The History of the World Podcast, written and presented by Chris Hasler

Volume 3 the Classical World

Episode 68 The Hand Dynasty. Part 2. Oh, In our previous episode we described how Emperor Wu became the Emperor in the year 141

BCE.

Emperor Wu had decided that he wanted to be a strong emperor and where his predecessors

had looked to pacify their mighty nomadic step neighbors to the north that Sionnu Empire, Emperor Wu decided that he wanted to gain a political

advantage in their tense relationship and was prepared to take military action

to ensure the balance of power and was not against Han China.

Emperor Wu would use the strategy of expanding his borders in order to gather more wealth

and manpower to support the cause of the ongoing war with the Tsionnu.

It's possible that the Tsionknew were complacent about the abilities and aggressive

inclination of their Chinese neighbours, but the Han was successful in taking back

influence over the borderlands between themselves and the Tionnu

and would achieve success in the Ordos Loop, the Gobe Desert and the Hexi Corridor.

Control of thexie Corridor. Control of the Hexie Corridor was quite important too as it was a recently discovered pathway to new trading opportunities on a transcontinental scale not realized on any

significant scale previously. So everything was pointing in the right direction

for Han China and Emperor Wu in the first 35 years of his

impressively long reign and he had turned China into a nation more large and powerful than ever.

The biggest challenge about having a large and powerful empire is keeping a large and

powerful empire. Emperor Wu would have to alter his methods of taxation

and changes are often not well received.

New taxation was applied to salt, iron and wine in order to sustain the expense of

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