Editing Hexi Corridor (section)

=== Han-Xiongnu Wars ===
[[File:Han_dynasty_(60_BC).png|thumb|300x300px|The Han dynasty in 60 BCE, after their conquest of the Tarim Basin. {{plainlist|{{color box|#A7A3BF}} Principalities and centrally-administered commanderies (including the Hexi Corridor and its four commanderies) <br />
{{color box|#ECCEF2}} Protectorate of the Western Regions}}]]
The [[Yuezhi]] were a nomadic tribe that lived in the Hexi Corridor in the 3rd century{{Nbsp}}BCE.{{Sfn|Beckwith|2009|p=84: "Group A dialect speakers who became Proto Tokharians arrived in the area of Kansu and dwelled west of Tun-huang in an area that included Lop Nor and the later Kroraina Kingdom. Eighteen centuries passed. In the third century bc, the Tokharian people—called Yüeh- chih, that is, *Tokwar—still lived in the area."}}{{Sfn|Reden|2020|p=76: "Prior to their migration into Bactria, the history of the Yuezhi is only tenuously known from Chinese historical sources, which place their earliest known home in the Gansu corridor"}} The [[Xiongnu]], another nomadic tribe, were forced out of their homelands near the [[Ordos Plateau]] following the [[Qin's campaign against the Xiongnu|Qin-Xiongnu]] wars in 215{{Nbsp}}BCE,{{Sfn|Kim|2017|p=7: "The Xiongnu were expelled from their homeland in the Ordos region by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi."}}{{Sfn|Harmatta|1996|p=149: "China of the Ch’in dynasty (246–207 b.c.) built the famous Great Wall,3 a military fortification running along the length of its frontier. In 214 b.c. the Ch’in court sent an army of 100,000 men against the Hsiung-nu, captured Ordos from them and then the foothills of the [[Yin Mountains|Yinshan]]."}} and [[Qin dynasty]] built the [[Great Wall of China]] into parts of the Hexi Corridor to enclose the conquered territory.{{Sfn|Beckwith|2009|p=71: "[...] the people who ruled the Eastern Steppe, including the Ordos, were known as the Hsiung-nu. The Ch’in general Meng T’ien attacked and crushed them in 215 bc, and the First Emperor of Ch’in built the Great Wall [...] The wall and line of fortifications stretched from Lin- t’ao ([[Lintao County]]) in Kansu to Liao-tung and enclosed the entire Yellow River valley, including the former Hsiung-nu homeland."}} The Xiongnu subsequently formed a confederacy against the Qin under [[Modu Chanyu]],{{sfn|Di Cosmo|1999|pp=964-966|p=892–893: "The colonization of the Ordos region led by General Meng Tian in 215 B.C. caused a widespread dislocation of Xiongnu tribesmen from their ancestral land, the ensuing political and economic crisis creating among the Xiongnu the conditions for the rise of a new leadership. This led to the formation of a powerful northern empire, founded by Maodun in 209, just as China was about to plunge into a civil war [...]"}} which [[Yuezhi#Exodus of the Great Yuezhi|defeated and expelled the Yuezhi]] from the Hexi Corridor in 176{{Nbsp}}BCE.{{Sfn|Beckwith|2009|p=84-85: "The  Hsiung- nu defeated them [the Yuezhi] conclusively in 176 or 175 bc, drove them from their ancestral lands, and also subjugated the *Aśvin (Wu- sun)19 and others in the vicinity. Some of the *Tokwar, known as the Lesser Yüeh- chih, fled south and took refuge among the Ch’iang people in the Nan Shan, but the main body of survivors, the Great Yüeh-chih, migrated to the west into Jungharia"}}<ref name=":1222">{{Cite web |last=Dawson |first=P. L. Kessler and Edward |title=Kingdoms of the Far East - Greater Yuezhi |url=https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsFarEast/AsiaGreaterYuezhi.htm |access-date=2024-12-29 |website=The History Files |language=en}}</ref>{{Sfn|Harmatta|1996|p=169: "In 176 b.c. he defeated the Yüeh-chih in the western part of Gansu Province. In his letter to the Han, Mao-tun said that the Hsiung-nu had destroyed the Yüeh-chih; and Lou-lan, Wusun, Hu-chieh and twenty-six other countries in the neighbourhood were subjugated to the Hsiung-nu."}}

In 138{{Nbsp}}BCE, [[Han dynasty]] diplomat [[Zhang Qian]] was sent to convince the Yuezhi to ally against the Xiongnu and move back into the Hexi Corridor. He was unsuccessful in doing so and was captured by the Xiongnu, but gave detailed accounts of various kingdoms in the [[Tarim Basin]] and further areas which had been unknown to the Chinese before then.{{Sfn|Beckwith|2009|p=86: "The most important and vivid accounts are those of Chang Ch’ien (d. 113 bc), who in 139 bc left on a mission to entice the *Tokwar to return to their previous homeland in the region between Tun-huang and the Ch’i-lien Mountains. Chang was captured by the Hsiung-nu, among whom he lived for ten years before escaping and continuing his journey to the west. He was in Bactria in about 128 and returned home in 122 bc after another, shorter stay among the Hsiung-nu. After being sent out again in 115, he returned and died two years later."}}{{Sfn|Yü|1986|p=407: "As the first Han envoy to the west, the immediate objective of Chang Ch'ien's mission was to seek a military alliance with the Greater Yueh-chih, who had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Hsiung-nu in the early years of Mao-tun's reign. However, when Chang Ch'ien and his party eventually arrived in the Yiieh-chih territory, after being captured by the Hsiung-nu and detained by them for ten years, they were disappointed to find that the Yiieh-chih were too well settled to want a war of retaliation against the Hsiung-nu."}}{{Sfn|Di Cosmo|2009|p=197: "When the famous explorer and imperial envoy Chang Ch’ien was sent by Emperor Wu to seek an anti-Hsiung-nu alliance with the Yüeh-chih nomads in 139–138 b.c., he was captured by the Hsiung-nu [...]"}} These accounts influenced [[Emperor Wu of Han]] to expand westwards,{{Sfn|Benjamin|2018|p=69: "When [Zhang Qian] finally returned to the Han court and presented his report to Wudi, the Han became seriously aware for the first time [...] of the opportunities for imperial Han expansion the western regions presented. Indeed, Zhang Qian’s report explicitly introduced Wudi and the Han court to the diplomatic and strategic opportunities available were they to expand their diplomatic interests into Central Asia, opportunities that as we shall see, Wudi was quick to exploit."}}{{Sfn|Yü|1986|p=407: "Chang Ch'ien's failure turned out, however, to be the beginning of Han China's success in its subsequent western expansion. It was largely owing to the information about the Western Regions brought back by Chang Ch'ien that the Han court later decided to make its first diplomatic overtures toward some of the small states in that area."}} who attacked the Xiongnu at the [[Battle of Mayi]] in 134 or 133 BCE, and began the centuries-long [[Han–Xiongnu Wars|Han-Xiongnu Wars]] in 129{{Nbsp}}BCE.{{Sfn|Kim|2017|p=8: "The story of how Emperor Wu precipitated a war between China and the Xiongnu is told in great detail by Sima Qian. In 134 BCE, the Chinese attempted to trap Gunchen Chanyu (the grandson of Modu) and the Xiongnu army in an ambush. The plot failed, but just five years later in 129 BCE, full-scale war erupted between the two empires and would continue on and off until the final dissolution of the Xiongnu Empire more than two hundred years later in the late 1st century CE."}}{{Sfn|Di Cosmo|2009|loc=section 1: "In 133 b.c.e. Emperor Wu decided to abandon the heqin "appeasement" policy and to endorse a more muscular approach to border defense that may be characterized as "defensive expansionism." This doctrinal shift in foreign relations led in the first place to the military campaigns against the Xiongnu, who were holding sway north of the Great Wall."}}{{Sfn|Yü|1986|p=389-390: "But the emperor's decision was apparently made with much reluctance, for a year later (134 B.C.) he reversed the decision, adopting the plot of a frontier merchant to trap the shan-yu in an ambush in the city of Ma-i (in Yen-men commandery, modern Shansi). The plot was discovered by the shan-yu and the ambush came to nothing. [...] Full-scale war did not break out until the autumn of 129 B.C."}} In the {{ill|Battle of Hexi|zh|河西之战 (西汉)}} in 121{{Nbsp}}BCE, Han general [[Huo Qubing]] expelled the Xiongnu from the region,{{Sfn|Sneath|Kaplonski|2010|p=58: "In the spring of the next year (121 BC), the Han dispatched the general of swift cavalry Huo Qubing to lead 10,000 cavalry out of Longxi. [...] In the summer Huo Qubing, accompanied by Gongsun Ao, the Heqi marquis, led a force of 20,000 or 30,000 cavalry some 2,000 li out of Longxi and Beidi to attack the barbarians. They passed Juyan, attacked in the region of the Qilian Mountains, and captured or killed over 30,000 of the enemy, including seventy or more petty kings and their subordinates [...] the Han found itself far less troubled by barbarian invasions in the regions of Longxi, Beidi, and Hexi."}}{{Sfn|Yü|1986|p=391: "In 121 B.C. the Hsiung-nu were dealt another severe blow at the hands of the general Huo Ch'ii-ping, who ranks with Wei Ch'ing among the rare geniuses in Chinese military history. Huo led a force of light cavalry westward out of Lung-hsi and within six days had fought his way through five Hsiung-nu kingdoms, wresting both the Yen-chih and Ch'i-lien mountain ranges from them. The Hsiung-nu Hun-yeh king was forced to surrender with 40,000 men."}} and four new commanderies were established on these lands, namely (from east to west) [[Wuwei, Gansu|Wuwei]], [[Zhangye]], [[Jiuquan]] and [[Dunhuang]].{{Sfn|Yü|1986|p=391: "The lands previously occupied by the Hun-yeh king stretched west from the Kansu corridor to Lop Nor. After the surrender of the Hun-yeh king in 121 B.C., all the Hsiung-nu people moved out of the area, and the Han court may have established the commandery of Chiu-ch'iian there. Later on, three more commanderies Chang-i, Tun-huang, and Wu-wei —were added, which together with Chiu-ch'iian have come to be known in Han history as "the four commanderies west of the [Yellow] River."}}{{Sfn|Psarras|2003|p=148: "Nonetheless, the greatest territorial gains by the Han resulted not from military victories, but from the surrender in 121 B.C. of the Xiongnu King Kunye (or Hunye) with 40,000 of his men [...] The Han colonized the land thus acquired as Jiuquan and Wuwei (both in present-day central Gansu).}}{{Sfn|Harmatta|1996|p=220: "After Chang Ch’ien’s first mission there was a long struggle for control of the Western Regions. In 121 b.c. one of the Hsiung-nu leading nobles ruling over the Gansu corridor surrendered to the Han, who set up the four prefectures of Wu-wei, Chang-i, Chiu-ch’üan and Tun-huang, the first step towards extending Han power over the Western Regions."}} Starting from around 115{{Nbsp}}BCE, the Han dynasty fought the Xiongnu over control of the [[Tarim Basin]] using the Hexi Corridor as a base of operations,{{Sfn|Yü|1986|p=|pp=391-392: " With the annexation of Ho-hsi the Han succeeded in separating the Hsiung-nu from the Ch'iang peoples to the south and also gained direct access to the whole of the Western Regions. As is amply shown in subsequent history, Ho-hsi became the most important base for Han military operations in the Western Regions [...] The period from 115 to 60 B.C. witnessed two related developments in the history of Han and Hsiung-nu relations. First, during this time Han and Hsiung-nu struggled for mastery over the Western Regions, a contest that ended in a complete triumph for Han.}} and established the [[Protectorate of the Western Regions]] following their victory in 60 or{{Nbsp}}59{{Nbsp}}BCE.{{Sfn|Benjamin|2018|pp=|p=86: "Indeed, the Han were now so deeply invested in Central Asia that, in either 60 or 59 BCE, during the reign of Xuandi, the court made a decision to establish a permanent presence deep in the Tarim Basin to protect its various garrisons, commanderies and allied states from the Xiongnu and to reinforce its hegemonic status among the various tributary town-states of the region. Accordingly, the Office of the Protector General of the Western Regions was established, and General Cheng Chi was appointed the first protector general."}}{{Sfn|Yü|1986|p=411: "The establishment of the office of protector-general of the Western Regions in 60 or 59 B.C. marks the start of a new phase in which Han influence became markedly more effective."}}


During the [[Xin dynasty|turbulent reign]] of [[Wang Mang]], Han lost control over the Tarim Basin, which was reconquered by the Xiongnu in 63 CE and used as a base to invade the Hexi Corridor.  [[Dou Gu]] defeated the Xiongnu again at the [[Battle of Yiwulu]] in 73 CE, evicting them from [[Turpan]] and chasing them as far as [[Lake Barkol]] before establishing a garrison at [[Hami City|Hami]].

After the new Protector General of the Western Regions [[Chen Mu]] was killed in 75 CE by allies of the Xiongnu in [[Karasahr]] and [[Kucha]], the garrison at Hami was withdrawn.  At the [[Battle of the Altai Mountains]] in 89 CE, [[Dou Xian]] defeated the [[Northern Chanyu (1st century)|Northern Chanyu]], who retreated into the [[Altai Mountains]].  The Han forces, allied with the subjugated Southern Xiongnu, again defeated the Northern Chanyu twice in 90 CE and 91 CE, forcing him to flee west into [[Wusun]] and [[Kangju]] territories.