The Upheaval of the Five Barbarians also translated as the Uprising, Rebellion or the Revolt of the Five Barbarians (simplified Chinese: 五胡乱华; traditional Chinese: 五胡亂華; lit. 'Five foreign tribes disrupting China') is a Chinese expression used to refer to a chaotic period of warfare from 304 to 316 during the fall of the Western Jin dynasty. Overlapping with the War of the Eight Princes, these conflicts involved non-Han peoples and tribes eventually drove the Jin imperial court out of northern China.
The "Five Barbarians" were the Xiongnu, Jie, Qiang, Di and Xianbei, many of whom had resettled within China during the preceding centuries. Despite the period's name, many Han Chinese and other tribal people like the Wuhuan were also involved, wavering their support between Jin and the separatist regimes. Years of poor administration and civil wars between the ruling princes left the empire open to its disaffected and opportunistic subjects. Ethnic tensions in the Guanzhong region between the Han and the tribes, primarily the Qiang and Di, led to major revolts which resulted in an exodus of refugees into southwestern China. Efforts to force them back to Guanzhong were met with resistance and culminated in the rebellion of the Ba Di refugee Li Te in 301.
In the north, the Five Divisions of Bing province, descendants of the Southern Xiongnu, took advantage of the Jin prince's infighting to declare independence and establish the Han-Zhao in 304, acclaiming the noble Liu Yuan as their leader. As anti-Jin revolts spread to Hebei and Shandong, a former Jie slave, Shi Le, rose to prominence, and after joining Liu Yuan, he would effectively control the eastern part of his empire. The Xianbei Duan tribe in Liaoxi and Tuoba tribe in Dai were initially important allies of Jin in helping them fight against Han, but later pulled out from the conflict to consolidate control over their territories.
Li Te's son Li Xiong captured Chengdu and established Cheng-Han in 304. In 311, Han captured Emperor Huai of Jin and the ancient capital, Luoyang, in an event known as the Disaster of Yongjia. In 316, Jin's hope of restoring imperial authority in the north were crushed when Han defeated and captured Emperor Min in Chang'an. The establishments of Cheng-Han and Han-Zhao in 304 were seen as the start of the Sixteen Kingdoms period, and the defeat of Emperor Min led to the formation of the Eastern Jin dynasty by Emperor Yuan in Jiankang in 318. For the next 130 years or so, China would be divided between the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin before the eventual dissolution of Jin by the Liu Song dynasty and the unification of the north by the Northern Wei dynasty.
Background
Demobilization and War of the Eight Princes
During the early days of the Western Jin, the imperial Sima family began allowing their princes to assume the roles of military governors, a privilege that was non-existent under the preceding Cao Wei dynasty. Following the unification of the Three Kingdoms in 280, Emperor Wu of Jin also issued orders for the demobilization of every province and commandery in the empire, and reduced the military authority of the provincial inspector into a civilian role. Only 100 military officials were stationed in large commanderies, while smaller commaderies only had 50.
The policy of concentrating military power in the hands of the princes was intended to safeguard the dynasty from potential usurpers and keep the power of the gentry clans in check. However, this decision became a contributing factor to the War of the Eight Princes (291–306); after the death of Emperor Wu, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Emperor Hui of Jin, who was developmentally disabled. With the emperor a mere figurehead in his own court, the princes instead pitted their armies against one another for real control over the empire.
As the Jin military weakened itself under the princes, many counties and commaderies were left defenceless to rebellions. In the finals years of the Western Jin, tribal subjects collectively known as the Five Barbarians started to dominate northern and western China; they were known as the Xiongnu, Jie, Xianbei, Di and Qiang.
The Five Divisions and Hu of Bing province
The migration of the nomadic people into the Chinese interior had been ongoing since the early Han dynasty. In 50 CE, after the Xiongnu empire was divided into two, the Southern Xiongnu became a vassal state for the Han on the northern frontier within the Great Wall. The chanyu's court was moved to Xihe Commandery in Bing province while his followers served as auxiliaries in defending the border commanderies from nomadic forces such as the Northern Xiongnu and Xianbei. However, their relation with the Han remained tense due to the poor living conditions on the frontiers and the Chinese court interfering in their politics. They thus frequently rebelled, eventually exiling their chanyu and dissolving his government in 189, just as the Han was experiencing their own collapse.
In 216, the warlord Cao Cao detained the chanyu Huchuquan at Ye, and reorganized what remained of the Southern Xiongnu into the Five Divisions in central Shanxi. As the Xiongnu eroded as a cohesive identity, their descendants that remained in the interior were broadly referred to as "Hu" (胡; roughly meaning "barbarian") and other ethnic labels. The Five Divisions became dominated by the Chuge tribe, and during the Jiaping era (249–254), their leader, Liu Bao unified the divisions, which prompted the Wei-Jin courts to intervene. They were gradually divided back into five, and their nobles including Liu Bao had to send their children as hostages to the Chinese capital, Luoyang.
Through these arrangements, the Five Divisions underwent a significant degree of sinicization and were even allowed to hold Jin offices, but resentment against the ruling dynasty persisted. As the noble, Liu Xuan, stated in the Book of Jin:
“In the past, our ancestors and those of the Han acted like brothers through joy and sorrow. However, since the fall of Han and the rise of Wei and Jin, our titles of chanyus hold no value, and we have not gained a foot of land since. Although we have been bestowed with many noble ranks, our taxable households are all equally low."
The Hu tribes excluded from the Five Divisions often intermingled with those from other ethnic group. A notable example was the Tiefu tribe, whose descendants were Xiongnu who mixed with the Xianbei. The Jie were also among the miscellaneous Hu peoples in Bing. Their exact origins is still debated by scholars today, although one of their chieftains, Shi Le, was a descendant of a Southern Xiongnu tribe, the Qiangqu. When a great famine broke out in 303, many of the Jie and Hu became displaced. The Chinese provincial inspector Sima Teng, looking to fund his own military, had these tribesmen (including Shi Le) captured and sold them into slavery, scattering them around Hebei and Shandong.
Ethnic tensions in Guanzhong
The term "Qiang" broadly referred to groups of pastoral nomads in the western regions of modern day Gansu and Qinghai. Since the Western Han period, many of the Qiang submitted to the Chinese court and were allowed to settle in the Guanzhong region and the watersheds of the Wei and Jing rivers. There, they worked as farmers alongside Chinese settlers, but many were also turned into slaves for local magnates. Due to the oppression they faced, the Qiang often instigated large-scale rebellions which adversely affected the Han military and economy. Living close to the Qiang were the Di tribes, who became tributaries as the Han expanded westwards and annexed their land.
The fall of Han and the Three Kingdoms period further encouraged the immigration of nomadic people to repopulate devastated areas and provide military power and labour. The Guanzhong region in particular became a contested region between warlords and later between the states of Cao Wei and Shu Han. In 219, Cao Cao relocated around 50,000 Di from Wudu to Tianshui and Fufeng commanderies. The Qiang and Di people were numerous in northwestern China, and they fought for Wei or Shu depending on their circumstances. Other tribal people who resided in the northwest included the Lushuihu and Xiutu, along with newly-migrated Xianbei tribes such as the Tufa and Qifu. By the late 3rd century, the tribes made up around half of the population in Guanzhong.
While Wei kept the tribes mostly under control, the northwest descended into chaos under the Western Jin as their governors struggled to keep the support of the tribes. In 270, the Xianbei chieftain, Tufa Shujineng, led a multi-ethnic rebellion against Jin in Liang and Qin provinces that lasted until early 280, with the rebels briefly taking control over Liang. From 296 to 299, the tribes rebelled again, this time acclaiming the Di chieftain, Qi Wannian as their emperor. Qi Wannian's rebellion was accompanied by famines and plagues so severe that it devastated the Guanzhong and prompted tens of thousands of refugees to move into Hanzhong and Sichuan in search of food.
The rebellious tribes of Guanzhong and Bing province raised concern among a few officials within the Jin court. After the unification of China in 280, the minister Guo Qin (郭欽), advised Emperor Wu to focus on moving the tribal peoples out of the borders. Following Qi Wannian's defeat in 299, another minister, Jiang Tong, submitted an essay titled Xi Rong Lun (徙戎論; Discussion on Relocating the Rong Tribe) to the court, also calling for the tribes' repatriation. However, both proposals were rejected.
Xianbei migration and alliances with Jin
During the 2nd century, the Xianbei people supplanted the Xiongnu on the northern steppe and, unified under the confederation of Tanshihuai, launched numerous raids on the Han's borders. However, after Tanshihuai's death in 181, the confederation went into an immediate decline due to a succession crisis. Many of the Xianbei tribes seceded and decided to migrate southward with the intention of settling down near or within the Chinese interior.
In the northeast, where the Wuhuan people once dominated before their defeat at the Battle of White Wolf Mountain, the Xianbei Murong, Duan and Yuwen tribes came to fill in the power vacuum that was left. The Murong was the first of the three to attach themselves to the Central Plains dynasties by aiding the Cao Wei in their campaign against Gongsun Yuan. They remained affiliated well after the founding of Jin, and despite a war between both sides from 281 to 289, the Murong resubmitted to Jin and their chieftain, Murong Hui, was appointed Commander of the Xianbei. Meanwhile, in 258, another Xianbei tribe, the Tuoba, occupied the abandoned city of Shengle north of Shanxi, also becoming a vassal of Wei and Jin. The Xianbei retained most of their nomadic way of life and rendered their services as skilled horsemen.
In the midst of the War of the Eight Princes, the Chief Controller of You province, Wang Jun, sought to consolidate his control over his domain. He allied himself with the surrounding Duan, Yuwen and Wuhuan, who provided him with cavalry units who fought in the campaigns against Sima Ying and Sima Yong. The Xianbei were a deciding factor in Sima Yue's victory in the civil war, but they also carried out the brutal sackings of Ye in 304 and Chang'an in 306. Their military effectiveness encouraged the Jin to continue employing them in containing the growing threat of Han-Zhao, with the Tuoba soon joining on the side of Jin as well.
Climate Change
Modern historians and meteorologists believe that climate change was an important factor in the migration of nomadic peoples into the Chinese interior, as the weather became too cold and dry in the north for agriculture. Chu Coching stated that there was a cold period from the Three Kingdoms to the Northern and Southern dynasties, with relevant historical records reporting cases of extreme weather phenomena, such as the freezings of the Huai River in 226 and the Bohai Sea in 336. Research conducted in the Mu Us Desert also found that desertification took place around the steppe between the Han and Tang dynasties, making it difficult for cities to survive.
There was a severe decline in population; the Han census in 157 was 56.5 million people and 10.7 million household, but Jin census in 280 was only 16 million people and 2.5 million households. The cold and dry weathers prompted Chinese farmers to move to the warmer southlands and steppe peoples to move into northern China for fertile land. During the Taikang era (280–289), the Jin accepted a series of submissions from people claiming to be "Xiongnu" living outside the border, with the largest group coming in 286, purportedly at 100,000. Natural disasters and famines became common occurrences and were aggravated by the War of the Eight Princes.
Rise of Cheng-Han
Refugees in Ba-Shu
The people displaced by Qi Wannian's rebellion were from six commanderies in Guanzhong and composed of both Han Chinese and tribal peoples. They initially moved southwards to Hanzhong, where one Di chieftain, Yang Maosou, brought his followers to Chouchi and declared semi-autonomy from Jin in 296. Later, the court allowed the refugees to go further south into the Ba-Shu region. They were scattered throughout Yi and Liáng provinces, where they became hired labourers for the local populace.
Among the refugees was one of their leaders, Li Te. He and his family were Ba Di people, an ethnic group whose ancestors were Zong people from Ba who moved north and mingled with the Di. In 300, Li Te and his brothers joined the Inspector of Yi in his rebellion against Jin, but later betrayed and ousted him from the provincial capital, Chengdu, sacking it in the process. Li Te soon submitted back to Jin due to the arrival of the army led by the new inspector, Luo Shang but retained a significant amount of influence in the region as an acting representative for the refugee families.
Li Te's Rebellion
In 301, the court in Luoyang ordered the refugees to return to Guanzhong, but they were reluctant to comply as they believed that it was still unstable and they did not have enough supplies to guarantee a safe journey. Li Te extended their stay by negotiating with Luo Shang, but the latter soon became frustrated with the delay and tried to force a move. As conflict appeared inevitable, many of the refugees flocked to Li Te to defend themselves. In winter 301, Luo Shang sent his troops to attack them, beginning a three-year-long rebellion led by Li Te and his family.