- Liu Yan (Southern Han)
Liu Yan (; 889-942) was King of
Nanhai ,China (911-917) and later declared himself the emperor of theSouthern Han Kingdom during theFive Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period inChina .Rise to power
The
Tang Dynasty , which had controlled all ofChina , for about three centuries, fell in 907. Liu Yan’s brother, Liu Yin, was named regional governor by the Tang court in 905, two years before its fall. He assumed the title Prince ofNanping in 909. After his father’s death in 911, he succeeded him as king of Nanhai. Six years later, he declared himself emperor of Great Yuè (越) (Viet ). He renamed the kingdom Southern Han two years later in 919.Reign
Liu Yan reigned over the
Southern Han kingdom until his death in 943. Due to the geographic location of the kingdom, not only did Liu have to deal with Chinese kingdoms such asSouthern Tang , Min, and Chu, but non-Chinese peoples, most notably the Vietnamese, who only recently threw off the Chinese yoke. In 939, Liu Yan decided that it was time to bring the Vietnamese back into the Chinese orbit. However, despite the fact that the Vietnamese had yet to truly organize into a strong polity, theSouthern Han forces were unsuccessful in subduing the Vietnamese.While he reigned ably on the domestic front during his two and a half decades in power, his rule was unremarkable. He was not able to turn Canton into one of the centers of Southern learning and culture that
Hangzhou ,Nanjing , andChengdu had emerged into.ee also
*
Ngo Quyen
*Battle of Bach Dang River (938) References
*cite book|title=Imperial China (900-1800)|author=Mote, F.W.|year=1999|publisher=Harvard University Press|pages=11, 15|id=ISBN 0-674-01212-7
*cite book|title=The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Volume One, Part One): From early times to c. 1500|year=1999|pages=139|editor=Tarling, Nicholas|publisher=Cambridge University Press|id=ISBN 0-521-66369-5
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