What were the causes of the Anshi Rebellion?

Happening between 755 and 763 CE, the Anshi Rebellion is one of the deadliest and most important uprisings in Chinese history that ruined the Tang Dynasty’s success and began its slow decline.

1. Political Decay and Weakened Central Authority

In the middle of the 8th century, the Tang Dynasty’s central government became corrupt and ineffective, especially when Emperor Xuanzong was near the end of his rule, because he was once a hardworking leader but later focused on pleasure, gave up his duties, and trusted dishonest officials such as Li Linfu and Yang Guozhong, who took all the power, stopped anyone who disagreed with them, and damaged the government’s honesty, which made the central government lose its ability to check local areas and keep order and allowed regional leaders to become independent.

2. The Rise of Military Governors (Jiedushi) and Military Imbalance

To guard its huge borders, the Tang Dynasty created military leaders called jiedushi in its border areas, and these leaders had a lot of power—they commanded local soldiers, managed money, and controlled local affairs, so they were almost like independent rulers; by the 750s, there were far more soldiers on the borders than in the central army, with about 500,000 border soldiers and fewer than 100,000 poorly trained central soldiers, which left the central government open to rebellion, and two key jiedushi, An Lushan and Shi Siming, who ruled three important border regions, built up a lot of military strength and eventually fought against the Tang Dynasty.

3. Ethnic Tensions and Frontier Disputes

Many different ethnic groups, such as the Khitan, Xi, and Sogdians, lived in the Tang Dynasty’s border lands, and An Lushan, who was part Sogdian and part Turkish, used his family and ethnic connections to get a lot of minority soldiers to join his army; the central government’s rules for ethnic groups were inconsistent, sometimes treating them harshly and sometimes ignoring their needs, which made these border ethnic groups angry, and frequent fights with nearby powers like the Tibetan Empire and the Uyghur Khaganate put stress on the Tang’s border defenses and made jiedushi more powerful, as these leaders used the fights to make their armies larger.

4. Economic Crisis and Social Inequality

The Tang Dynasty’s long period of success led to big economic troubles because the land equalization system, which used to make sure land was split fairly, fell apart when rich landlords and nobles took over large areas of land, making many farmers lose their land and become poor, and heavy taxes and forced labor made people’s lives harder and made them unhappy; at the same time, the central government’s money system got worse because of corruption and waste, so it couldn’t support the army or fix social problems, and this economic hardship made it easy for a rebellion to start, as many farmers joined An Lushan’s army hoping for a better life.

Conclusion

To sum up, the Anshi Rebellion was caused by political corruption, jiedushi having too much power, ethnic tensions, and economic inequality, and these problems worked together and got worse over time, eventually starting a rebellion that destroyed the Tang Dynasty; besides killing many people and destroying a lot of property, the rebellion changed China’s political and social situation greatly, ending the Tang’s golden age and starting a long time of division and unrest.