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'''Emperor Guangwu of Han''' the founder and first emperor of the Eastern Han dynasty (5 BC - 57 AD), who restored the Han house after the interregnum of Wang Mang and reunified China under a government based at Luoyang. His reign of more than three decades rebuilt the institutions of the empire and earned him a reputation as a wise and moderate ruler.

== Early Life and the Fall of Wang Mang ==
Liu Xiu was born in 5 BC, a member of the imperial Liu clan and a distant descendant of the founding emperor of the Han. His branch of the family had lost much of its wealth and standing, and he grew up in modest circumstances in the region of Nanyang, where he worked on the family estates and studied the classics. He was, by tradition, a quiet and thoughtful youth.

The usurper Wang Mang had taken the throne in 9 AD and founded the short-lived Xin dynasty, but his reforms and his mismanagement brought disorder and rebellion. Bandits and rebels rose across the country, and popular movements challenged the authority of the new regime. Liu Xiu and his elder brother Liu Yan joined the uprising against Wang Mang and raised forces of their own.

The rebels won a decisive victory at the battle of Kunyang in 23 AD, in which a greatly outnumbered force defeated the main army of Wang Mang. Liu Xiu distinguished himself in the fighting by his coolness and daring. Wang Mang was killed soon afterwards, and the collapse of his regime left China divided among competing warlords, a chaos that Liu Xiu would spend years resolving.

== Founding the Eastern Han ==
After the death of Wang Mang, the various rebel groups and regional commanders struggled for power, and a series of claimants to the throne rose and fell. Liu Xiu emerged as the strongest of these contenders, and in 25 AD he declared himself emperor and adopted the reign title Guangwu, meaning martial glory or glorious martial achievement. He fixed his capital at Luoyang, east of the old capital of Chang'an.

He spent more than a decade subduing his rivals. He defeated the Red Eyebrows, a powerful popular movement, and gradually brought the regional warlords of the north, the east and the south under his authority. By around 36 AD he had reunified the empire and ended the long period of civil war that had followed the fall of the western dynasty.

He was careful to present his rule as a restoration of the Han rather than as the founding of a new dynasty. He claimed continuity with the earlier emperors, restored their rites and their institutions, and presented himself as the legitimate heir who had rescued the house from usurpation. This appeal to tradition gave his government a legitimacy that a merely new regime would have lacked.

== Government and Reforms ==
Guangwu ruled with an eye to the lessons of the past. He had seen how the over-centralisation and the ambitious reforms of Wang Mang had provoked resistance, and he governed with restraint. He reduced the burden of taxation, restored the agrarian economy after the devastation of the civil wars, and encouraged the return of refugees to their lands and the reclamation of abandoned fields.

He reformed the central administration, strengthening the office of the emperor and limiting the power of the chief ministers. He reduced the size of the army and demobilised many of the soldiers who had fought in the wars, easing the burden on the treasury and returning men to the land. He was himself frugal and avoided the lavish display that had characterised some earlier courts.

He took a personal and serious interest in the welfare of the people and in the quality of his officials. He reformed the selection of officials, encouraged the study of the classics, and supported the establishment of the imperial academy at Luoyang, which became a centre of scholarship and training for the bureaucracy. He sought to appoint men of ability and honesty rather than men of mere connection.

He also worked to secure the frontiers. He declined to pursue costly expansion into the western regions, judging that the exhausted empire needed peace more than conquest, and he consolidated the defences of the north against the Xiongnu. Later, however, he sanctioned the reopening of contacts with the western oases when conditions allowed, and he maintained the traditional Chinese claim to a universal order.

== Consolidation and Succession ==
Guangwu's long reign gave the restored dynasty time to take root. He ruled for more than thirty years, and the stability and prosperity of his later years allowed the Eastern Han to recover much of the strength of the former dynasty. Agriculture revived, population grew, and the machinery of government was rebuilt on a sounder footing than it had known during the troubles.

He was concerned with the succession and worked to secure the position of his family. In 43 AD he named his son Liu Yang as heir and eventually as crown prince, and he arranged the marriages and offices that would give the dynasty a stable future. His empress Yin Lihua was a figure of considerable influence, and the succession passed peacefully to his son, who reigned as Emperor Ming.

He died in 57 AD at the age of about sixty-two, having reigned for thirty-three years. He was buried with the honours of a founding emperor, and his memory was honoured by his successors as that of the ruler who had saved the Han house and given the empire a new beginning. His tomb and his cult became part of the ritual landscape of the restored dynasty.

== Influence and Legacy ==
Guangwu is remembered as one of the more successful founders of a Chinese dynasty. He took a fractured and exhausted land and reunified it, restored the institutions of government, and gave the empire two centuries of renewed life. The Eastern Han that he founded would last until 220 AD, and its culture and scholarship left a deep mark on later ages.

His reign was notable for its moderation and its attention to the practical needs of the people. He avoided the grandiose projects and harsh reforms that had undone Wang Mang, and he cultivated the image of a ruler who listened to good counsel and governed with care. Historians have praised him as a model of the founder who consolidates rather than merely conquers.

He is remembered, too, for the example he set to later rulers of how a dynasty might be restored after a period of disorder. His combination of military skill, political patience and personal restraint secured the restoration of the Han, and his name remains associated with the revival of one of the greatest of China's ancient dynasties.

== See also ==
* Han dynasty
* Wang Mang
* Luoyang
* Xiongnu

== References ==

<ref name="r1">Fan Ye, Book of the Later Han, Zhonghua Book Company, 1965.</ref>
<ref name="r2">Ban Gu and Ban Zhao, Book of Han, Zhonghua Book Company, 1962.</ref>
<ref name="r3">Rafe de Crespigny, A Biographical Dictionary of Later Han to the Three Kingdoms, Brill, 2007.</ref>
<ref name="r4">Hans Bielenstein, The Restoration of the Han Dynasty, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1953.</ref>

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[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Royalty]]
[[Category:Han dynasty]]