Fall of the Han Dynasty
The Han dynasty's final century was consumed by factional struggle between court eunuchs, the families of empresses, and the Confucian-trained scholar-official class, compounded by the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184 CE — a millenarian peasant uprising that shattered central authority and left regional warlords in effective control of their own armies and territories. Emperor Xian, enthroned as a child in 189 CE, became a figurehead successively controlled by the warlord Dong Zhuo and then by the ambitious general Cao Cao, who used the emperor's nominal authority to legitimise his own campaigns against rival warlords across the Yellow River basin. When Cao Cao died in 220 CE, his son Cao Pi dispensed with the pretence entirely, forcing Emperor Xian to abdicate in his favour and founding the state of Wei. Cao Pi's usurpation did not restore unity — it merely formalised the fragmentation already underway. Liu Bei, claiming Han legitimacy through distant imperial descent, founded the rival state of Shu in the Sichuan basin, while the warlord Sun Quan consolidated the southeast as the state of Wu. The resulting Three Kingdoms period (220-280 CE) became one of the most romanticised eras in Chinese history and culture, though for its contemporaries it meant sixty years of near-continuous warfare and catastrophic population decline before the short-lived Jin dynasty briefly reunified China in 280 CE.
- Year: 220 CE
- Category: Military
