Later Zhou Dynasty
State | Defunct
951 CE to 960 CE
The Later Zhou Dynasty is the last in a succession of five dynasties that controls most of northern China during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, which lasts from 907 to 960 and bridges the gap between the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty.
Worlds
The Far East
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Guo Wei, a Han Chinese, serves as the Assistant Military Commissioner at the court of the Later Han Dynasty, a regime ruled by Shatuo Turks.
A teenager has come to the throne of the Later Han in 948 after the death of the founding emperor, Gaozu.
Guo Wei leads a successful coup against the teenage emperor and declared himself emperor of the new Later Zhou Dynasty on New Year’s Day in 951.
Posthumously known as Emperor Taizu of Later Zhou, Guo Wei is the first Han Chinese ruler of northern China since 923.
He is regarded as an able leader who attempted reforms designed to alleviate burdens faced by the peasantry.
His short rule will be considered vigorous and well-organized.
The Later Zhou Dynasty strikes at Liao Dynasty positions in the Sixteen Prefectures, but is defeated.
Zhao Kuangyin’s usurpation of the Later Zhou Dynasty throne in 960 brings to and end the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period in China.
The amount of registered soldiers in the Chinese army at this time is some 378,000.
This marks the end of the post-Tang military regimes known as the Five Dynasties with the seizure of the imperial throne by general Zhao Guangyin, who founds the Song dynasty.
Zhao places the military under civil administration to prevent a recurrence of the militarism that had toppled the Tang.
Under Zhao and subsequent Song rulers, the aristocrats will lose their domination of government to the emergent scholar-gentry class, who derive their power from landholding and extensive educational training.