Battle of Gaixia and the founding of the Han dynasty
- Date
- 202 BCE
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- China (Central Plains)
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
After the Qin collapse, the warlords Liu Bang and Xiang Yu fought the four-year Chu–Han Contention for mastery of China. In 202 BCE the combined armies of Liu Bang, with his generals Han Xin and Peng Yue, trapped Xiang Yu's outnumbered and supply-starved forces at Gaixia.
By tradition the Han troops sang Chu folk songs to demoralise the enemy and suggest mass defection; Xiang Yu broke out with a handful of riders and, cornered, took his own life. Liu Bang then proclaimed himself emperor, founding the Han dynasty, which (interrupted briefly by Wang Mang's Xin interregnum) would rule until 220 CE. The Han retained the centralised Qin administrative apparatus while softening its harshest Legalist edges, and its long rule so defined Chinese civilisation that the majority ethnic group of China still calls itself 'Han'. The dynasty became a model of imperial governance whose prestige later rulers sought to emulate.
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Empires active in 202 BCE
- Maurya Empire322 BCE – 185 BCE
- Roman Republic509 BCE – 27 BCE
- Han Dynasty202 BCE – 220 CE
- Seleucid Empire312 BCE – 63 BCE
- Odrysian Kingdom480 BCE – 46 CE
- Ptolemaic Kingdom305 BCE – 30 BCE
Related military & conflict events
- The Kalinga War and Ashoka's turn to Dhammac. 261 BCE
- Battle of Zama ends the Second Punic War19 October 202 BCE
- Battle of Gaugamela destroys the Achaemenid Empire1 October 331 BCE
- Alexander the Great invades the Persian Empire334 BCE
- Meng Tian links the northern walls into the Qin Great Wallc. 215–214 BCE
- Battle of Cannae: Hannibal annihilates a Roman army2 August 216 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han
Authoritative yet readable survey (Harvard History of Imperial China).
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