Anticipating Wu Zetian's political ambitions, 60,000 flatterersincluding Confucian officials, imperial relatives, Buddhist clergy, tribal chieftains, and commonerssupported the petition to proclaim the Zhou Dynasty with herself as the founding emperor. Her paranoia resulted in a purge of her administration. 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. provided her with a string of virile lovers such as one lusty, big-limbed lout of a peddler, whom she allowed to frequent her private apartments. Wu Zetian's first two sexual partners were emperors and related to each other as father and son. Just how accurate this picture of Wu is remains a matter of debate. empress wu primary sources - tiba-constructions.com empress wu primary sources. 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. She killed her sister, butchered her elder brothers, murdered the ruler, poisoned her mother, the chronicles say. When Taizong died, Gaozong became emperor, and Wu Zetian joined a Buddhist nunnery, as required of concubines of deceased emperors. Founder of the Song Dynasty, Zhao Kuang-yin (927-976) ended the practice of frequent military coups, which had exhausted China for mor, https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wu-zetian-624-705, Mandate from Heaven: The Tomb of Qin Shi Huang. For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. These historians claim that Wu ordered Lady Wang and Lady Xiao murdered in a terrible way: she had their hands and feet cut off and they were then thrown into a vat of wine to drown. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/4558/empress-wu-zetian/. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. 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. Originally published/produced in China, 18th century. It is the only known uncarved memorial tablet in more than 2,000 years of imperial history, its muteness chillingly reminiscent of the attempts made by Hatshepsuts successors toobliterate her namefrom the stone records of pharaonic Egypt. Still, Xuanzong continued many of Wu's policies, including keeping her reforms in taxation, agriculture, and education. 23 Feb. 2023 . World History Encyclopedia. 1, 1993, pp. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Recent revisionist reappraisals have focused on the feminist slant of her rule and her record as an emperor rather than a woman, but no new primary sources have appeared to resolve conflicting information and gaps in her biography. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. 31, no. and turned the, Wang Mang (45 B.C.-A.D. 23) was a Chinese statesman and emperor. Unlike most young girls in China at this time, Wu was encouraged by her father to read and write and develop the intellectual skills which were traditionally reserved for males. She improved the public education system by hiring dedicated teachers and reorganizing the bureaucracy and teaching methods. The earliest sources on Wu Zetian already contained rumors of sex scandals in her court. Nationality/Culture Wu Zetian Biography, Facts & Quotes | Who was Empress Wu? | Study.com In 652 CE, Wu gave birth to a son, Li Hong, and in 653 CE had another son, Li Xian. On the question of succession after her death, Wu Zetian entertained notions of an heir from a Wu and Li marriage. Her 50-year rule was marked by a successful foreign policy that saw only a few, victorious, wars but the considerable expansion of the influence of the Chinese state. 77116. World History Encyclopedia, 17 Mar 2016. 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. . Neither of these boys was a threat to Lady Wang or Lady Xiao because Gaozong had already chosen a successor; his chancellor Liu Shi was Lady Wang's uncle, and Gaozong appointed Liu Shi's son, Li Zhong, as heir. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. 1996-2021 Bellingham : EAS Press, 1978; Robert Van Gulik. If Wu Zetian is judged by the traditional female virtues of chastity and modesty, then she falls short of expectations. Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca.1500 BC till 1644 AD. https://www.worldhistory.org/Wu_Zetian/. In fact, the Tang Dynasty experienced a small interruption with the second Zhou Dynasty (690-705) established by the only female monarch in Chinese history-Empress Wu. When Gaozong died in 683 CE, Wu took control of the government as empress dowager, placing two of her sons on the throne and removing them almost as quickly. "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. RELIGION AS A PERCENTAGE OF WORLD POPULATION: 0.1 percent She ordered farming manuals to be written and distributed. Carved in limestone, the colossal statue is reputed to have been carved in Wus own likeness. 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. 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. 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. His rule covered a span of 63 years, a reign lo, Zhao Kuang-yin 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. She commissioned statues of the Maitreya in the Longmen Caves outside Luoyang. "Empress Wu and the Historians: A Tyrant and Saint of Classical China," in Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross, eds., Unspoken Worlds: Religious Lives of Women. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. Original image by Unknown. However, the date of retrieval is often important. She kept Ruizong under a kind of house arrest confining him to the Inner Palace. is held up in Chinese histories as the prototype of all that is wicked in a female ruler. 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. Empress Wu (died September or October 245), [a] personal name Wu Xian ( Chinese: ), formally known as Empress Mu (literally "the Just Empress"), was an empress of the state of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period. Thank you for your help! (February 22, 2023). This mountain, so born of the sudden convulsion of earth, represents a calamity. Already in 674 she had drafted 12 policy directives ranging from encouraging agriculture to formulating social rules of conduct. In the largest cave there is a statue called the Grand Vairocana Buddha. Mutsuhito Give me three tools to tame that wild horse. Wu was given the privileged position of first concubine even though by law she should have been left in the temple as a nun. 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). Jennifer W. Jay , Professor of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Name variations: Wu Ze-tian; Wu Chao, Wu Hou, or Wu Zhao; Wu Mei or Wu Meiliang; Wu Tse-t'ien, Wo Tsetien, or Wu Tso Tien; Wu of Hwang Ho or Huang He; Empress Wu, Lady Wu. Image taken from An 18th-century album of portraits of 86 emperors of China, with Chinese historical notes. Thank you! 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. Wu Zhao (624-705), also known as Empress Wu Zetian, was the first and only woman emperor of China. Empress Wu is one of the most controversial leaders in Chinese history for her method of rule and the means she likely used to rise to power. Vol. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. An active imagination produced pornographic novels in the 16th century focusing on her alleged sexual practices. For centuries she was excoriated by Chinese historians as an offender against a way of life. The critical Anderson concedes that, under Wu, military expenses were reduced, taxes cut, salaries of deserving officials raised, retirees given a viable pension, and vast royal lands near the capital turned over to husbandry.. 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. 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. With her exceptional intelligence, extraordinary competence in politics, and inordinate ambition, she ruled as the "Holy and Divine Emperor" of the Second Zhou Dynasty (690-705) for fifteen years. Advertising Notice Hauppauge : Nova Science Publishers, 2003; Richard Guisso, Wu Tse-Tien and the Politics of Legitimation in Tang China. Mary Anderson. across from her husband, the emperor. World History Encyclopedia. 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. In sum, within the social and political context of her time, Wu Zetian was a leader who went beyond the traditional roles of submissive wife and home-bound mother to emerge as ruler, lawmaker, and head of state and society while her second husband, lovers, and sons were relegated to less powerful positions than traditionally expected. Some historians have viewed her as blazing the trail for the women who came after her, and indeed her daughter, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter aspired to emulate her success, but they failed and even died violently in the process. Empress Wu (Zhaolie) - Wikipedia Illustration. The Tang empire in 700, at the end of Wus reign. And while Chinas imperial chronicles were too rigidly run and too highly developed for Wus name to be simply wiped from their pages, the stern disapproval of the Confucian mandarins who compiled the records can still be read 1,500 years later. In promoting Buddhism over Confucianism and Daoism as the favored state religion, the Empress countered strongly held Confucian beliefs against female rule. 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. It was Lu Zhi who, in 194 B.C., wreaked revenge on a rival by gouging out her eyes, amputating her arms and legs, and forcing her to drink acid that destroyed her vocal chords. The Demonization of Empress Wu - Smithsonian Magazine The Controversial Empress Wu - Travel Through Time This opposition was formidable; the annals of the period contain numerous examples of criticisms leveled by civil servants mortified by the empresss innovations. Her patronage of Buddhism also expanded to other temples and sects, and much work was done on the cave temples at Longmen on her orders. She ordered the executions of several hundred of these aristocrats and of many members of the imperial family of Li. Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. (2016, February 22). Controversial ruler of Tang China who dominated Chinese politics for half a century, first as empress, then as empress-dowager, and finally as emperor of the Zhou Dynasty (690705) that she founded . The spirit road causeway to Wus still-unopened tomb lies between two low rises, tipped by watchtowers, known as the nipple hills.. Her travel writing debuts in Timeless Travels Magazine. Guisso, Richard W.L. She worked against the Confucian dictum that women must restrict their activities to the home and in the wildest imagination could not become emperors. 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. To reinforce her legitimacy, Wu Zetian also invented about a dozen characters with a new script. Guo, Moruo. She established a policy so that informants could be paid to travel by public transportation to report to the court. 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. Her last name, "Wu" is associated with the words for 'weapon' and 'military force' and she chose the name 'Zeitan' which means 'Ruler of the Heavens'. She, like Lady Wei, had paid careful attention to the reign of Wu Zetian and thought she would be able to manipulate Xuanzong as her mother had Gaozong. One of the most powerful champions of Buddhism in China was the Empress Wu Zetian. We would much rather spend this money on producing more free history content for the world. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1989, pp. Buddhism was carried into East Asia by merchants and Buddhist monks traveling the Silk Road from Northern India, Persia, Kashmir and Inner Asia. World Eras. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. The court followed Empress Wus example by creating an enormous statue of the Vairocana Buddha in gold and copper at the Todaiji monastery in Nara, Japans capital. Historical Significance: Empress Wu was very significant in the Tang Dynasty. ." Rise to Power. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. 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. One critic, the poet Luo Binwang, portrayed Wu as little short of an enchantressAll fell before her moth brows. Cold, ruthless, and ambitious, the Han dynasty dowager murdered her rival, the beautiful concubine Lady Qi, by amputating all her limbs, turning her into a human swine and leaving her to die in a cesspit. Wu Zhao: China's Only Woman Emperor - World History Encyclopedia Map: Wikicommons. disadvantages of food transportation. Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter! Her reign witnessed a healthy growth in the population; when she died in 705 her centralized bureaucracy regulated the social life and economic well-being of the 60 million people in the empire. The famed imperial mosaics in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna depict the sixth-century Byzantine empress. Her overall rule, in spite of the change of dynasty, did not result in a radical break from Tang domestic prosperity and foreign prestige. Empress and emperor appear at the center of each scene, larger than the other figures to show their importance, bedecked in imperial purple, and sporting . 04 Mar 2023. 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. "Wu Zetian." 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). 22 Feb. 2023 . History 100 Flashcards | Quizlet The cambridge history has a fascinating take on this period - the author of the chapter on Wu's reign keeps reminding the reader that the imperium was peaceful; the economy was booming; government was rational, efficient and effective; and a parade of highly qualified top officials presided. The Demonization of Empress Wu : r/history - reddit This spy system served her well in giving her early warning of any plots in the making and enabled her to take care of threats to her reign before they became actual problems. The term Confucianism is derived from Confucius, the convention. She whispered slander from behind her sleeves, and swayed her master with vixen flirting and insisted that she was the arch manipulator of an unprecedented series of scandals that, over two reigns and many years, cleared her path to the throne. It is also generally accepted that Ruizongs wife, Empress Liu, and chief consort, Dou, were executed at Wus behest in 693 on trumped-up charges of witchcraft. Her significance as an emperor and founder of a new dynasty lies in her redefining of the gender-specific concepts of the emperorship and the Confucian state. 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. Wu Zetian died within a year. Alternate Names Terms of Use (It was common for poor Chinese boys to voluntarily undergo emasculation in the hope of obtaining a prestigious and well-remunerated post in the imperial service). Before Smithsonian.com, Dash authored the award-winning blog A Blast From the Past. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps, Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. In the last three decades, Marxist historiography on Wu Zetian in Mainland China has yielded a positive but unreliable and ideologically charged reappraisal. Born: February 17, 624 Lizhou, China Died: December 16, 705 in Luoyang, China Reign: October 16, 690 to February 22, 705 Best known for: The only woman to be Emperor of China Biography: Empress Wu Zetian by Unknown [Public Domain] Growing Up Wu Zetian was born on February 17, 624 in Lizhou, China. The scholar N. Henry Rothschild writes, "The message was clear: A woman in a position of paramount power was an abomination, an aberration of natural and human order" (108). Empress Wu proved to be a wise monarch, and in her reign of twenty years she continued many policies and practices of her predecessors. Mutsuhito (also known as Meiji Tenno; 1852-1912) was a Japanese emperor, who became the symbol for, and encouraged, the dramatic, Quin Shi Huang-Di 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. (British Library, Shelfmark Or. After this event Wu became Empress and shared Imperial power equally with her emperor. 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. by Unknown. Twitchett, Denis, and Howard J. Wechsler. The Empress Wu Zetian (690-704 CE) is the only female ruler in the history of China. Missions from Japan, Korea, and Vietnam arrived at Xi'an bearing tribute and seeking education in Buddhism and Confucianism. Buddhists Support. The Woman Who Discovered Printing. The primary and secondary sources on Wu Zetian are abundant and problematic, reflecting an almost exclusively male authorship that has portrayed her as a beautiful, calculating, brutal woman who ruled China as the only woman emperor in name and in fact. Moreover, Wu exhibited one important characteristic that suggests that, whatever her faults, she was no despot: She acknowledged and often acted on the criticisms of loyal ministers, one of whom dared to suggest, in 701, that it was time for her to abdicate. Yet Wu has had a pretty bad press. (3). Wu also accused Lady Wang and her mother of practicing witchcraft and implicated Lady Xiao; Lady Wang was found guilty of all the charges and so were the others. It was Taizong who called her 'Mei-Niang' meaning 'beautiful girl' (one of the names commonly, and wrongly, attributed to her as her birth name). Empress Wu is the only female to have ever ruled in her own name in China. Shortly after she took the throne there was an earthquake which was interpreted as a bad omen. They came to power, mostly, by default or stealth; a king had no sons, or an intelligent queen usurped the powers of her useless husband. Her Buddhist supporters interpreted the Madamegha (Great Cloud) sutra to predict a maitreya Buddha (Buddha-to-come) in female form, presumably Wu Zetian herself, who would embody the concept of the cakravartin (wheel-turner, universal emperor, or the ideal man who is king). All in all, Wus policies seem less scandalous to us than they did to contemporaries, and her reputation has improved considerably in recent decades. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. The Confucian dynastic system of government, based on the mandate of heaven, or the claim of heaven-sanctioned military conquest and benevolent rule, was first propounded by the Zhou Dynasty in 1045 bce and perpetuated by subsequent dynasties until 1911. Even her gravesite is remarkable. Five Historical Plays. So queens and empresses regnant were forced to rule like men, and yet roundly criticized when they did so. At the same time, another political faction formed around Wu's other son, Ruizong, who was supported by Wu's daughter, Taiping. Wu Zetian's SteleI, (GJGY.com) (CC BY-SA). 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. When her mother was distressed about losing her to an uncertain life fraught with intrigues in the emperor's harem, she firmly reassured her: "Isn't it a fortune to attend the emperor! She graduated from SUNY Delhi in 2018. 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. From 697 onward she found it so diffi-cult to win support that she attempted to return the throne to her son Zhongzong.