4.9: The Han Commanderies

Once under Han control, Lelang people produced silk, lacquerware, and jewelry, and made carriages out of parts imported from the mainland. In exchange for raw materials, Lelang provided local chiefs with prestige goods, especially bronze mirrors (originally a steppe product, remember?, but by now thoroughly identified with elite Chinese culture).

The commanderies on the peninsula were ruled much like the rest of the empire: with officials appointed by the center and local staff members, who counted and registered people and demanded taxes and labor service. Some household registers on wood tablets have been excavated. According the census of Lelang in 45 BC, about 15% of the population had recently come from the mainland. Mainlanders were not treated better by the government; in fact, locals were given preferential treatment, with each 30-40 households placed under local chiefs and assigned lighter tax and labor burdens. This was to assure acceptance of the new government. Mainlanders intermarried with local elite families, who learned to read and write in Chinese, and began to study the classics and write their own poems, as recent excavations have shown.

When Huo Guang was ruling Han in 82 BC, he retreated from Wudi’s expansionist mode by closing the commandery in Vietnam and two short-lived commanderies on the peninsula, and moving the Xuantu commandery to a safer location. Even before that retreat, the Han commanderies’ control was limited and tenuous. The local population continued to fight. (Indeed from 25-30 AD, a local rebel took over Lelang, and allied with others in Shandong province until Latter Han defeated them all.) To fight effectively, they had to improve not only weaponry but organization, and several different polities slowly developed. Their elite were pure warriors, who never farmed themselves, but (like the Shang, Zhou, and Xiongnu) dominated the local farming and gathering people by force of arms.