A study on China's only female emperor Wu Ze Tian

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2009

Author

Tezel, Aybike Şeyma

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This thesis aims at clarifying the very basic characteristics of Wu Ze Tian’s reign and her utilization of religious and symbolic propaganda for legitimizing her authority. Wu Ze Tian is the only female emperor of China’s long dynastic history who founded her own dynasty, Zhou dynasty after overthrowing the Tang dynasty in 690. The political ideal presented by Confucianism, which is the traditional state doctrine of the imperial China, refuses female participation to political arena and identifies the emperor as the Son of Heaven. In order to overcome the Confucian obstacle, Wu Ze Tian referred to the symbols and rituals of the antiquity, highly appraised by the Confucians, which enabled her participation to the political sphere. Moreover, for legitimizing herself as a female ruler, she utilized the Buddhist scholarship and concepts as tools of political propaganda. It was also a matter of fact that due to the northwestern nomadic influence on the society, female rulership was not conceived to be impossible in the Tang dynasty, as it was in the previous dynasties. Benefitting from this sociopolitical atmosphere, Wu Ze Tian occupied the throne first as the empress and later as the empress dowager for almost 35 years and at last ruled over the whole Chinese soil as the female emperor of the Zhou dynasty for 15 years. Wu Ze Tian proved herself as a capable ruler under whose dominion the whole country reached its broadest borders and the economy flourished considerably. Not only owing to the power of her political propaganda but also mostly because of her talent in rulership and her social and political reforms, Wu Ze Tian is one the most important Chinese rulers who left a remarkable influence on the governmental tradition of China.

Subject Keywords

Leadership.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12610953/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/19058

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

A. Ş. Tezel, “A study on China’s only female emperor Wu Ze Tian,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2009.