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The An Lushan Rebellion devastates Tang China

755–763 CE·Military & conflict·China·
755–763 CEDate
Military & conflictCategory
18Empires active
Date
755–763 CE
Category
Military & conflict
Region
China
Era
Post-Classical / Medieval
Significance

In December 755 the powerful frontier general An Lushan rose in revolt against the Tang dynasty, seizing the eastern capital Luoyang and then the main capital Chang'an, forcing Emperor Xuanzong to flee and proclaiming a rival Yan dynasty.

The civil war that followed raged until 763 and ranks among the most catastrophic conflicts in human history: census figures, which fell from around 53 million registered persons before the war to roughly 17 million afterward, point to enormous mortality and displacement from famine, massacre and the collapse of taxation and registration, with serious scholarly estimates of the dead ranging into the tens of millions. The rebellion shattered the confident cosmopolitanism of the High Tang. Although the dynasty survived for another century and a half, it never recovered its former strength: central authority gave way to autonomous military governors, the Western Regions were lost, and economic and demographic weight shifted decisively toward the south. The trauma reshaped Chinese politics, society and poetry for generations.

See the world map in 755–763 CE →More military & conflictThe Post-Classical / Medieval era

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Empires active in 755–763 CE

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Further reading

The wider story

China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty

Mark Edward Lewis

Readable survey of Tang China (Harvard History of Imperial China).

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