New Capital. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. When Gaozong suffered a stroke in 660, the empress made herself the ruler. Wu Zetian's father was a successful merchant and military official who reached ministerial ranks. Wus memorial tablet, which stands near her tomb, was erected during her years as empress in the expectation that her successors would compose a magnificent epitaph for it. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. Hauppauge : Nova Science Publishers, 2003; Richard Guisso, Wu Tse-Tien and the Politics of Legitimation in Tang China. The Story Of Wu Zetian, China's First Female Emperor, The Demonization of Empress Wu by Mike Dash, The Karmic Retribution of Pei Huaigu by Kelly Carlton (University of Florida), Wu Zetian: China's One and Only Woman Emperor by Jim Down. World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. Empress Wu, or Wu Zhao, challenged the patriarchal system by advocating women's intellectual development and sexual freedom. 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. By 655 she had consolidated her position after her son inherited the throne. 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. Having been raised by her father to believe she was the equal of men, Wu saw no reason why women could not carry out the same practices and hold the same positions men could. Determining the truth about this welter of innuendo is all but impossible, and matters are complicated by the fact that little is known of Wus earliest years. emperor angelfish (Pomecanthus imperator) See CHAETODONTIDAE. 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. She commissioned statues of the Maitreya in the Longmen Caves outside Luoyang. 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). She particularly supported Huayan Buddhism, which regarded Vairocana Buddha as the center of the world, much as Empress Wu wished to be the center of political power. In the reign of Empress Wu, persons who entered government through the examinations were able for the first time to occupy the highest positions, even that of chief minister. By transferring the normal seat of the court from Changan to Luoyang, she was able to escape the control of the great families of the northwestern aristocracy, which played an important role in the rise of the Tang dynasty. Hailing from the Tang dynasty, Empress Wu made some great positive strives for the Tang dynasty, but also got caught up in scandals - a couple even involving murder! 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. Pomacanthus imperator (emperor angelfish) See CHAETODONTIDAE. womeninworldhistory.com. 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. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. 23 Feb. 2023 . She attracted the attention of many of the young men at court and one of these was the Prince Li Zhi, son of Taizong, who would become the next emperor, Gaozong. These ready-to-use worksheets are perfect for teaching kids about Empress Wu, the first and only female emperor of Imperial China. On the Korean peninsula Empress Wu supported the unification movement under the state of Silla. If it does not yield, I'll hit it with the iron hammer. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Guisso, Richard W. Empress Wu Tse-t'ien and the Politics of Legitimation in T'ang China. She appears in influential plays as a feminist and champion of the lower classes while her male rivals are shown to be aristocrats, landlords, and conservatives against the tide of history. 77116. (3). 1, Sui and T'ang, pp. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. She reigned during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) and was one of the most effective and controversial monarchs in China's history. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. 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. Throughout 15 dismal years in exile, her sons consort had talked him out of committing suicide and kept him ready to return to power. Taizong forced the abdication of his own father and disposed of two older brothers in hand-to-hand combat before seizing the throne. Vol. Charlemagne (or Charles the Great) was king of the franks from 768 to 814, king of the lombards from 774 to 814, and emperor from 800 to, FOUNDED: c. 1050256 b.c.e. It could also be, like it was in Egypt after Queen Hatshepsut's reign, that no one in power wanted to record the reign of a woman and hoped that Empress Wu would be forgotten. This institution became a political weapon in the hands of Empress Wu when she usurped the throne in 690. Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty (The Greenwood Press Wu: The Chinese Empress who schemed, seduced and murdered her way to Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. 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. She gave titles of royalty to her own Wu family: her brothers and nephews became princes while her sisters, aunts, and nieces became princesses. Empress Dowager. Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week: Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Territorial Expansion. 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. $1.99. Lyn Reese is the author of all the information on this website Her upright Confucian minister, Di Renjie (d. 700, the protagonist of Robert van Gulik's popular Judge Dee detective novels), convinced her to bring back her son, the deposed emperor Zhongzong, to be appointed as her successor. At one point, to the horror of her generals, Wu proposed raising a military corps from among Chinas numerous eunuchs. Her overall rule, in spite of the change of dynasty, did not result in a radical break from Tang domestic prosperity and foreign prestige. The insurrections had received little popular support and in the years that she dominated politics as empress, empress dowager, and finally as emperor, there were no widespread military unrests. "Empress Wu Zetian." Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1994, pp. "Kao-tsung and the Empress Wu," in Denis Twitchett, ed. Gaozong fell for it and the Empress Wang was put to death. There must also be some doubt as to whether Wu really was guilty of some of the most monstrous crimes that history has charged her with. empress wu primary sources. 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. Although Wu's account claims that Lady Wang murdered her daughter, later Chinese historians all agree that Wu was the murderer and she killed her child to frame Lady Wang. Instead, it was left without any inscriptionthe only such example in more than 2,000 years of Chinese history. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. 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). If it still won't be tamed, I'll cut its throat with the knife. Her giant stone memorial, placed at one side of the spirit road leading to her tomb, remains blank. https://www.worldhistory.org/Wu_Zetian/. Empress Lu Zhi (241-180 B.C.) After this event Wu became Empress and shared Imperial power equally with her emperor. 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. Wu also took back lands which had been invaded by the Goturks under the reign of Taizong and distributed them so that they were not all held by the aristocrats. In defiance of convention Emperor Gaozong started an affair with her, and she bore him a son in 652. Again, it is hard to tell what is true and what is slander being that Wu Zeitan's story is so long ago and the sources are sketchy. One of the most powerful champions of Buddhism in China was the Empress Wu Zetian. The system of Neo-Confucianism of which Chu Hsi is regarded as the spo, Mutsuhito Emily Mark studied history and philosophy at Tianjin University, China and English at SUNY New Paltz, NY. Wu Zhao listened to her minister and considered his argument and then, Rothschild writes, "Wu Zhao, with no intention whatsoever of 'leading the quiet life of a widow', rejected this interpretation and promptly exiled the man to the swampy, disease-ridden, Southland" (109). The most spectacular are the stone temples and statues chiseled into grottoes at Longmen, near her capital. 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. Overall Wu Zetian was a decisive, capable ruler in the roles of empress, empress dowager, and emperor. 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. Wei had her father appointed Chief Minister to her husband and tried to push through other measures favoring her family. 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'. 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). The first thing she did was change the name of the state from Tang to Zhou (actually Tianzhou or Tiansou). 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. (2016, February 22). She then began to plot against Gaozongs consort, Empress Wang, incriminating the empress in the death of Wus infant daughter. World History Publishing is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. . Theodora. ." License. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. Jennifer W. Jay , Professor of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. China during Wu Zetian's ReignIan Kiu (CC BY-SA). She ruled China with complete authority and no one dared to challenge her when she was in control. However, despite establishing an autocratic and centralised state, Emperor Wu adopted the principles of Confucianism as the state philosophy and code of ethics for his empire and started a school to teach future administrators the Confucian classics. We would much rather spend this money on producing more free history content for the world. Zhou Dynasty. Wang was the last person seen in the room and had no alibi. This opposition was formidable; the annals of the period contain numerous examples of criticisms leveled by civil servants mortified by the empresss innovations. https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wu-zetian-624-705, "Wu Zetian (624705) She ordered the executions of several hundred of these aristocrats and of many members of the imperial family of Li. We care about our planet! Wu Zetian. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. 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. She worked against the Confucian dictum that women must restrict their activities to the home and in the wildest imagination could not become emperors. In death, as in life, then, Wu remains controversial. Buddhists Support. Princes and ministers loyal to the Tang Dynasty and princes suspected of rebellious motives against her were executed. Her social, economic and judicial views could hardly be termed advanced, and her politics differed from those of her predecessors chiefly in their greater pragmatism and ruthlessness. Even the terror of the 680s, in this view, was a logical response to entrenched bureaucratic opposition to Wus rule. She began her life at court as a concubine of the emperor Taizong. The remaining Li-Tang family who survived the murders, including Wu Zetian's own son on whose behalf she was serving as empress dowager, begged to take the surname of Wu to replace their birth surnames of Li. 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. The term Confucianism is derived from Confucius, the convention. Swedens fascinating Queen Christina was nearly as infamous for eschewing her sidesaddle and riding in breeches as she was for the more momentous decision that she took to convert to Catholicismwhile mustering her troops in 1588 as the Spanish Armada sailed up the Channel, even Elizabeth I felt constrained to begin a morale-boosting address with a denial of her sex: I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too.. Empress Wu (Wu Zhao) 627-705 First female monarch Sources Rise to Power. The historians always portray Wu as ruthless, conniving, scheming, and bloodthirsty, and she may have been all of these things, she may have even murdered her daughter to gain the throne, but any of these claims should only be accepted after considering their source. What role, if any, the undeniably ambitious concubine played in the events of the early Tang period remains a matter of controversy. Lady Wu played the role of the shy, respectable emperor's wife well in public but, behind the scenes, she was the actual power. . She is hated by gods and men alike.. The reversal of gender roles was nowhere more objectionable than Wu Zetian's sexuality, in the eyes of the traditional historians. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. While Confucian historians condemned her usurpation, extravagance, and scandal, Wu Zhao has been credited for providing strong leadership and ruling during an age of relative peace and prosperity. Her spy network and secret police stopped rebellions before they had a chance to start and the military campaigns she sent out enlarged and secured the borders of the country. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms. The empress responded with both diplomacy and force, concluding a marriage alliance with the Turks and defeating the Qidan in battle. "The Real Judge Dee: Ti Jen-chieh and the T'ang Restoration of 705," in Asia Major. Vol. Her name was Wu Zetian, and in the seventh century A.D. she became the only woman in more than 3,000 years of Chinese history to rule in her own right. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. When Taizong died, Wu and his other concubines had their heads shaved and were sent to Ganye Temple to begin their lives as nuns. 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. However, the date of retrieval is often important. "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. Not only do we pay for our servers, but also for related services such as our content delivery network, Google Workspace, email, and much more. To legitimize her position, Empress Wu turned mainly to Buddhism, proclaiming herself an incarnation of Maitreya (Mi-le), the Buddhist savior. Wu Zetian's first two sexual partners were emperors and related to each other as father and son. But already in 666 when Wu Zetian was empress to the reigning Gaozong, she had prepared for her imperial ambitions by defying tradition and mockery as she led the unprecedented procession of imperial ladies to sacrifice to earth, believed to be a female deity. Her experience reflected a reversal of the gender roles and restrictions her society and government constructed for her as appropriate to women. Shortly after she took the throne there was an earthquake which was interpreted as a bad omen. Luoyang was favorably located on the last stop of the river routes from the South, which greatly reduced the cost of shipping grains from the Southeast to the imperial capital. unified China in 221 B.C. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. Guisso, Richard W.L. Her success in the campaigns against Korea inspired confidence in her generals and Wu's decisions on military defense or expeditions were never challenged. One reason, as we have already had cause to note in this blog, is the official nature and lack of diversity among the sources that survive for early Chinese history; another is that imperial history was written to provide lessons for future rulers, and as such tended to be weighted heavily against usurpers (which Wu was) and anyone who offended the Confucian sensibilities of the scholars who labored over them (which Wu did simply by being a woman). World History Encyclopedia, 17 Mar 2016. To ensure the security of her new reign she had any members of the Tang Dynasty royal family imprisoned (including the future emperor Xuanzong) and proclaimed herself an incarnation of the Maitreya Buddha, calling herself Empress Shengsen which means 'Holy Spirit'. Map: Wikicommons. She reformed the structure of the government and got rid of anyone she felt was not carrying out their duties and so reduced government spending and increased efficiency. Favoring the power base in the Northeast, the royal family finally moved to Luoyang in 683. 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). is held up in Chinese histories as the prototype of all that is wicked in a female ruler. First, I'll beat it with the iron whip. 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. Twitchett, Denis, and Howard J. Wechsler. Woodbridge Bingham, The Founding of the Tang Dynasty: The Fall of Sui and Rise ofTang, a Preliminary Survey (New York: Octagon, 1975). Quin Shi Huang-Di 1996-2021 The horrible deaths of empress Wang and the Pure Concubine, for example, are nowhere mentioned in Luo Binwangs fearless contemporary denunciation, which suggests that Wu was not blamed for them during her lifetime. The poet Luo Binwangone of the Four Greats of Early Tang and best known for his Ode to the Gooselaunched a virulent attack on the empress. Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. "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. After his death, she married his son, Gaozong (r. 649-683 CE) and became empress consort but actually was the power behind the emperor. Sunzi/Sun Wu, Eastern Zhou Period (770-221 BCE) Selections from the Sunzi: Art of War [PDF] Agriculture, Han Period. These characters were supposed to replace between 10 and 30 of the older characters and were Wu's attempt to change the way her people thought and wrote. How to evaluate such an unprecedented figure today? Mutsuhito World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. Wu Zetian's SteleI, (GJGY.com) (CC BY-SA). Naples: Institute Universitario Orientale, 1976. According to the histories of the period, Wu smothered her own week-old daughter by Gaozong and blamed the babys death on Wang, who was the last person to have held her. 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. Mark, Emily. ." Wu Zetian is the only legitimatized Empress in Chinese history. Wuplayed here by Li Lihuawas depicted as powerful and sexually assertive in the Shaw Brothers 1963 Hong Kong movie Empress Wu Tse-Tien. World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization. For centuries she was excoriated by Chinese historians as an offender against a way of life. Buddhism was carried into East Asia by merchants and Buddhist monks traveling the Silk Road from Northern India, Persia, Kashmir and Inner Asia. The military exams were intended to measure intelligence and decision making and candidates were personally interviewed instead of just being appointed because of family connections or their family's name. When she died, she was laid to rest in an elaborate tomb in the countryside about 50 miles north of the then capital, Xian. Forte, Antonino. Fitzgeraldwho reminds us that Tang China emerged from 400 years of discord and civil warwrites, Without Wu there would have been no long enduring Tang dynasty and perhaps no lasting unity of China, while in a generally favorable portrayal, Guisso argues that Wu was not so different from most emperors: The empress was a woman of her times. had been organized in a systematic way by the year 669. 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. It is not likely Wu was involved in the disgrace of Taizongs unpleasant eldest son, Cheng-qian, whose teenage rebellion against his father had taken the form of the ostentatious embrace of life as lived by Mongol nomads. In 683 CE, when Wu began manipulating events as a man would, one Confucian scholar wrote that nature had been reversed by the 'usurping woman' and "throughout the empire in every prefecture hens changed into roosters, or half changed" (Rothschild, 108). This mountain, so born of the sudden convulsion of earth, represents a calamity. Under Wus rule the government was expanded, and many of the new positions were filled through the examination system. Empress Wu proved to be a wise monarch, and in her reign of twenty years she continued many policies and practices of her predecessors. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Buddhism was carried into East Asia by merchants and Buddhist monks traveling the Silk Road from Northern India, Persia, Kashmir and Inner Asia. Please note that some of these recommendations are listed under our old name, Ancient History Encyclopedia. When she saw she would not be able to control the court as her mother did, she killed herself and Xuanzong decreed that no member of Wu's family would be allowed to hold public office because of their ruthless scheming and underhanded politics. These women were rarely chosen by their people. 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. However they rose, though, it has always been harder for a woman to rule effectively than it was for a manmore so in the earlier periods of history, when monarchs were first and foremost military leaders, and power was often seized by force. Zizhi tongjian [Comprehensive mirror as guide to history]. Cite This Work Nevertheless, court intrigues still greatly influenced the recruiting of civil servants. When Taizong died, Gaozong became emperor, and Wu Zetian joined a Buddhist nunnery, as required of concubines of deceased emperors. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Van Gulik, Robert. The only woman ever to rule as emperor of China, Wu Zhao (Wu ZeTian) was born in 624 C.E. 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. Her travel writing debuts in Timeless Travels Magazine. 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. One example of her clout was in 666 CE when she led a group of women to Mount Tai (an ancient ceremonial center), where they conducted rituals which traditionally were performed only by men. Jiu Tangshu [Old history of the Tang]. The woman who believed she was as capable as any man to lead the country continues to be vilified, even if writers now qualify their criticisms, but there is no arguing with the fact that, under Wu Zetian, China experienced an affluence and stability it had never known before. Born ne Wu (first name at birth not known) in 624 in Taiyuan, Shanxi province; died in 705 in Luoyang, Henan province; daughter of a high-ranking official, Wu Shihuo, and his aristocratic wife; married Emperor Taizong (r. 626649), in 640 (died 649); married Emperor Gaozong (r. 650683), in 654; children: (second marriage) Crown Prince Li Hong; Crown Prince Li Xian; Emperor Zhongzong; Emperor Ruizong; Princess Taiping ; another daughter (died in infancy). At a nunnery she established, Empress Komyo sponsored the creation of a statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon which, like Wu Zetians statue at Longmen, was felt to be done in her likeness. Wu was given the privileged position of first concubine even though by law she should have been left in the temple as a nun. One of these served as her new personal name, Zhao, which articulates the fundamental Buddhist notion of universal emptiness. Kannon embodies compassion, and when seen as female is venerated as a patron of motherhood and fertility. 3rd Series. Historians have documented Wu Zetian's resort to slander, torture, and murders to reinforce the propaganda of omens. Lu Zhi was an instantly recognizable villain to the people of China, and linking Wu with her through the murders worked to destroy Wu's reputation. An official under the former Han dynasty, he took the Han throne and founded his own, CHARLEMAGNE
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