The Zhou dynasty was a royal dynasty of China that existed for 789 years from c. 1046 BC until 256 BC, the longest of all dynasties in Chinese history. During the Western Zhou period, the royal house, surnamed Ji, had military control over ancient China. Even as Zhou suzerainty became increasingly ceremonial over the following Eastern Zhou period (771–256 BC), the political system created by the Zhou royal house survived in some form for several additional centuries. A date of 1046 BC for the Zhou's establishment is supported by the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project and David Pankenier, but David Nivison and Edward L. Shaughnessy date the establishment to 1045 BC.
The Xiongnu were a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 209 BC, founded the Xiongnu Empire.
Qin Shi Huang was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of China. Rather than maintain the title of "king" borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he assumed the invented title of "emperor", which would see continuous use by monarchs in China for the next two millennia.
The recorded military history of China extends from about 2200 BC to the present day. Chinese pioneered the use of crossbows, advanced metallurgical standardization for arms and armor, early gunpowder weapons, and other advanced weapons, but also adopted nomadic cavalry and Western military technology. China's armies also benefited from an advanced logistics system as well as a rich strategic tradition, beginning with Sun Tzu's The Art of War, that deeply influenced military thought.
The First Era of Northern Domination refers to the period of Vietnamese history during which present-day northern Vietnam was under the rule of the Han dynasty and the Xin dynasty as Jiaozhi province and Jiaozhou province. It is considered the first of four periods of Chinese rule over Vietnam, and the first of the three in which were almost continuous and was referred to as Bắc thuộc.
Meng Tian was a Chinese inventor and military general of the Qin dynasty who distinguished himself in campaigns against the Xiongnu and in the construction of the Great Wall of China. He was the elder brother of Meng Yi. He descended from a great line of military generals and architects. His grandfather, Meng Ao, was a general from the era of King Zhao; and his father, Meng Wu, was also a general who served as a deputy to Wang Jian.
The Han–Xiongnu Wars, also known as the Sino–Xiongnu War, was a series of military conflicts fought over two centuries between the Chinese Han Empire and the nomadic Xiongnu confederation, although extended conflicts can be traced back as early as 200 BC and ahead as late as 188 AD.
Modu was the son of Touman and the founder of the empire of the Xiongnu. He came to power by ordering his men to kill his father in 209 BCE.
The Ordos culture was a material culture occupying a region centered on the Ordos Loop during the Bronze and early Iron Age from c. 800 BCE to 150 BCE. The Ordos culture is known for significant finds of Scythian art and may represent the easternmost extension of Indo-European Eurasian nomads, such as the Saka, or may be linkable to Palaeo-Siberians or Yeniseians. Under the Qin and Han dynasties, the area came under the control of contemporaneous Chinese states.
The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China. It followed the Qin dynasty, which had unified the Warring States of China by conquest. It was founded by Liu Bang. The dynasty is divided into two periods: the Western Han and the Eastern Han, interrupted briefly by the Xin dynasty of Wang Mang. These appellations are derived from the locations of the capital cities Chang'an and Luoyang, respectively. The third and final capital of the dynasty was Xuchang, where the court moved in 196 CE during a period of political turmoil and civil war.
The Upheaval of the Five Barbarians also translated as the Uprising, Rebellion or the Revolt of the Five Barbarians is a Chinese expression used to refer to a chaotic period of warfare during the Jin dynasty (266–420) roughly between 304 and 316 which heavily involved non-Han peoples living in China, commonly called the Five Barbarians. Coinciding with the War of the Eight Princes that greatly weakened the empire, these conflicts eventually drove the Jin imperial court out of northern and southwestern China.
Qin's wars of unification were a series of military campaigns launched in the late 3rd century BC by the state of Qin against the other six powers remaining in China — Han, Zhao, Yan, Wei, Chu and Qi. Between 247 and 221 BC, Qin had developed into one of the most powerful of China's Seven Warring States that coalesced in the wake of the Zhou dynasty's decline, by now retaining a weak and merely ceremonial position among the warring states. In 230 BC, King Ying Zheng of Qin began the sequence of campaigns that would bring the Warring States period to a close, setting out to conquer each remaining sovereign one by one. This was completed in 221 BC with the fall of Qi, leaving the former Zhou sphere unified under a more centralized Qin control. Ying Zheng declared himself the First Emperor, or Qin Shi Huang—becoming the first sovereign over a unified China under the imperial Qin dynasty.
The Ordos Plateau, also known as the Ordos Basin or simply the Ordos, is a highland sedimentary basin in parts of most Northern China with an elevation of 1,000–1,600 m (3,300–5,200 ft), and consisting mostly of land enclosed by the Ordos Loop, a large northerly rectangular bend of the Yellow River. It is China's second largest sedimentary basin with a total area of 370,000 km2 (140,000 sq mi), and includes territories from five provinces, namely Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and a thin fringe of Shanxi, but is demographically dominated by the former three, hence is also called the Shaan-Gan-Ning Basin. The basin is bounded in the east by the Lüliang Mountains, north by the Yin Mountains, west by the Helan Mountains, and south by the Huanglong Mountains, Meridian Ridge and Liupan Mountains.
Shuofang was an ancient Chinese commandery, situated in the Hetao region in modern-day Inner Mongolia near Baotou. First founded by Emperor Wu of Han in the wake of the successful reconquest of the area from Xiongnu tribes, it was dissolved during the late Eastern Han dynasty and then reconstituted centuries later during the Northern Wei and Sui periods, before finally being dissolved during the Tang dynasty.
Qiang was a name given to various groups of people at different periods in ancient China. The Qiang people are generally thought to have been of Tibeto-Burman origin, though there are other theories.
The history of the Great Wall of China began when fortifications built by various states during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods were connected by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, to protect his newly founded Qin dynasty against incursions by nomads from Inner Asia. The walls were built of rammed earth, constructed using forced labour, and by 212 BC ran from Gansu to the coast of southern Manchuria.
The southward expansion of the Han dynasty was a series of Chinese military campaigns and expeditions in what is now modern Southern China and Northern Vietnam. Military expansion to the south began under the previous Qin dynasty and continued during the Han era. Campaigns were dispatched to conquer the Yue tribes, leading to the annexation of Minyue by the Han in 135 BC and 111 BC, Nanyue in 111 BC, and Dian in 109 BC.
The Han conquest of Dian was a series of military campaigns and expeditions by the Western Han dynasty recorded in contemporary textual sources against the Dian Kingdom in modern-day Yunnan. Dian was placed under Western Han rule in 109 BC, after Emperor Wu of Han dispatched an army against the kingdom as the empire expanded southward.
Yiqu, was an ancient Chinese state which existed in the Hetao region and what is now Ningxia, eastern Gansu and northern Shaanxi during the Zhou dynasty, and was a centuries-long western rival of the state of Qin. It was inhabited by a semi-sinicized people called the Rong of Yiqu, who were regarded as a branch of western Rong people by contemporary writers, whom modern scholars have attempted to identify as one of the ancestors of the minority people in Northwest China.
This is a timeline of the Xiongnu, a nomadic people that dominated the ancient eastern Eurasian steppes from 209 BC to 89 AD. The Xiongnu settled down in northern China during the late 3rd century AD following the Three Kingdoms period, and founded several states lasting until the Northern Liang was conquered by the Xianbei Northern Wei in 439 AD.
