, Qinghai-Tibet in the south, and connect the Central Plains in the east. Whenever the Hexi Corridor is occupied by China, it is the most powerful dynasty in China, and when China loses the Hexi Corridor, it is the stage when China is moving towards the best and weaker.
The second to be included in the Chinese territory is the Southwest Yi. In the long-term understanding, Bashu is the border of southwest China, and further southwest is extremely foreign to Chinese. For a long time, the Han Empire did not have the idea of including Southwest Yi in its territory. In that land of lofty mountains, there are countless small tribal chiefs and ethnic minorities, which are very different from the Chinese mainland. In 135 BC, Tang Meng, a general who went to Nanyue, suggested to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty that he could conquer the land of Qiqi and Yelang in the southwest and send troops to Lingnan by means of the Qiqi River. After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty agreed, he appointed Tang Meng as the Zhonglang general, opening up the Qiqi Road from the southwest through Guangxi to the South China Sea, which is also known as the eastern route of the Southern Silk Road. The story of Yelang's arrogance happened when Tang Meng and King Yelang met, and in King Yelang's questioning, who was older than Yelang and the Han Dynasty? They didn't know anything about China at that time. Tang Meng later conscripted Bashu migrant workers to open up the Qiqi Road, and in 111 BC the Han Empire sent troops from the Qiqi Road to attack South Vietnam.
Another reason is that in order to deal with the Xiongnu, after Zhang Qian went to the Western Regions, he learned that he could get poison from the southwest, that is, India, and then India could go to the Western Regions to avoid the interception and killing of the Huns. After Zhang Qian's suggestion to poison the body from the southwest was agreed by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he successively sent Zhang Qian and Sima Xiangru to run the southwest, and the southwest Qiongdu State, the Di Du State, and the Ran Shu State surrendered one after another, and the distant Dian State also asked the same words as King Yelang, but also surrendered to the Han Dynasty under the attack of the Han Empire's expeditionary force in 109 BC. From there, through Shu County, through to Burma, India's Shu body poison road was opened.
When the Han Empire opened up the Southern Silk Road, the entire southwest region also began to be included in the Chinese territory, and the Han Empire successively set up Qianwei County, Qiqi County, Yizhou County, Yuewang County, Shenli County, Wenshan County, and Wudu County, which began China's effective jurisdiction over the southwest region.
The reoccupation of the Lingnan region. When Qin Shi Huang unified the world, he had already sent people to conquer Lingnan and set up four counties to govern it. However, after the outbreak of the peasant war at the end of Qin, the Qin general Yue Tuo, who lived in Lingnan, immediately succeeded the Great Yuling Mountain Road to prevent the southern extension of the war, and proclaimed himself king, and established the Nanyue Kingdom, and then other counties also became independent one after another, and established the Minyue Kingdom and the Donghai Kingdom, which were officially separated from the management of the Han Dynasty.
In 138 B.C., the Minyue Kingdom in the middle attacked the Donghai Kingdom in the north, and the king of the Donghai Dynasty asked the Han court for help, and the Han army rescued and defeated the Minyue Kingdom. Fearing that the Minyue Kingdom would retaliate again, Luo Wang, the king of the East China Sea, surrendered to the Han Dynasty and moved the whole country to live south of the Huai River. The Tokai Kingdom disappears. After that, in 135 BC, the Minyue Kingdom attacked the Nanyue Kingdom again, and the Nanyue Kingdom also asked the Han Empire for help, and the Han army attacked the Minyue Kingdom again, and the Minyue Kingdom begged for peace with China. The Han Empire had no intention of destroying them until the death of Zhao Yingqi, the king of Nanyue, in 113 BC, civil strife broke out in Nanyue, and the Chinese expeditionary force captured Panyu in 111 BC, Nanyue fell, and the Minyue Kingdom was destroyed the following year, so that all the southern territories opened up by the Qin Empire were restored.
The occupation of Korea was also based on the idea of the first kingdom, In 109 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent envoys to the Kingdom of Korea to persuade King Wei Youqu to cancel independence and annex to China. However, King Wei Youqu rejected this suggestion and still sent him out of the country. But Shibu Ho's self-esteem made him unbearable to be treated like this by the Joseon Kingdom, and he killed the North Korean personnel escorting him on the border line. Then he lied to Emperor Wu of Han that North Korea did not listen to persuasion, and he killed the Korean general. As a result, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty rewarded him and appointed him as the governor of Liaodong. This undoubtedly angered the Joseon king, and the two countries went to war.
In 108 B.C., China sent troops to Korea for the first time in history, and quickly captured the Korean royal capital of Wangxianseong, that is, Pyongyang, and the Korean state was destroyed. China included it in its territory and set up four counties: Lelang, Lintun, Xuansu, and Zhenfan. This was the first time that the Korean Peninsula was included in China's territory, and it has been under Chinese jurisdiction for more than 400 years since.
Finally, there is the inclusion of the Western Regions. Since Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions and China's occupation of the Hexi Corridor, the entire Western Regions has been under the dual pressure of the Han Empire and the Xiongnu Khanate. This makes the countries of the Western Regions have to maneuver between the two major forces and survive in the cracks. The Xiongnu operated the Western Regions earlier than the Han Empire, and they had already set up servants to govern the affairs of the Western Regions. Therefore, the power of the Xiongnu in the Western Regions was above that of the Han Empire, which made the Han Empire still face a humiliating situation in the Western Regions.
And so a flurry of blows appeared.
The first target of the attack was the Loulan Kingdom. The kingdom of Loulan and the kingdom of Cheshi, which bordered the Hexi Corridor controlled by the Han Empire, obeyed the orders of the Xiongnu and constantly sent troops to intercept and kill the Chinese mission, and in 108 BC, the general Zhao Ponu led an army to attack Loulan and beheaded the king of Loulan. Three years later, because of the bloody BMW incident, the ** team of the Han Emperor subdued the Dawan Kingdom. One of the ways in which China began to operate the Western Regions was to set up cantonment areas, and the Han people in the cantonment areas began to marry local women, so that the countries of the Western Regions had nationals of Chinese descent. This is the most fundamental way for China to incorporate the Western Regions into its territory.
After the death of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the Han Empire continued to maintain the management of the Western Regions, and in 77 BC the Chinese envoy Fu Zijie entered the Western Regions, killed the betrayal of the Chinese king of Loulan, An Gui, and set up another king, and changed his name to Shanshan, marrying a Chinese maid to the king. In 71 B.C., China and the Wusun Kingdom finally formed a joint trend, the two countries sent troops from the east and west to jointly attack the Xiongnu, the Wusun Corps won a complete victory, killing more than 40,000 Xiongnu people, China operated for sixty or seventy years of the strategy of attacking the Xiongnu on the east and west lines finally achieved a major victory, and the power of the Xiongnu in the Western Regions was even weaker.
The Chinese envoy Chang Hui also launched a blow to the Qiuci Kingdom, which did not obey the orders of the Han Empire and had hunted and killed Lai Dan, the commander of the Chinese Reclamation District, and forced the Qiuci Kingdom to hand over the ** Gu Yi and behead him. This greatly increased China's influence in the Western Regions, and the scope of the reclamation area also changed from Luntai to Korla, and Ruoqiang, China's foundation in the Western Regions became more and more solid.
In 60 B.C., the Han Empire began to set up a management agency in the Western Regions, the first capital protector was Zheng Ji, who served as the commander of the tun reclamation area, the capital protection was located in Luntai, and there was a management agency of the Han Empire in the Western Regions, with the various tun reclamation areas set up by the Han Empire, with Chinese nationals of Chinese ancestry, and Chinese princesses who married from various countries played a huge role in the entire Western Regions. The Han Empire had substantial jurisdiction over the Western Regions, especially south of the Tianshan Mountains.
From Zhang Qian's first mission to the Western Regions in 139 B.C. to the establishment of the Western Regions Protectorate in 60 B.C., after sixty or seventy years of operation, major progress was finally made, and the Western Regions, a land unfamiliar to the Central Plains Dynasty, was incorporated into the Chinese territory for the first time.
Beginning with Emperor Wudi of Han, the Han Empire, after years of hard work, expanded China's territorial scope from the original Yellow River and Yangtze River basin to the southwest, Hexi, Lingnan, northeast, and western regions, and the southern regions of the Han Empire, and opened up the road to the Western Regions, Central Asia, West Asia, India, and Nanyang, enabling the Chinese's vision to go out of the Hexi Corridor for the first time, cross the green ridge and reach the far west, laying the map of China for more than 2,000 years in the future, and the most solid step in the cause of China's great unification.