Han foreign relations and the opening of the Silk Road under Emperor Wu, the long struggle with the Xiongnu confederation and the shift from heqin appeasement to offensive war, Zhang Qian's missions to the Western Regions from 138 BC, the establishment of the Hexi Corridor commanderies and the westward trade in silk and Ferghana horses toward Central Asia and the Mediterranean, the tributary system, and the significance of these contacts down to the death of Emperor Wu in 87 BC

A 4-mark "outline" wants several correctly dated points, briefly developed.

The trigger

In 200 BC, the Han founder Gaozu personally led an army against the recently unified Xiongnu and was surrounded for seven days at Baideng, near Pingcheng, escaping only by negotiation (1 mark).

The policy

On the minister Liu Jing's advice, Han adopted heqin ("peace and kinship") from 198 BC: a woman of the imperial clan, presented as a princess, married into the Chanyu's family, with annual gifts of silk, grain and wine (1 mark).

The terms

Heqin treated the Han emperor and the Chanyu as formally equal rulers and tolerated periodic Xiongnu raids, a concession Han made only because it was not yet strong enough to win a war (1 mark).

Continuation

Emperors Wen and Jing maintained heqin through the early second century BC, husbanding resources rather than fighting (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the named trigger and date, the marriage-plus-gifts mechanism, and its continuation across several reigns.

A 5-mark "outline" wants a sequenced account of the mission and why it mattered.

The aim

In 138 BC Emperor Wu sent the courtier Zhang Qian west with about a hundred men to seek a military alliance with the Yuezhi against their common enemy, the Xiongnu (1 mark).

Captivity

Zhang Qian was captured almost at once by the Xiongnu and held for roughly ten years, taking a Xiongnu wife, before escaping and continuing west (1 mark).

The failed alliance

By the time he reached the Yuezhi, they had resettled prosperously in Bactria (Da Xia) and had lost interest in avenging their old defeat, so the alliance failed (1 mark).

The real achievement

He returned to Chang'an in 126 BC, thirteen years after setting out, with only two companions but with the first detailed Han account of Dayuan, Kangju, Da Xia and Anxi (1 mark).

Significance

That geographic knowledge, preserved in Sima Qian's Shiji, opened diplomatic and trade contact with Central Asia (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the correct date and aim, the captivity, and the point that the mission's value was geographic and diplomatic, not military.

A 6-mark "explain" needs the source decoded plus own knowledge showing its significance.

Use the source

Source A records what a Han envoy reported about Central Asia: settled farming states with grapes and wine, the famed blood-sweating "heavenly horses" of Dayuan (Ferghana), and rich trading kingdoms further west (Anxi and Da Xia) that did not yet know Chinese silk (2 marks for reading the content).

Own knowledge - what it represents

This mirrors the geographic reporting Zhang Qian brought back from his mission of 138 to 126 BC, preserved in the Account of Dayuan in Sima Qian's Shiji, the earliest Han description of the Western Regions (2 marks).

Own knowledge - what it reveals

It shows that the "Silk Road" began as intelligence and diplomacy, not trade: the report identified both a prize (Ferghana horses, sought for Han cavalry against the Xiongnu) and a market (western states ignorant of silk), which Emperor Wu then pursued through embassies and, from 104 BC, the Ferghana war under Li Guangli (2 marks).

Marker's note: markers reward accurate decoding of the source, correct identification of Zhang Qian's report behind it, and the point that western contact opened for strategic and diplomatic reasons before it became large-scale trade.

A 6-mark "explain" needs the trigger and the deeper reasons, argued rather than narrated.

The trigger

In 133 BC Han tried to ambush the Chanyu near the border town of Mayi; the plot was discovered and the Chanyu withdrew, but the failed ambush ended heqin in all but name and opened three decades of war (2 marks).

The underlying reason - accumulated strength

By Wu's reign (from 141 BC) Han had built up wealth, grain and horses under the frugal rule of Emperors Wen and Jing, giving Wu, unlike his predecessors, the resources to sustain prolonged cavalry campaigns rather than pay tribute indefinitely (2 marks).

The mechanism and result

Wei Qing recovered the Ordos in 127 BC and Huo Qubing cleared the Hexi Corridor in 121 BC, culminating in the decisive Battle of Mobei in 119 BC, which broke the Chanyu's field army and opened a secure land bridge west (2 marks).

Marker's note: markers reward the named trigger (Mayi, 133 BC), the resource explanation for the change of policy, and the dated sequence of campaigns that followed.

A band-6 essay sustains a judgement on "most significant", marshals dated evidence, and weaves historiography. This is a PLAN plus one model paragraph.

Thesis

The opening of the Western Regions was genuinely transformative, giving Han lasting reach into Central Asia and a durable channel of exchange, but it was inseparable from, and made possible by, the defeat of the Xiongnu; a defensible answer ranks the Xiongnu victory as the enabling development and the Silk Road as its most far-reaching consequence.

Argument 1 - the Xiongnu war was the precondition

Zhang Qian was sent in 138 BC to find an ally against the Xiongnu, not to open trade; the route west stayed insecure until Huo Qubing cleared the Hexi Corridor in 121 BC and Wei Qing and Huo Qubing broke the Chanyu's army at Mobei in 119 BC. Only then could the four Hexi commanderies (Wuwei, Zhangye, Jiuquan, Dunhuang) anchor a safe road. The Silk Road existed because the war was won first.

Argument 2 - the opening of the west had the longest reach

From Zhang Qian's return in 126 BC, Han sent regular embassies to Dayuan, Kangju and beyond; the pursuit of Ferghana's "heavenly horses" led to Li Guangli's campaigns of 104 to 101 BC. Silk moved west far enough that Roman writers later called the Chinese "Seres", while horses, grapes, alfalfa and glassware moved east. Ying-shih Yu shows this exchange was organised through a tributary framework, not a free market, but its cultural and diplomatic reach outlasted Wu himself.

Argument 3 - the tributary expansion mattered too

Wu's reach was not only westward: Nanyue was annexed in 111 BC, Wiman Joseon in Korea in 108 BC, and Dian submitted around 109 BC (its gold seal recovered at Shizhaishan in 1956 confirming Sima Qian's account). A strong answer weighs whether this southern and eastern expansion rivals the Silk Road in significance, and concludes that it was more territorially complete but far less historically far-reaching.

Historiography

Michael Loewe stresses that Wu's achievements were bought at heavy fiscal cost, debated by contemporaries at the Yantie Lun of 81 BC; Valerie Hansen argues the overland trade was modest in volume and served military supply as much as commerce, cautioning against a romantic "Silk Road"; Yu frames the exchange as tributary diplomacy. Used together, these qualify "most significant" without denying real reach.

Model paragraph (argument 1)

The strongest reason to rank the Xiongnu war above the Silk Road is that the road could not exist without it. When Emperor Wu sent Zhang Qian west in 138 BC, his purpose was an anti-Xiongnu alliance, and the envoy spent a decade as a Xiongnu prisoner precisely because the steppe still controlled the corridor. It was Huo Qubing's clearing of the Hexi Corridor in 121 BC and the victory at Mobei in 119 BC that let Han plant the four commanderies through which every later caravan and embassy passed. The Silk Road, in other words, was the dividend of a war, which is why its significance, however great, is best judged as consequence rather than cause.

Marker's note: band 6 answers state a clear ranking, deploy precise dated evidence across the western, southern and eastern fronts, integrate at least two named historians as argument, and treat "most significant" as a claim to be tested rather than assumed.

A band-6 "to what extent" essay states a degree of change in the opening line and defends it. This is a PLAN plus one model paragraph.

Thesis

The shift was decisive in strategy and in outcome - Han moved from paying the Xiongnu to defeating them and projecting power from Korea to Ferghana - but elements of continuity (the tributary framing, the ongoing use of marriage diplomacy, the persistence of the Xiongnu themselves) mean the change is best judged as a decisive reversal of policy rather than a total break with the past.

Argument 1 - the case for decisive change

For seventy years after Baideng (200 BC), four emperors paid the Xiongnu in silk, grain and imperial women under heqin (from 198 BC). The failed Mayi ambush of 133 BC ended that logic; within fourteen years Wei Qing recovered the Ordos (127 BC), Huo Qubing cleared the Hexi Corridor (121 BC), and Mobei (119 BC) broke Xiongnu power. Wu then expanded on every front: Nanyue (111 BC), Korea (108 BC), Dian (c. 109 BC) and the pursuit of Ferghana (104 to 101 BC).

Argument 2 - continuity qualifies the change

The rhetoric stayed tributary and hierarchical throughout; marriage diplomacy did not vanish (it returned on Han's terms in the next generation). The Xiongnu were beaten, not destroyed, and remained a frontier problem after 87 BC. Nicola di Cosmo argues the "civilised versus barbarian" framing that justified the wars was itself continuous with earlier Han attitudes, so the ideology behind expansion was not new.

Argument 3 - the cost tempers the triumph

Michael Loewe shows the campaigns strained Han finances so badly that the state imposed salt and iron monopolies, criticised at the Yantie Lun debate of 81 BC, only six years after Wu's death. The reversal was decisive but not costless, and the debate shows contemporaries already questioning it.

Historiography

Loewe stresses achievement bought at cost; di Cosmo stresses ideological continuity beneath the strategic reversal; Mark Edward Lewis frames Wu's reign as establishing the durable template of an expansionist unified empire. Together they support "decisive reversal, not clean break".

Model paragraph (argument 1)

The clearest sign of decisive change is the abandonment of heqin itself. For nearly seventy years Han bought peace from the Xiongnu with silk and imperial brides, a policy four emperors judged safer than war; the failed ambush at Mayi in 133 BC did not merely fail as a plot, it permanently ended that logic. Within a generation the same court that had paid tribute was planting commanderies at Dunhuang and sending armies to Ferghana. A state does not reverse a foundational policy of seventy years' standing by degrees, which is why the shift from appeasement to expansion is best read as decisive, even where its tributary language stayed the same.

Marker's note: band 6 answers name a clear extent, trace the dated pivot from heqin to Mobei and beyond, weigh at least one genuine continuity, and integrate named historians rather than listing them.