The Western Han established institutions that shaped Chinese politics, economics, and culture for two millennia. Yang Zhao traces the uneasy inheritance of Qin, early experiments with decentralization, Emperor Wu’s concentration of talent, power, wealth, ideology, and bureaucracy, and the crises that followed.
From Liu Bang and the reigns of Wen and Jing to Sima Qian, the salt and iron debates, Wang Mang’s reforms, and Liu Xiu’s rise, the course asks whether collapse was built into the structure of absolute imperial power.
