Emperor Gaozu of Han
Emperor Gaozu of Han (; 256 BCE – 1 June 195 BCE), born Liu Bang (劉邦), was the founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigning from 202 – 195 BCE. He was one of the few dynasty founders in Chinese history who was born in a peasant family.
History of the Han dynasty
Government policies were influenced by the proto-Daoist Huang-Lao (黃老) ideology, a mix of political and cosmological precepts given patronage by Wen's wife Empress Dou (d. 135 BCE), who was empress dowager during Jing's reign and grand empress dowager during the early reign of his successor Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BCE). Huang-Lao, named after the mythical Yellow Emperor and the 6th-century-BCE philosopher Laozi, viewed the former as the founder of ordered civilization; this was unlike the Confucians, who gave that role to legendary sage kings Yao and Shun. Han imperial patrons of Huang-Lao sponsored the policy of "nonaction" or wuwei (無為) (a central concept of Laozi's "Daodejing"), which claimed that rulers should interfere as little as possible if administrative and legal systems were to function smoothly. The influence of Huang-Lao doctrines on state affairs became eclipsed with the formal adoption of Confucianism as state ideology during Wu's reign and the later view that Laozi, not the Yellow Emperor, was the originator of Daoist practices.