东越 / Dongyue (Western Han)

Overview

东越 / Dongyue is the southeastern polity ruled by 余善 whose resistance to Western Han ends through combined military pressure, internal defection, elite killing, surrender, reward, and population removal.

Current Profile

Hanji 356-2 presents Dongyue as difficult terrain prepared for resistance, but not as a unified actor. 吴阳 moves seven hundred followers to the Han side, while 建成侯敖 and 繇王居股 kill Yu Shan and surrender their people. The polity’s collapse therefore comes from a fracture between ruler and insiders under outside pressure.

The aftermath is more than a change of ruler. The source says 汉武帝 rewards participants and orders the regional population moved to the Yangtze-Huai area, leaving the old territory empty. The episode also shifts between Dongyue and 闽越 language, so this page treats the two as historically connected labels without assuming they are interchangeable in every context.

Key Characteristics

• Southeastern Yue polity ruled by Yu Shan in the episode’s campaign sequence.
• Terrain-favored resistance target of Western Han forces.
• Politically divided community whose insiders defect and kill the ruler.
• Conquered order converted through surrender rewards rather than battle alone.
• Region subjected to post-conquest population removal.

Evidence

• Resistance and terrain: Hanji 356-2 says Yu Shan has occupied difficult ground before the Han advance.
• Internal fracture: Hanji 356-2 reports Wu Yang’s defection and the killing of Yu Shan by Ao and Jugu.
• Coercive aftermath: Hanji 356-2 joins rewards for submission to an order moving the population away.

Qualifications

This profile rests on one short podcast source with substantial transcription corruption. Exact force movements, offices, personal names, rewards, the constitutional relation between Dongyue and Minyue, and the scale and completeness of population removal require primary-text or specialist verification. The source’s description of the population as repeatedly unreliable is imperial justification, not a neutral group characteristic.

What Changed

• Created a bounded polity profile for the campaign’s internal-fracture and post-conquest sequence.

Relationships

• 余善 - ruler whose rebellion and death define the campaign endpoint.
• 闽越 - connected regional and political label that the source also uses.
• 吴阳 - local elite who defects with followers.
• 建成侯敖 - insider who joins the killing and surrender.
• 繇王居股 - royal insider who joins the killing and surrender.
• 汉武帝 - opposing emperor who rewards defectors and orders removal.
• 征服后人口迁出 - policy mechanism applied after the polity’s collapse.