Wang Mang nationalises land under the Xin dynasty
- Date
- AD 9
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- China (Xin dynasty)
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
In AD 9, having usurped the Han throne and founded the Xin dynasty, Wang Mang issued an edict nationalising all agricultural land, declaring it wangtian (王田, 'royal fields') belonging to the state and forbidding its private sale or purchase.
The reform consciously revived the idealised Zhou-era well-field (jingtian) system, aiming to break up vast estates, redistribute holdings to the landless, and curb the power of aristocratic landowners; households with fewer than eight members holding more than about one 'well' (roughly 0.6 km²) were ordered to surrender the excess to kin, neighbours, or fellow villagers. In tandem he restricted the slave trade by reclassifying slaves as 'private dependents' who could no longer be bought or sold. The measures provoked fierce resistance from elites who bribed officials to keep their land, while corrupt local officials exploited the law to seize peasant plots, and ordinary farmers found they had lost security without gaining promised land. Faced with this opposition, compounded by Yellow River floods and famine, Wang Mang repealed the land and slavery edicts in AD 12, and the broader failure of his reforms contributed to the rebellions that destroyed the Xin dynasty in AD 23.
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Empires active in AD 9
- Han Dynasty202 BCE – 220 CE
- Roman Empire27 BCE – 476 CE
- Parthian Empire247 BCE – 224 CE
- Xiongnu Confederation209 BCE – 93 CE
- Kan Kingdom (El Mirador)300 BCE – 150 CE
- Indo-Greek Kingdom180 BCE – 10 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Augustus founds the Principate (First Settlement)16 January 27 BCE
- Assassination of Julius Caesar (the Ides of March)15 March 44 BCE
- Teotihuacan rises as a great city and builds the Pyramid of the Sunc. 100 CE
- Ardashir I defeats the Parthians at Hormozdgan and founds the Sasanian Empire28 April 224 CE
- Qin unification of China and the First Emperor221 BCE
- Tribunate and murder of Tiberius Gracchus133 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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