Shortly after his disastrous defeat at Pingcheng in 200 BC, Han Gaozu, first emperor of the Han dynasty, introduced the heqin, or peace marriage, system:
The empire was at that time still quite new and the Han did not have the resources to wage large-scale war against the Xiongnu. Gaozu was left with the difficult task of finding a permanent resolution to threat the Xiongnu posed to his realm. The heqin system was the best his court could come up with.
The heqin system had four components:
- The Han Emperor and Xiongnu Chanyu would address each other as equals and brothers. The Xiongnu would acknowledge Han suzerainty of all people of the plow; the Han, for their part, would acknowledge Xiongnu overlordship of the people of the bow.
- The Han Emperor would provide an imperial princess to be a wife of every Chanyu (Note: In reality the princess was always a concubine taken from the imperial palace. A multitude of legends and love stories about these concubines have?made this a strong and enduring memory in Chinese popular culture for the last two millennia).
- The Chanyu — or one of his subordinates — would take regular trips to Chang’an (the Han capital) to pay his respect to the emperor. During these visits the emperor would bestow lavish gifts upon the Xiongnu retinue as a sign of their friendship.
- Trade between the Xiongnu and the Han commoners would be allowed at select border stations across the frontier.
The benefits of this system for the Xiongnu were obvious. One of the prime motivations behind Xiongnu raids were the economic benefits each raid offered — Xiongnu incursions were almost always marked by mass kidnappings and the theft of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Chinese livestock. Opening trade on the frontier allowed regular Xiongnu to increase their household wealth through trade instead of theft.
On the other hand, the luxury gifts from the capital were distributed among the Xiongnu’s closest allies, retainers, and vassals as a way to maintain prestige and improve loyalty ties among the Xiongnu elite.
Without a system of trade in place the Chanyu faced immense pressure from his impoverished subjects; without a stream of luxury items that could be distributed to the Chanyu’s favorites the anarchic dynamics of steppe politics threatened to tear the Xiongnu empire apart. Thus “raids in China were a profit making enterprise that served to weld the Xiongnu into a single unit”; open plunder was the simplest way to reduce tensions when trade was not on the table. It usually was not on the table.
Sima Qian narrates a conversation that reveals the policy’s hidden purpose:
“If you could see your way clear to send your eldest daughter by the empress to be the consort of Maodun, accompanied by a generous dowry and presents, then Maodun, knowing that a daughter of the emperor and empress of the Han must be generously provided for would, with barbarian cunning, receive her well and make her his legitimate consort and, if she had a son, he would make him heir apparent. Why would he do this? Because of his greed for Han valuables and gifts. Your majesty might at various times during the year inquire of his health and send presents of whatever Han has a surplus of and the Xiongnu lack. At the same time you could dispatch rhetoricians to expound to the barbarians in a tactful way the principles of etiquette and moral behavior. As long as Maodun is alive he will always be your son-in-law and when he dies your grandson by your daughter will succeed him as Shanyu. And who has ever heard of a grandson trying to treat his grandfather as an equal? Thus your soldiers need fight no battles, and yet the Xiongnu will gradually become your subjects.”
Luttwak’s description of the heqin policy’s aim is basically correct, T. Greer notes, but what Luttwak neglects to mention is that the policy was a complete and utter failure.