文章讲述了古代中国的一段历史-三国时期。这个时期是中国历史上最混乱，最戏剧性的时刻之一，英语论文，期间曹魏、蜀汉及孙吴三分天下，英语论文，并相互征战渴望自己一统天下。文章介绍了当时这三个国家的一些主要特征。
The Three Kingdoms period was one of the most chaotic and dramatic times in Chinese history. The Records of Three Kingdoms, the officially recognized history of the Three Kingdoms period, chose the late Han Dynasty as the beginning of the record, which is in violation of the traditional history writing of China , but was necessary due to the consequences led by those incidents. By then, after the loss of control of the Han Dynasty imperial government of the country, hundreds of warlords and provincial officials rose from their original positions and tried to take control of the whole country by force. However, the deeply rooted thoughts of loyalty hinder the warlords from banishing the Han emperor and declared emperor themselves. In the early period of the late Han Dynasty chaos, several warlords who attempted to do so were fought by all other powerful warlords. The first one was Dong Zhuo, who took control of the capital in 189 AD and captured the emperor for five years. As a northeast warlord, Dong Zhuo was objected by eighteen other warlords in total, who launched a grand battle against him in 190 AD. After Dong Zhou was killed by the ministers in the capital, Cao Cao, a famous warlord in northern China, took control of the Han emperor and escorted him to Xudu, as the new capital of the empire. Cao Cao was later appointed the Prime Minister of the emperor and seized real power of the state, and he began his war of unification of whole China. In 207, Cao Cao reunified the northern China and was determined to eliminate all the warlords in southern China. But he was defeated in Red Cliff by the united forces of Sun Quan (the warlord of Jiangdong, southeastern China) and Liu Bei (one of the few descendants of the Han royal family). After the battle of Red Cliff, Cao Cao returned to north and was never able to reunite the south again; Liu Bei seized control of southwestern China and established a country of his own; Sun Quan kept his position in Jiangdong and later established his own regime. By 220 AD, Cao Cao’s son, Cao Pi, banished the last emperor of Han Dynasty and declared himself the emperor of northern China. By then, the partial unification of China was completed, and the situation of three kingdoms was established.
All three countries wanted to reunify the whole China during their regime. Shu, the country established by Liu Bei, was the most active of all for Liu Bei himself was a descendant of the royal family. The Chinese people took reputation and family roots very seriously, especially when it comes to politics. Therefore, Liu Bei believed that as a member of the royal family, his destination was to destroy Cao Cao’s regime in the north and bring Han Dynasty back to rule over China. In order to achieve the destination, Liu Bei carried out the policy of his Prime Minister, Zhuge Liang, to remain friendly with Sun Quan while sparing no efforts attacking Cao Cao to resotre Han regime. In the beginning, the two regimes collaborated well to fight Cao Cao in Red Cliff, burying his dream of reunifying China under his name; and Liu Bei married Sun Quan’s sister as a friendly symbol of the coalition of the two forces. However, things turned south when both sides concerned greatly about Jinzhou—a place of great strategic value and prosperity. Before Zhuge Liang served Liu Bei, he told Liu Bei that Jinzhou was so important that capturing the place would enable Liu Bei to possess great advantages against Sun Quan and Cao Cao . If Jinzhou was to be captured by Liu Bei, he could go direct into northern China and capture the capital to eliminate Cao Cao and then rule over Sun Quan. By the time Zhuge Liang raised the importance of Jinzhou, it was in the hand of Liu Bei’s cousin Liu Biao; but Liu Bei, minding the relationship of the family, refused to take Jinzhou as his own. Later, Cao Cao and Sun Quan captured Jinzhou separately, then it was “lent” to Liu Bei by Sun Quan as a sign of friendship between two forces; yet after Liu Bei captured the land of Shu (Sichuan of modern China), he didn’t want to give it back and sent his brother, Guan Yu to defend the place. However, due to the overwhelming pride of Guan Yu and his despise of Sun Quan, he was defeated and killed by the united forces of Cao Cao and Sun Quan, and Jinzhou was recaptured by Sun Quan.
The loss of Jinzhou overturned Zhuge Liang’s assumption of China’s situation, one of the most important rings of his plan of restoring the Han Dynasty failed. Still, Zhuge Liang believed that if he could continue his plans of collaborating with Sun Quan to fight against Cao Cao, the reunification was not doomed to fail. But Liu Bei, having lost his brother Guan Yu to Sun Quan, was determined to avenge for him. Therefore, he lost his opportunity of attacking the then unstable Wei and restore Han once and for all . In 221 AD, Liu Bei declared himself the new emperor of Han Dynasty when he heard that Han Xiandi, the last emperor, was killed . In order to do so, Liu Bei launched a massive attack on Sun Quan in 222 AD, but was defeated by Sun Quan’s son-in-law, general Lu Xun in Yiling, a border city between Shu and Wu. After which, Liu Bei lost Jinzhou forever, and he lost all the elite forces of the country; thus, the plan for reunification has been lost and Liu Bei died out of the desperation of unable to restore the Han Dynasty. The task was given to Zhuge Liang, as both the Prime Minister and chief in command of Shu’s army, to carry out all the main attacks against the north and restore relations with Sun Quan’s Wu.
By now, the tripartite confrontation between Wei (Cao Cao’s kingdom), Shu and Wu is formed. Both Liu Bei and Cao Cao’s son Cao Pi had declared themselves emperors of the whole China and both wanted to eliminate each other. After Liu Bei’s death, Zhuge Liang, feared that long waiting could undermine the strength of Shu for it occupied much smaller lands than that of Wei, and its population was not enough to compare to Wei, so he decided to attack Wei as soon as possible so that he could have better chance to defeat Wei. In 228 AD, after settling the domestic affairs, Zhuge Liang launched his first northern attack against Wei in order to recapture the capital and restore the Han Dynasty. The first war of northern expedition was successful at the beginning, while Shu captured several counties and cities of Wei which are located in Gansu and Shaanxi province of China today. But during the battle, Ma Su, a general of Shu, lost the very important city of Jieting, which made the Shu army in the dilemma of defeat. Zhuge Liang had to give up the first northern expedition and returned to Chengdu, the capital of Shu to prepare for the next battle. But it proved to be the last chance of Shu: in the next four northern expeditions, Shu did not succeed in taking any more of Wei territory in western China and was exhausted during the fifth expedition. Zhuge Liang later passed away in Wuzhangyuan, a place located in the battlefield between Shu and Wei of Shaanxi province. After his death, several Shu generals, including Zhuge Liang’s disciple, Jiang Wei, tried to carry on with his expedition, but all failed due to the weakness of the country and the Shu emperor. The northern expedition of Shu was one of the most remembered incidents in Chinese history, and Zhuge Liang was depicted as the symbol of loyalty and valor of Chinese, who was remembered by generations of Chinese people, including those of today.
Unlike Shu, Wei, having taken control of the whole northern China, awaited its opportunity to come to reunify China without much effort. For Wei, the location of both Shu and Wu were too much to take by only infantry army: Shu, located in the mountainous area of southwestern China, was extremely hard for large scales of troops to march into. It is much easier for Shu to defend itself in terms of coming war. While Wu, occupying one side of the Yangtze River, was able to hold the line by the natural barrier of the river. Besides, Cao Cao had already suffered from the defeat of Red Cliff before, and it had become a thorn of Wei to attack Wu without full preparation. Despite all these disadvantages, Wei’s advantage was also very obvious: it captured the center of China and the old capital, which were the richest regions of the whole China by that time; Wei’s population was also much higher than that of Shu and Wu, which made its mobilization capability the greatest of all three states. Also, Wei succeeded in defeating the northern nomadic tribes, including Modu and Wuhuan, who were originally strong cavalry tribes and later formed a formidable force of the Wei army. Having possessed all these strategic advantages, Wei took a slow process to wait for Shu and Wu to exhaust their strengths so that it could take the two countries once and for all. In 249 AD, Sima Yi, the most powerful minister of Wei, took control of the state and named his two sons to be the supreme commander of the Wei army. After which, Sima Yan, the grandson of Sima Yi, overthrew the Wei emperor and declared himself the monarch, changing the state name from “Wei” to “Jin” and destroyed both Shu and Wu in his later time of reign. Eventually, it was Wei who reunify China again in its time.
Works Cited
Chen, Shou. The Records of Three Kingdoms. Zhonghua Shuju (2017).
Chi-yun Chen. “Review of The Records of the Three Kingdoms. BY RAFE DE CRESPIGNY. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (May, 1971), pp. 658-659
Guang, Sima. "Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive mirror for aid in government)." Beijing: Zhonghua shuju (1956).
Moody, Peter R. "The romance of the three kingdoms and popular Chinese political thought." The Review of Politics 37.02 (1975): 175-199.
Bibliography
Chen, Shou. The Records of Three Kingdoms. Zhonghua Shuju (2017).
The Records of Three Kingdoms was the official history record of the Three Kingdoms period by Chen Shou of Jin Dynasty during the 4th century. The book takes Wei (Cao Cao’s country) as the legitimate regime and describes other states in the perspective of Wei. The book was written in the form of a set of biographies of most important figures of the three kingdoms, which is a common way for Chinese history records to be written. It was an abundant and genuine record of the history of that time.
Chi-yun Chen. “Review of The Records of the Three Kingdoms. BY RAFE DE CRESPIGNY. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (May, 1971), pp. 658-659
The article reviews Rafe De Crespigny’s book on The Records of Three Kingdoms and briefly introduced the content, stating that Chen Shou’s opinion and writing methodologies were not as traditional as his predecessors.
Guang, Sima. "Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive mirror for aid in government)." Beijing: Zhonghua shuju (1956).
This history record was written by Sima Guang, the vice Prime Minister of Song Dynasty during the 11th century. It recorded the history from 2017 BC to 560 AD. It was written in the chronicle form and served as a mirror for Song emperors to lend from the experiences of previous dynasties.
Moody, Peter R. "The romance of the three kingdoms and popular Chinese political thought." The Review of Politics 37.02 (1975): 175-199.
The article aims to explain the Chinese people’s political thought by analyzing the important plots and factors in the novel The Romance of Three Kingdom
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