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The Hegemon King 项羽, 西楚霸王


The legendary warrior king Xiang Yu toppled the Qin Dynasty of China's first Emperor and then went on to briefly dominate the post- Qin world. His stormy life and tragic death inspired the famous Beijing Opera: "Farewell My Concubine."



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Han dynasty tomb fresco of Xiang Yu depicting him in a banquette.
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Der said…
I've always found the term Western Chu 西楚 to be curious. Was the State of Chu not one state? Why divide it with West and East? or was the conquest of Yueh and Wu never truly complete even after a century of Chu rule? And that Western Chu the true 'Chu' ?? Maybe this contributed to Chu's weakness compared to Qin which conquered and fully integrated Ba and Shu into the Qin State.
May 12, 2019 at 12:22 PM
Dragon's Armory said…
Western Chu was what Xiang Yu called his turf after he eventually split up the Post Qin China into 18 different kingdoms. He had tired of ruling through the puppet King of King Huai the 2nd so he assassinated him. However with the death of Huai came a new dilemma. For nearly 1000 years the state of Chu was intimately tied to the blood of the Xiong Kings. By doing away with the blood-dynasty there goes a direct claim to Chu as well. So Xiang Yu made himself the king of Western Chu.

At the point Xiang Yu made himself the King of Western Chu he was pretty much the de facto ruler of eastern China anyway. So it's a formality.

It is my opinion that Xiang Yu was only buying time by carving up the 18 kingdoms. Most of it was done to divide up the territories of some of his strongest potential rivals, including that of Liu Bang. It's a move to nerf everyone else while still holding on to a solid core of good troops and the allegiance of most of the powerful lords. A lot of people disses Xiang Yu for blindly dividing the country rather than declaring himself emperor and ruling all of the empire as he see fits. But I think he did so because he think that if he did so many of the lords would not not right support him. So he has an elaborate plan to nerf his enemies then swoop in and reap the rewards once his foes have weakened themselves.

However his plan never came to fruition. Only 3 months after he carved up the 18 kingdoms the whole realm went into a berserk battle royal, and it quickly boiled down into an all out Chu- Han war with many of the smaller states supporting one or the other.
May 13, 2019 at 2:36 PM
Han_Xidai said…
Chu still vying for hegemony 426 years after Chengpu. Jokes aside Chu was a state whose place in the Zhou world was interesting, particularly as it was the first to truly challenge the Zhou, with King Wu declaring himself King in 704, directly challenging the Zhou, which none of the central Zhou states would do until King Hui of Wei in 344. Chu to the Zhou world was similar to how Macedon was to the Hellenic and Greek world. Both saw themselves as part of those civilisations and political spheres, also culturally, with the Xiong Dynasty connecting themselves to the Yellow Emperor, while the Argeads of Macedon connected themselves to Heracles. However, the worlds they both desired to be a part of both looked at them with contempt, with the Zuozhuan writing how Chu lacked propriety (Zhou etiquette and ritual) and Duke Wen of Jin was thus seen in the Zuozhuan as someone who drove out the uncivilised Chu, even those his actions were almost solely about gaining hegemony rather than upholding the Zhou.

The same was with Macedon, who saw themselves as part of the Hellenic world and constantly involved themsleves in Greek affairs since the Persian wars and were a hegemonic power by the time of Phillip II, but many Greeks looked at Macedon the same way the Zhou world viewed Chu, with the famous Philippic by Demosthenes calling Macedonians barbarian invaders. Chu was no different in that it saw itself as part of the Zhou world, as King Zhuang declared himself Ba (hegemon), a title normally bestowed upon the leaders of interstate alliances such as Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin, and the hegemon system was an integral part of the Zhou world in the Spring and Autumn. It is interesting how Chu, like Macedon, desired and saw itself as part of the Zhou world, while in many regards (particularly in the Spring and Autumn and not so much the Warring States) they were viewed as not necessarily foreign, but as outsiders and backwards and uncivilised.
May 13, 2019 at 6:25 PM
Dragon's Armory said…
I always kind of liked Chu, I liked that they are stubbornly...themselves and really don't give a @#$%. They were at the beginning to help the founding of Zhou but then they went out and carved out a realm for themselves, became the Kings of many local tribes and then, while Zhou stagnated possessed a state that is almost as big as the rest of the central plains polities combined and lived to scare the Qin several times well into the last days of the Warring States.

The fact that they were a looming semi-assimilated "barbarian" civilization that outmatched their overlords makes them very interesting. And you can bet so many tiny states are scared the living crap of by them. Then boogeyman- rouge state, attitude is really interesting.

They did well for themselves for the majority of the time along the Zhou dynasty, even out living it well into the time of the Qin unification. Not to mention they were resurrected to destroy the Qin. I venture to say that the Han dynasty and early Han dynasty culture had a great amount of Chu influence as well.
May 14, 2019 at 6:07 AM
Der said…
Hello,

Yes, Macedon is a great analogy for Chu, Russia is another good analogy vis a vis early modern Europe during the reign of Peter the Great. Usually these analogies are accurate in regards to culture. But the geo-political status of Chu, I've read some academic papers comparing the State of Chu to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, both are sprawling geographic empires made up of numerous different ethnic groups and a high bound court culture where change was difficult to enact. They got away with it for so long because they were large geographically, rich economically and had a large population, like Russia and Austria-Hungary. But when confronted by a tightly organized, ruthlessly centralized and brutally regimented state like Qin State (and Prussia/Germany) ... they couldn't cope and were eventually defeated on the battlefield if not totally destroyed.

I've also read Chu is basically the center of the Daoist philosophy, as opposed to Qin's Legalism.
May 14, 2019 at 9:37 AM
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