Zhang Qian's Mission and the Opening of the Silk Road
Emperor Wu (Han Wudi), who came to the Han throne in 141 BCE, pursued a far more assertive foreign policy than his predecessors, seeking to break the decades-long pattern of tribute payments and marriage alliances that had bought peace with the Xiongnu steppe confederation on the northern frontier. In 138 BCE, Wudi sent the palace official Zhang Qian west with a small escort to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi people, who the Han believed harboured similar hostility toward the Xiongnu after being driven from their homeland. Zhang Qian was captured almost immediately by the Xiongnu and held for roughly ten years, during which he married and had a family, before escaping and continuing his mission west. He reached Bactria and the Fergana Valley but found the Yuezhi no longer interested in fighting the Xiongnu, having resettled comfortably in Central Asia. The alliance mission failed diplomatically, but Zhang Qian's reports to the Han court on the kingdoms, goods, and 'heavenly horses' of Central Asia and beyond proved transformative. Wudi subsequently pushed Han military and administrative control west into the Gansu Corridor and the Tarim Basin oases, securing the route that merchants, missionaries, and diplomats would use for the next fifteen centuries — the network later named the Silk Road. Wudi also formally adopted Confucianism as state orthodoxy during this reign, establishing an imperial academy to train officials in the Confucian classics, cementing the ideology that would outlast every subsequent dynasty.
- Year: 138 BCE
- Category: Diplomacy
