Eastern Han

Reference entry · last updated August 27, 2026

Eastern Han (東漢, also Later Han, 後漢) is the second half of the Han dynasty, conventionally dated 25–220. Liu Xiu (Emperor Guangwu) restored the Liu house after Wang Mang's Xin interregnum (9–23) and after civil war. The capital was Luoyang, east of Western Han's Chang'an, which is why the period is called Eastern. The last Han emperor, Xian, abdicated in 220 to Cao Pi, who proclaimed Wei. That abdication is the usual end of Han and the start of the Three Kingdoms as a political label.[1]

Name and dates

Han as a dynasty name comes from Liu Bang's fief on the Han River, not from the later ethnic term. Western Han (202 BC–9 AD) is the first sequence, capital Chang'an. Eastern Han is the restored sequence, 25–220, capital Luoyang. "Later Han" is the same Eastern period in Chinese usage. It is not the Five Dynasties Later Han of the tenth century.[1]

Wikipedia states Guangwu's accession as 5 August AD 25. This page uses the year 25. Day-level conversions of Chinese court dates are reconstructions.

Sources

The standard official history of this period is Fan Ye's fifth-century Hou Hanshu (Book of the Later Han). It is not to be confused with Ban Gu's Hanshu, which covers Western Han. For the warlord years after 184, Chen Shou's third-century Sanguozhi is the main chronicle of Wei, Shu, and Wu. Pei Songzhi's fifth-century notes on Chen Shou add material Fan Ye and Chen both omitted or disputed.[2][3]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms opens in the last decades of Eastern Han. It is a Ming novel, not a history of the dynasty. Use it for the later popular story, not for dating offices or troop counts.[4]

Restoration

Wang Mang's Xin state (9–23) broke the first Han line. After his fall, several Liu claimants fought. Liu Xiu won, took the title Guangwu, and rebuilt a Han court at Luoyang. The restored empire again claimed the Western Regions at intervals (Ban Chao as Protector General in 91), fought Xiongnu and later Xianbei on the steppe, and put down the Trưng sisters in Jiaozhi (42–43). Buddhist translators such as An Shigao appear in this period. A group recorded as a Roman embassy reached Emperor Huan's court in 166; Rafe de Crespigny treats that party as more likely merchants than an official mission from Marcus Aurelius.[1]

Court politics in the second century turned on eunuchs, consort clans, and the gentry. The Partisan Prohibitions shut large numbers of officials out of office. Those bans were lifted when rebellion made the court need the gentry again.[1]

Collapse after 184

In 184 the Yellow Turban Rebellion (Zhang Jue) and the Five Pecks of Rice movement (Zhang Lu) broke out. The Yellow Turbans were beaten within a year as a mass revolt; smaller risings continued. Generals raised for the emergency kept their armies. In 189 the eunuchs killed He Jin; Yuan Shao's men then slaughtered eunuchs in Luoyang. Dong Zhuo seized the boy emperors, deposed Shao, installed Liu Xie as Emperor Xian, and later burned Luoyang and moved the court to Chang'an (191). Dong was killed in 192. Xian reached Cao Cao in 196; the court sat at Xuchang under Cao's control.[1][5]

Cao Cao beat Yuan Shao at Guandu (200) and held the north. Red Cliffs (208) stopped him from taking the Yangzi. After that, Cao in the north, Sun Quan in the south, and Liu Bei in the west were the three blocs still nominally under a Han emperor who no longer ruled.[1]

Relation to the Three Kingdoms

In 220 Cao Pi forced Xian's abdication and founded Wei. Liu Bei answered with a Han title in 221 (Shu Han). Sun Quan took an imperial title later. The "Three Kingdoms" name is later historiography for that split. Shu's claim was that Eastern Han had not ended in legitimacy, only in possession of the capital. That is why Zhuge Liang's memorials speak of restoring the Han, not of founding a new house.[3]

The novel starts earlier, in the Yellow Turbans, and treats Liu Bei's oath and Zhuge Liang's Longzhong plan as the moral plot of Han's last age. Those scenes mix Chen Shou with invention. The historical Eastern Han ends with an abdication document in 220, not with a peach-garden oath.[4]

References

↑ Wikipedia, "Han dynasty," sections on etymology, Eastern Han (25–220), and the end of Han. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_dynasty
↑ Wikipedia, "Book of the Later Han" (Hou Hanshu), Fan Ye, 5th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Later_Han
↑ Chen Shou, Sanguozhi; Nestor G. Pestelos Jr., "Zhuge Liang." https://ngpestelos.com/reference/zhuge-liang/
↑ Nestor G. Pestelos Jr., "Romance of the Three Kingdoms." https://ngpestelos.com/reference/romance-of-the-three-kingdoms/
↑ Wikipedia, "End of the Han dynasty" (189–220). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_the_Han_dynasty