The Yellow Scarves Uprising (184–185 AD) serves as the logical starting point and historical backdrop for the narrative of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The specific event that shattered the “ordered world” of the late Eastern Han Dynasty and plunged it into “chaos” was the Yellow Turban Rebellion.
Outbreak of the Rebellion
In the first chapter of the novel, during the late Eastern Han period, Emperors Huan and Ling are depicted as incompetent and corrupt, favoring eunuchs (such as the Ten Regular Attendants) and allowing court politics to deteriorate, leading to widespread suffering among the people. Zhang Jiao, Zhang Bao, and Zhang Liang, three brothers from Julu, rallied hundreds of thousands of impoverished peasants in the name of the religion of Way of Great Peace.
A seditious song began to circulate at this time:
The pale sky is on the wane,
Next, a yellow one shall reign;
The calendar’s rotation
Spells fortune for the nation.
This inspired the rebels to wear yellow scarves and launch the uprising.
The rebel forces quickly swept across eight provinces, overwhelming imperial troops. Emperor Ling was forced to issue an edict allowing local officials and powerful elites to recruit their own armies to suppress the rebellion. This policy directly shattered the centralized military structure of the Eastern Han Dynasty, paving the way for subsequent warlord separatism.
Before the Yellow Scarves Uprising, the Eastern Han Dynasty, though corrupted, maintained a facade of unity. It was the outbreak of the rebellion that caused the collapse of central authority, allowing local powers to rise and enabling the emergence of heroes of the chaotic era such as Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Jian.
Criticism of the Novel’s Portrayal
It is important to critique the novel’s completely negative portrayal of the Yellow Scarves Uprising (the largest peasant rebellion of the late Han Dynasty). This was not merely the author’s personal view but reflected the prevailing “orthodox historical perspective” of the feudal scholar-official class. In traditional narratives, peasant uprisings were consistently labeled as “illegal rebellions against authority” rather than “righteous resistance,” while warlords who suppressed these uprisings were glorified as “heroes.”
Even when the novel mentions the background of the uprising—such as severe land annexation, peasants losing their livelihoods, and the dual blows of natural disasters and epidemics —it does not present these as justifications for the rebellion’s justice. Instead, it emphasizes Zhang Jiao’s use of sorcery to deceive the masses, attributing the uprising to “cult incitement” rather than acknowledging it as an inevitable and necessary defiance by peasants forced into action by the cruel exploitation, oppression of feudal rulers and survival crisis.
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