In 316, the Han army Liu Yao attacked the outer city of Chang'an, and Emperor Huan of Jin surrendered. Later, Emperor Han made Emperor Huan the Marquis of Huai'an, changed his name to Yuan Linjia, and died in the Western Jin Dynasty.
In 420 AD, Liu Yu, the Duke of Song, abolished Emperor Gong of Jin and established Liu Song, the Eastern Jin Dynasty fell, and Chinese history entered the Period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
In the second year of Xianxi (265), the Cao Wei emperor Cao Yanchan was located in Sima Yan, and changed his name to Yuan Taishi as Emperor Wu of Jin. Cao Wei perished and the Western Jin Dynasty began.
The Jin Dynasty itself inherited the division from the late Eastern Han Dynasty to the Cao Wei period, and the influence of the local clans far exceeded that of the emperors. After Sima Yan succeeded in usurping Wei, he divided the members of each clan as kings, and in order to prevent other clans and powerful subjects from following suit, he finally usurped Wei and established himself. At the same time, the "Occupation Order" was promulgated to limit the area and quantity of land owned by the clans.
Sima Yan ordered Yang Hu to exert influence on the Wu army with benevolence in Xiangyang, while training water troops and building warships in Yizhou on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. After 10 years of full preparation, in 279 AD, the Jin army launched a war to destroy Wu, and 200,000 Jin troops directly attacked the capital of the Wu army.
Because Emperor Wu of Jin was well prepared, the timing was right, and the strategy was correct, it took only more than four months before and after to seize all the victories in the war against Wu. Since then, all the counties, prefectures, and counties of Eastern Wu have been officially incorporated into the territory of the Jin Dynasty. The three kingdoms were over. Sima Yan unified the whole country and ended eighty years of division.
In order to create new achievements after the annihilation of Wu, Sima Yan took Luoyang as the center and adopted a series of measures throughout the country, gradually freeing the people from the suffering of war and chaos, and enabling the country to embark on the road of development.
However, the good times did not last long, and the western Jin dynasty gradually decayed. The family clan is greedy and wanton, and extravagance is the norm. How to eclipse ten thousand dollars, but also said "no place to go". Wang Kai and Shi Chong, the great clan, were more extravagant than each other, and the chancellor Fu Xianshang said that "the cost of luxury is worse than natural disasters" and asked the emperor to stop it, but Sima Yan was not only indifferent, but also funded his uncle to fight for wealth. Bureaucrats not only have extravagance, but also openly rob and kill people. For example, Shi Chong's history of Jingzhou's assassination, "robbing merchants far away, getting rich is not profitable."
Sima Yan also became extravagant and lascivious, because he failed to solve the problems of corrupt political style, party chaos, expansion of clan power, and internal migration of foreign tribes. In the first year of Taixi (290 AD), Emperor Wu of Jin died, Emperor Hui of Jin succeeded to the throne, and his foreign relative Yang Jun assisted the government, and the internal contradictions of the rule intensified, so the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" broke out.
In the Rebellion of the Eight Kings, many of the kings who participated in the war were defeated one after another, many people were killed, the social economy was seriously damaged, the strength of the ruling clique of the Western Jin Dynasty was exhausted, and the hidden class contradictions and ethnic contradictions quickly broke out.
In the fifth year of Yongjia (311 AD), Sima Yue, the king of the Eastern Sea of the Western Jin Dynasty, fell ill and died, and the Xiongnu army besieged Luoyang for the third time.
In the first year of Jianxing (313 AD), Emperor Huai of Jin was killed at Pingyang, and Emperor Huan of Jin in Chang'an ordered Sima Rui, Liu Kun, and others to attack Pingyang in three ways. As a result, Sima Rui, who was the main force in this battle, disobeyed the order at the instigation of the shi clan.
In the fourth year of Jianxing (316 AD), Chang'an fell and the Western Jin Dynasty fell. The Xiongnu controlled almost all of the Central Plains, and the great upheaval that lasted for more than a hundred years began. Subsequently, various ethnic groups successively established states in the north, known in history as the "Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms".
After the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Han established the Eastern Jin Dynasty in Jiangdong. In 317 AD, Sima Rui, the Jin Emperor of Zhenshou Jiankang, rebuilt the Jin Dynasty in Jiangnan, known as the Eastern Jin Dynasty, in addition, the history books also imitated the Eastern Han Dynasty as the Middle Han, calling the Eastern Jin Dynasty the Middle Jin Dynasty, which means the Jin Dynasty Zhongxing; and most of the eastern Jin Dynasty ruled areas were in Jiangdong, called Jiangzuo in ancient times, so Jiangzuo referred to the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Sima Rui's establishment of a form of power in Jiankang was actually in 311 AD, when the Western Jin Dynasty was on the verge of collapse, but there was no explicit demise. The time of the establishment of the Eastern Jin Dynasty is generally regarded as the time when Sima Rui became emperor. The Eastern Jin Dynasty maintained a long period of partial security rule, and its territory was largely limited to the south of the Yangtze River basin of the Huai River. Correspondingly, the north was basically divided, and 16 states that "could establish a state and become a warring state" appeared successively, so the period was generally called the Sixteen Kingdoms, and together with the Eastern Jin Dynasty, it was called the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Although the Eastern Jin Dynasty was a continuation of the Sima clan regime, the Sima clan itself was not high in political prestige, and the entire imperial court was controlled by the clans, the first one was Wang Dun and Wang Dao, who were from the Langya Wang clan, and then There were Xie An and Xie Xuan of the Xie clan of Chen County. Among the family families, the representatives are the surnames of Wang, Xie, Yuan, Xiao and other overseas Chinese who went south, and the Surnames of Zhu, Zhang, Gu and Lu who lived in Jiangnan themselves. Initially, the Eastern Jin Dynasty relied on the powerful minister Wang Dao to preside over the overall situation, on the one hand, to win over the Jiangnan Shi clan, on the other hand, to arrange for the Shi clan from the Central Plains to go south, and to take the Sima family as the object of common support.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty also tried the Northern Expedition many times, but due to internal disunity, except for Liu Yu, who finally usurped the Jin Dynasty, achieved certain results, the rest were not achieved. Zu Di had hoped to restore the old land, but he was held hostage by Sima Rui and died depressed. Huan Wen's Northern Expedition was defeated by Murong Chui.
In 420, Liu Yu usurped the throne and replaced the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In 439 AD, Tuoba Tao unified the north. At this point, a situation of confrontation between the north and the south was formed, and the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Eastern Jin Dynasty became synonymous with the old era.