Three Kingdoms Period (220-280): Wei, Shu and Wu Divide China

The Three Kingdoms period was the era from 220 to 280 when China was divided between three rival states: Wei in the north, Shu in the south-west and Wu in the south-east. It grew out of the collapse of the Han dynasty, which had ruled for four centuries, and ended when the Jin dynasty reunited the country in 280. Through the official history Records of the Three Kingdoms and the later novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it became one of the most famous periods in East Asian history.

The fall of the Han

The Eastern Han dynasty was weakened in the 2nd century AD by struggles between palace eunuchs and court families, by heavy taxes and by natural disasters. The Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184 was put down, but the commanders who crushed it kept their armies.

In 189 the general Dong Zhuo seized the capital Luoyang, deposed the emperor and installed the boy Emperor Xian. A coalition rose against him, and when it broke apart China fell into war between regional warlords. Out of this chaos three leaders emerged.

Cao Cao took Emperor Xian under his protection in 196 and ruled in his name. He defeated his northern rival Yuan Shao at the Battle of Guandu in 200 and controlled all of north China by 207. Sun Quan, heir of the warlords Sun Jian and Sun Ce, held the lower Yangtze. Liu Bei, a distant member of the imperial clan, had no secure base until his alliance with Sun Quan defeated Cao Cao at the Battle of Red Cliffs in the winter of 208-209. Liu Bei then took Jing province and, between 211 and 214, the rich province of Yi, centred on Chengdu.

The founding of the three states

Cao Cao died in early 220 at Luoyang. Later that year his son Cao Pi forced Emperor Xian to abdicate, ending the Han dynasty after more than 400 years, and proclaimed himself emperor of Wei, with his capital at Luoyang.

Liu Bei refused to recognise Wei. In 221 he declared himself emperor at Chengdu, presenting his state as the continuation of the Han; historians call it Shu Han or simply Shu. Sun Quan at first accepted the title King of Wu from Wei in 221, to secure his northern flank, but soon broke with Wei. In 229 he declared himself emperor, and he later moved his capital to Jianye, modern Nanjing.

The three states were very unequal. Wei held the Yellow River plain, the heartland of Chinese civilisation, and most of the population. Wu controlled the Yangtze and the still lightly settled south. Shu, the smallest, was protected by mountains around the Sichuan basin.

Each state also claimed legitimacy in its own way. Wei argued that the Han had passed the throne to it lawfully through Emperor Xian’s abdication, which it staged with formal ceremonies. Shu insisted that it was the Han, continued by a member of the imperial Liu clan. Wu, with the weakest claim, relied on its control of territory and on omens reported in its lands. Later Chinese historians argued for centuries over whether Wei or Shu should be treated as the legitimate dynasty of the period.

Wars of the three states

The alliance between Liu Bei and Sun Quan had already broken in 219, when Sun Quan’s general Lü Meng seized Jing province and Liu Bei’s general Guan Yu was captured and executed. Liu Bei invaded Wu to recover it but was crushed by Lu Xun at the Battle of Yiling in 222, and died at Baidicheng in 223.

His chancellor Zhuge Liang became regent for Liu Bei’s son Liu Shan. He restored the alliance with Wu, pacified the south of Shu in 225, and from 228 to 234 led the Northern Expeditions against Wei. They won some ground but no lasting breakthrough, and Zhuge Liang died in camp at Wuzhang Plains in 234. His successor Jiang Wei continued campaigns against Wei for decades, which drained Shu’s limited resources.

Wei and Wu fought repeatedly along the Huai River and the middle Yangtze, especially around the fortress of Hefei, without either side gaining a decisive advantage. Hefei had already become famous in 215, when the Wei general Zhang Liao, with a garrison of about 7,000 men, beat off a much larger army led by Sun Quan himself. Wu, for its part, used its control of the river and its fleets to block every Wei attempt to cross the Yangtze, notably during Cao Pi’s campaigns of 222-225. In the far north-east, Wei destroyed the Gongsun family’s state in Liaodong in 238 and opened contacts with the Korean peninsula and Japan, including the embassy of Queen Himiko of Yamatai in 239.

Rise of the Sima and the end of the era

Inside Wei, power slowly passed to the family of the general Sima Yi, who had commanded against Zhuge Liang. In 249 Sima Yi staged a coup while the regent Cao Shuang was away from the capital visiting the imperial tombs at Gaoping, and had him executed. His sons Sima Shi and Sima Zhao then ruled Wei in all but name, crushing several revolts.

In 263 Sima Zhao sent the generals Zhong Hui and Deng Ai against Shu. Deng Ai led a force through mountain country to Chengdu, and Liu Shan surrendered. Sima Zhao died in 265, and soon afterwards his son Sima Yan forced the last Wei emperor, Cao Huan, to abdicate. As Emperor Wu of Jin he founded the Jin dynasty.

Wu, weakened by succession disputes and the harsh rule of its last emperor Sun Hao, held out longer. In 279-280 Jin armies attacked along the Yangtze, including a fleet built in Sichuan by Wang Jun. Sun Hao surrendered in 280, and the Jin reunification of China brought the Three Kingdoms period to an end.

Society, government and culture

Constant war shaped the three states. Cao Cao’s military agricultural colonies (tuntian), where soldiers and settlers farmed state land, fed Wei’s armies and were copied elsewhere. In 220 Wei created the “nine-rank system”, in which local officials graded candidates for office; it was meant to find talent but soon favoured great families, shaping Chinese society for centuries.

Population and registered households fell dramatically. The Han census of 157 recorded about 56 million people, while the Jin records of 280 list roughly 16 million. Historians agree there was great loss of life from war, famine and epidemics, but much of the decline reflects people leaving the tax registers to work for powerful landowners.

The period was also creative. Zhuge Liang gave Shu a reputation for strict but fair administration, and Wei produced engineers such as Ma Jun, who is credited with improving the silk loom and building a south-pointing chariot. The Cao family were notable poets, and Cao Cao’s son Cao Zhi is counted among China’s great writers. The mathematician Liu Hui wrote his commentary on the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art in Wei in 263. Wu developed the south: its fleets traded and sent envoys to South-East Asia, and it encouraged settlement along the Yangtze.

Key people

• Cao Cao (155-220): warlord and chancellor, founder of the power of Wei; honoured after death as Emperor Wu of Wei.
• Cao Pi (187-226): first emperor of Wei from 220.
• Liu Bei (161-223): founder and first emperor of Shu Han.
• Sun Quan (182-252): founder and first emperor of Wu, who ruled for over 50 years.
• Zhuge Liang (181-234): chancellor and regent of Shu, later a symbol of wisdom and loyalty.
• Sima Yi (179-251): Wei general and statesman whose family founded the Jin dynasty.

History and the novel

The main source for the period is the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi) by Chen Shou, a former Shu official who served the Jin and completed his work in the late 3rd century. In 429 Pei Songzhi added a commentary that roughly doubled its length with quotations from other works.

More than a thousand years later, storytellers and dramatists turned the period into popular legend. The novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, usually attributed to Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century and first printed in 1522, follows the history in outline but favours Liu Bei and Shu, portrays Cao Cao as a cunning villain and turns Zhuge Liang into a near-magical strategist. Episodes such as the oath of brotherhood in the peach garden and Zhuge Liang borrowing arrows are fiction. Guan Yu was later worshipped as a god, and the novel inspired operas, films, television series and video games across East Asia.

Timeline

• 184: Yellow Turban Rebellion.
• 189: Dong Zhuo seizes Luoyang.
• 200: Cao Cao defeats Yuan Shao at Guandu.
• 208-209, winter: Battle of Red Cliffs.
• 220: Cao Cao dies; Cao Pi ends the Han and founds Wei.
• 221: Liu Bei proclaims himself emperor of Shu Han.
• 229: Sun Quan proclaims himself emperor of Wu.
• 263: Wei conquers Shu.
• 266: Sima Yan founds the Jin dynasty.
• 280: Jin conquers Wu and reunites China.

Why it matters

The Three Kingdoms period marked the end of the first great Chinese empire and the start of more than three centuries of division, broken only briefly by Jin. Its stories of loyalty, ambition and strategy, retold in the novel and its countless adaptations, remain among the most widely known in East Asia today.