account of past events in the Chinese civilisation From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The History of China covers thousands of years. The earliest records are from about 1250 BC, but a few things are known about earlier times. Chinese history covers many periods and dynasties. See Ancient China for the earliest times.
The Qin Dynasty was very important in the history of China. They followed the philosophy of Legalism. Their capital was at Xianyang. Under the emperor of this dynasty, Qin Shi Huang, China became a powerful country. Many new things were done for the first time. A tight legal system was followed. Written language was developed. The common currency was used. The building of the Great Wall of China was started.
The Han dynasty was founded by Liu Bang after the Qin dynasty ended. During the Han dynasty, the territory of China expanded, and many advancements in science and technology took place. It was considered a golden age in Chinese history.
The Three Kingdoms period (traditional Chinese: 三國; simplified Chinese: 三国; pinyin: Sānguó) is a period of history where China was divided into the states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Eastern Han dynasty lost all power. Eventually, the Han dynasty emperor abdicated.
The Jin dynasty (1115–1234) is also known as the Jurchen dynasty and as the Great Jin. It was one of the last dynasties before the Mongol invasion (and eventual conquest) of China.
The dynasty was founded by the Wanyan (完顏 Wányán) clan of the Jurchens. These were the ancestors of the Manchu, who established the Qing dynasty some 500 years later. The Jin Dynasty was founded in northern Manchuria, The founder was Wanyan Aguda (完顏阿骨打).
The name of this dynasty is sometimes written as Jinn to differentiate it from an earlier Jin dynasty (265-420) of China whose name is spelled identically in the Roman alphabet. The History of Jin recorded that Tangkuo Dingge (唐括定哥), Consort Gui (貴妃) was a Jurchen woman. She was first married to the Jurchen Jin royal Wanyan Wudai (完顏烏帶. She had an affair with her Han Chinese slave, Yan Qi'er (閻乞兒), and with Wanyan Liang (Prince Hailing). When Wanyan Liang became emperor of the Jin dynasty he forced Dingge to have her husband Wanyan Wudai killed by her other slaves, Ge Wen (葛溫) and Ge Lu (葛魯) and he promised that she would be named empress. Wanyan Liang broke his promise after he got bored of her when she entered the harem. Dingge then smuggled Yan Qi'er into the palace through a trunk after first smuggling a trunk full of her clothes as a dummy and then reprimanded him for looking at her clothes so he wouldn't look when Yan Qi'er was smuggled in next. Dingge and Yan Qi'er had sex until a Jurchen maid, Guige (貴哥) told them to the emperor and Dingge was strangled and Yan Qi'er was beheaded.
The Sui Dynasty (隋朝 Suí cháo; 581-618) was founded by Emperor Wen, or Yang Jian. Its capital was Chang'an (present-day Xi'an). The dynasty is important because it reunited Southern and Northern China and the Grand Canal was built then.
The Tang Dynasty was founded by the Li (李) family, who came to power during the fall of the Sui Empire. The dynasty was interrupted for a short time by the Second Zhou Dynasty (16 October 690–3 March 705) when Empress Wu Zetian managed to claim the throne, becoming the first and only Chinese Empress.
The capital of the Tang, Chang'an (today Xi'an), was the biggest city in the world at the time. Many historians see the Tang dynasty as a high point in Chinese civilization and as a golden age of cosmopolitan culture.
The concept of inalienable private property has grown in China since the Tang dynasty.[1] Chinese land deeds are preserved from medieval times[2] and there were even land deeds for the afterlife in tombs in the Six dynasties.[3]
The Song dynasty maintained the image and memory of the "universal empire" of the Han dynasty and Tang dynasty periods despite contracting in size.[4]
One of the descendants of the Yan clan during the Song dynasty was Yan Zhengqing. When Eastern Jin was set up by Han Chinese nobles fleeing south, Yan Han was among the nobles and he was the ancestor of the Yan clan, who were related by blood to the Langye nobles who they married including the Wang clan of Langye, the Yin Clan of Chen commandery and Shen clan of Wuxing. Yan Han was the 13th generation ancestor of Yan Zhenqing.[5]
The Yuan Dynasty was first ruled by Genghis Khan, a Mongolian leader who took control of the Song Dynasty. He was considered a barbarian and not civilized. His grandson, Kublai Khan, was one of the most famous and liked rulers of the Yuan dynasty. He opened up China to many other cultures and improved life for the Chinese very much.
In 1368, a rebellion led by Zhu Yuanzhang broke out in southern China and eventually overthrew the Yuan Dynasty. Then, Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming Dynasty at Nanjing, its capital until Emperor Yongle changed the capital to Beijing.
In the 15th century, a man named Zheng He took the majority of the Ming navy to explore the Indian Ocean and brought wealth and power to the Ming Dynasty. The empire experienced a prosperous period until 1449 when the Battle of Tumu Fortress broke out. In the battle, the Mongol descendants of Yuan captured the emperor and surrounded the capital. After the war with the Mongols, the Ming started to decline. During this time, the empire had two wars with the Japanese (the first against the Japanese pirates took place in southeastern China; the second against the armies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi that invaded Korea), and one war with the Portuguese of Macao. These wars eventually weakened the declining empire. In 1616, rebellions broke out at Manchuria and Shanxi. Twenty-eight years later, the Manchus crossed the Great Wall, invaded the capital, and destroyed the Shanxi rebels.
Horses, cattle, farms, villages, servants, slaves, homes, and wives were given by Nurhaci to Jurchens who defected like Guwalca, Hurha, and Warka as well as Han Chinese defectors and Mongol defectors to Later Jin.[6]
Jurchen chiefs were given Korean women as wives by Joseon to control them.[7]
Scholars commissioned by Qianlong when editing historical texts and making commentaries on them often made up fanciful and completely fictional etymologies. One of the works they did was analyzing Jurchen clans mentioned in the History of Jin and trying to match their names to the Manchu clans that still exist.[8][9]
Some Han bannermen promoted to Manchu banners added giya to the end of their surname.[10][11][12] The ethnic identity of the Tong family of Liaodong during the late Ming and early Qing has been debated by historians.[13][14][15][16][17]
The Oirat Torghut Kalmyk Mongol leader Khatun Khan was jailed by Yaqub Beg as he was attacking the Oirats in Kurla and attacking Hui forces for Tuo Ming, Daud Khalifa in Ürümqi with the help of Han militia under Xu Xuegong.[18][19][20][21]
Mao Zedong was the leader of the People's Republic of China from 1949 until he died in 1976.
In the 21st century, China became the richest country in the world in terms of GDP.
The countries below are not included in the sixteen kingdoms:
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