Chinas best dynastic military?

China's most glourious military in dynasties


  • Total voters
    145

muyang523

New Member
I liked the Yuan dynasty at one point they had the largest empire of all time. I think Qing was strong in the beginning , but they got weaker and weaker. This is the same with all the dynastys.
 
muyang523 said:
I liked the Yuan dynasty at one point they had the largest empire of all time. I think Qing was strong in the beginning , but they got weaker and weaker. This is the same with all the dynastys.

It won't be the case for the People's Republic of China!
 

Obcession

Junior Member
Every great nation/empire/dynasty has its rise, maturity, and fall. The main reason many dynasties fell previously in China was because of corruption. The emperor wanted everything to himself and built big projects using slave labourers. Or the emperor's subordinates were very corrupted and started taxing the people like crazy. This resulted in many peasant uprisings which overthrew the old government and installed a new one that thinks for the people. But over time this government will become corrupt as well and history repeats itself. That's why the CCP either needs to crack down on corruption more, or have multi party elections.
 

patriot

New Member
I voted for the Warring State because there's a lot of famous battles involved. I don't think the voting instruction is quite clear whether it's asking for the best/famous military time or a good army

I was wondering why the Han dynasty wasn't involve in this poll. I would definitely vote for it if it's there.
 
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Tassadar

New Member
Registered Member
J T Z said:
Tang was never a military power house. it is known for its culture and science. Song was small and weak beacuse of all the boarder confilct with other chinese ethnic groups. and none of those nations during Song era was really big and well funded. thats why mongols just rolled through them all. Of course the mongols were amazing too.

It basicly should boils down to: Han, Ming, Qing. Han is 3rd largest dynasty ever at its peak if you count in yuan. and during its time Kao Tsu, wudi and other empreors have expanded the boarder and opened up trade routes.(the silkroad) For its time it was no doubt one of the great powers. Even the Romans at the time couldnt match them.(206 b.c. - 220 A.D.) At that time the Romans were involved in Macedonian Wars. And these wars for the most of time were at a small scale thats fought between Greek city-states, and Syria. Kao Tsu also pushed out the Huns that was in western china and beyond, which enabled the silkroad to be open. Huns later dominated most of europe and the Romans couldnt really stop them. So in terms of territory size and amry size and technology Han at its time was far greater than any nation.

As Ming and Qing, I think FriedRiceNSpice explained pretty well on why it was a great military power.

The problem with most Chinese dyansty is that none of the rulers were ambitious enough. Han, Tang, Ming even part of Qing could easily conqure every other nation near by. And project its power over europe and even find america. But due to that they never got anywhere. and even for the ones that did explore, and seeked out others. because of china's technology were so much more advenced compare to other powers at the time. The explorers comes back with nothing new, and the king/empreor would assume that every other nation around the world are nothing compare to him therefore compeletly ignore other nations, unless they come to him. Over the time this settles in and became the close door policy. And China became more and more isolated and shortsighted that it stop most of technological and civil advencements. Until rest of the world caught up and surpassed them.


With all due respect, I beg to differ. In terms of military power, there is only one time in Han(under Han Wu Di) that china is strong. Also, the military organization in Han is obsolete and ineffective. On the paper it works fine: with every peasant in china as a soldier, china will have millions. However, as Qian Mu(钱穆)and many other notorious historians pointed out: that everyone is a solider effectively equates none is a soldier. The poor training, poor equipment and poor morale is inevitable given the organization method of military of Han.


On the other hand, Tang has a different approach. By organizing militaries as self-supplied production units(府兵制), the training and the equipement of military improved with no burden on goverment. Although the organizaiton method rotten and deterorated latter on due to human failures, the first half of Tang(初唐-盛唐) was arguably the strongest period of chinese military.

As a chinese myself, I do admire the conquer of Han and other dynasties. However, a more clear look at the history reveals that Tang is the zenith of Chinese civilization for almost all aspects with no exception of military.
 

mindreader

New Member
FriedRiceNSpice said:
I do not understand why anyone voted for Tang. The Tang did little to expand China's borders. Furthermore, the Tang didn't vastly improve China's wealth or improve China intellectually or scientifically. The Song which followed the Tang was a much stronger dynasty, and did much to defeat barbarian tribes and expand Chinese territory before being overwhelmed by the Turks themselves.

I am sure you are joking. Too see how far the Tang Dynasty expanded, look up the Battle of Talas. The Song Dynasty can't hold the Li family's collective jockstraps. And no, the Tang armies were far from weak. Just ask the Japanese for the "lessons" they learnt.

Then there are other people saying that "power projection" through the Ming fleets is a sign of the greatest dynasty. That is also a ridiculous qualifier. When comparing history, one needs to look at things relative to other powers of the time. It is asinine to say the Ming Dynasty could conquor the world where the Qin couldn't. Put simply, there is a 1600 year technology gap. If one day people in giant space ships are fighting on Mars, is the Ming Dynasty less impressive then?

Also, I can't believe how anybody in their right mind could vote the Qing Dynasty as the best, especially to do so based simply on looking at maps. There is a reason the Qing Dynasty is considered in China, almost without question, as the worst dynasty ever.

Huang Taji was OK. Kangxi was great. It was all downhill from there. If not for the so called Ten Great Campaigns, Qianlong would be looked upon as a moron (as he should be).

For those that says corruption got especially bad during Cixi, they've obviously never heard of He Shen, who's wealth is mentioned as a percentage of the world's total wealth. When he was finally forced to suicide and his property seized, his wealth exceeded 10 to 15 years worth of the Qing Dynasty's total income. And he is just the tip of the iceberg. If we are to include other corrupt officials, well...

But by far the greatest setback they did to China was technologically. By the way, yes they did abandon firearms. As I've said in another thread, if not for Kangxi's obsession with cannons, the Opium War would have been even uglier than it was.
 

Edinburgher

Just Hatched
Registered Member
Remember. the Qing troops did not get enough food, therefore they are slow, weak, fragile on the battlefield. Most of the money from the goverment had been stolen by lots of bad goverment officials's pockets.

Actually, i hate Qing, cos the rulers and kings of Qing are originally from other countries,(close to Russia and North China). they are very cruel *******, they ruined the China and dragged China into darkness, before Qing, China's military are advanced, technical, economic and agriculcure are ranged top 3 in the world, during Qing's ruling, China became very weak... the most shame for Qing;s rulers are they forced Chinese to change their hair style and cloth style. so Chinese in Qing 's dressing are ugly...
 
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sumdud

Senior Member
VIP Professional
First, welcome to The Forum. :china:
I see that you are from Edinburgh. Go ahead and enjoy yourself in the Club room.

But I hope you understand that this is a strict forum and we do not allow bashing of any kind, including the Manchus. We do have Manchu members onboard. It does not help either when the information is biased/connected with only one kind.
 

kunmingren

Junior Member
Actually, i hate Qing, cos the rulers and kings of Qing are originally from other countries,(close to Russia and North China). they are very cruel *******, they ruined the China and dragged China into darkness, before Qing, China's military are advanced, technical, economic and agriculcure are ranged top 3 in the world, during Qing's ruling, China became very weak... the most shame for Qing;s rulers are they forced Chinese to change their hair style and cloth style. so Chinese in Qing 's dressing are ugly...

i would completely disagree with your thinking, Qing werent any worse than any other dynasty, they didn't 'ruin' china, its just that the rest of the world caught up with China because there wasnt any inovation since Song Dynasty ended. If anything, the Ming dynasty was the most abysmal ruling family in Chinese history. Most notoriously decadent or sadistic or even illiterate emperors are from that dynasty.
 

Spike

Banned Idiot
The Tang period was one of the most glorious in Chinese history; it was a marvel of culture, diplomacy, and military conquest. The early Tang emperors built strong relationships with certain nomadic tribes and cleverly exploited divisions among their enemies from without. Using their technological superiority, the Tang armies expanded into Vietnam, Manchuria, and the Tarim Basin up to the Pamirs and the Talas River (Remarkably Korea stalemated the Tang but accepted tributary status). Culturally the Tang knew no rivals, porcelain was perfected during the Tang, and printing was invented. Some of the greatest poets in Chinese history were from the Tang, ie. Du Fu and Li Bai. Chang'an boasted 2 million inhabitants from all over the world: Arabs, Jews, Persians, Koreans, Japanese, etc. Korea, Japan, and Vietnam were heavily influenced by Tang China and began to borrow heavily from Chinese culture.

The Song Dynasty is often seen as 'weak' by Chinese because it fell to the Mongols, resulting in the poorly run and discriminatory Yuan dynasty. However, the Song managed to hold out for 40 years against the Mongols who were aided by Chinese engineers and military technicians. In fact, Genghis Khan first sent his Golden Horde west, overrunning all of Russia before they turned back in Hungary with the Great Khan's death. Despite being the closest in proximity to the Mongolian homelands the Song were probably one of the more successful holdouts to Mongol dominance, not able to exploit bad sea weather like the Japanese and Javanese, or extreme distances like the Mamluks.
 
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