Dian

A bronze cowry shell vessel (cowry shells were once used as currency in China) with oxen and tigers, made by the Dian people during the Chinese Western Han period (202 BC–9 AD)

Bronze was introduced to China during the Shang Dynasty, about I BOt1 B.C. The strongest alloy is eight parts copper to one pan tin. Yunnan, known also as the Kingdom of Non-ferrous Metals, has abundant supplies both.Dongchuan has long been famous for its copper, while Gejiu is called the Tin Capital of China. The Bronze Age was in full flourish in Yunnan by I260 B.C. Proof of that came in 1955 when archaeologists found 48 tombs at Shizhaishan, near Dian Lake, 40 km south of Kunming. Among the thousands of bronze objects excavated the most spectacular were the lids to cowry-shell containers. The cowries were used as currency and the lids featured figures and props engaged in sundry activities of their daily life: marketing, farming, selling slaves, executing criminals, performing religious rites, fighting wars, spinning and weaving, getting drunk, playing music and lining up to offer obeisance to the King of Dian.

Knowledge of this state had hitherto been confined to mention in the 2nd century B.C. Han Dynasty historian Sima Qian's work, He reported an alliance the Han Emperor Wu Di made with the King of a later Dian to subdue neighbouring tribes, The emperor presented the king with a seal commemorating Dian's new official status as a tribute state. In 1956 archaeologists found the seal. But by then they knew more about the older, vigourous, sophisticated, slave-holding, religious minded Kingdom of Dian than all the classic historians put together had ever learned.

But the Kingdom of Dian had no historians of its own, nor even a system of writing. Dian's rise and fall, as well as much about its society, is still a mystery. Yunnan also enters the works of classical Chinese chroniclers in connection with another Kingdom of Dian, during the Warring States Period of Chinese history (475-221 B.C.). The reigning Zhou Dynasty held sway over only a small fief around its capital Loyang. The rest of the old Zhou state was split up into several competing kingdoms which vied for supremacy.

With the break-up of the state of  Jin, the largest of them, in 403 B.C. the most powerful contenders were Qin in the northwest, which ultimately unified China in 221 B.C., and Chu in the south, mostly between the Huai and the Yangzi Rivers. The state of Chu was largely non-Han in population, probably of Dai or Zhuang stock, with Yao and Miao comprising sizable percentages. When Qin began gobbling up the smaller northern kingdoms Chu looked south to expand its holdings.

At the accession of King Wei in 339 B.C. Chu dispatched an army under the command of the king's relative General Zhuang Qiao to conquer southern lands. Zhuang swung into Yunnan from the northeast and eventually occupied the plain around Kunming. Annexing the territory to Chu he called it Dian and stayed on as its governor. Meanwhile Qin continued to strengthen its position. Taking advantage of the strife between its Sichuan neighbours Ba and Shu, the former centred in Chongqing, the latter in Chengdu, in 316 B.C. Qin invaded and conquered both states.

This augmented Qin's strength and prestige, put immediate pressure on Chu and cut off Dian from its home country. Zhuang Chao tried to reach Chu via Guizhou but ran into too much resistance from tribals there. He then proclaimed Dian an independent kingdom, which he and his descendants ruled the next two centuries. The ruling caste from Chu intermarried with the local people and adopted the local culture, which itself was non-Han and probably somewhat related to that back in Chu.

When Qin Shi Huang unified China he did not seek to extend his domain southward. Nor did the succeeding Han emperors for their first century of rule. But Wu Di (140-86 B.C.) was expansionist by nature. Campaigns to subdue Nanyue (present-day Guangdong Province) and Tonkin (northern Vietnam) so impressed the King of Dian he volunteered to become Wu Di's vassal This suited the emperor fine.He let the King of Dian retain de facto rule over the newly-created Commandery of Yichou and was thereby free to pursue his real interest, which was to secure a trade route to Burma and India.

This ambition remained unfulfilled in Wu Di’s lifetime, but emperors in the Later Han Dynasty (125-220A.D.) took up the task. In 69 A.D. the empire established the Yongchang Commandery on the broad plain between the Mekong and Salween Kivers (which the Chinese call Lancangjiang and Nujiang) at modern Baoshan, and later the Commandery of Tengyueh, modern Tengchong, near the border west of the Salween, These became the furthest Chinese outposts on what became known as the Southern Silk Route. When the Han court was strong it was able to maintain these posts. When it was weak the route, and its posts, were taken over by local tribal chieftains, The Han did not make any attempt to send groups of colonists into the province, nor even to extend the empire's authority beyond the trade routes. More mountains and malaria-ridden plains lay beyond them, effective barriers to further Han penetration of the province.

By the beginning of the 3rd century the Han empire began to disintegrate. its final collapse in 220 was followed by the Three Kingdoms era-Wei in the north. Wu in the south and Shu in the west. Of these Shu was the weakest, but gifted with the long, three-sided war's greatest statesman and military strategist-Zhuge Liang. Blocked by Shu's rivals from expanding east or north, Zhuge Liang First campaigned south against rebellious native vassals in Yunnan. He reduced Yichou to direct rule from Shu and marched east to Qujing and Zhaotong and west to Chuxiong, relieving pressure on Baoshan in the southwest, the only area that had remained loyal to Shu. In seven campaigns he subdued the indigenous tribes and win their allegiance by leaving their customs intact and their chieftains in power to rule as Shu's governors. This policy foreshadowed that to be pursued by the Yuan,Ming and Qing dynasties when they took over control of Yunnan and extended their authority into remote areas.