The Three Kingdoms (220–280) was a period of history during the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Western Jin Dynasty, divided into three regimes: Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. During the Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao was defeated by the combined forces of Sun and Liu, laying the foundation for the Three Kingdoms.

In 220, Cao Pi usurped the Han dynasty as emperor, the state name "Wei", and the history of the Three Kingdoms officially began. In the following year, Liu Bei continued the Han Dynasty in Chengdu, and was known as the Shu Han. In 222, Liu Bei lost the Battle of Yiling, and Sun Quan gained most of Jingzhou. When Liu Bei died in 223, Zhuge Liang assisted Liu Bei's son Liu Chan in reuniting with Sun Quan. In 229, Sun Quan was called emperor, the state name was "Wu", and the history was called Eastern Wu, and the three kingdoms were officially established.
In the following decades, Zhuge Liang and Jiang Wei of the Shu Han led troops to the Northern Expedition against Cao Wei many times, but they never changed the pattern of the three-legged tripod. The real power of the later Cao Wei period was gradually controlled by Sima Yi. In 263, Sima Zhao of Cao Wei launched the Battle of Wei and Shu, and Shu Han was destroyed. Two years later, Sima Zhao fell ill and died, and his son Sima Yan deposed Emperor Yuan of Wei and established himself as "Jin", known as the Western Jin Dynasty. In 280 AD, the Western Jin Dynasty destroyed Eastern Wu and unified China, ending the Three Kingdoms period and entering the Jin Dynasty.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, foreign qi was dictatorial, eunuchs were in power, political corruption was carried out, and natural disasters continued. In the first year of Emperor Zhongping of Han Ling (184), the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out.

The Yellow Turban Uprising, a peasant war in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, was also one of the largest religious forms of popular uprising in Chinese history, beginning in the seventh year of Emperor Guanghe of Han Ling (184 AD), when the imperial court was corrupt, eunuchs and foreign relatives were fighting endlessly, border wars were constant, the national situation was getting weaker and weaker, and because of the national drought, the grain was not collected and taxes were not reduced, and the desperate poor peasants rose up one after another under the order of Zhang Jiao, the giant deer people, they tied yellow scarves on their heads, shouting "The sky is dead, the yellow sky is standing, the age is in the jiazi, the world is prosperous." In order to quell the rebellion, the troops in various places supported their own dignity, and although the uprising ended in failure, the situation of warlord division and the existence of the Eastern Han Dynasty was irreversible, eventually leading to the formation of the Three Kingdoms situation.
After the Yellow Turban Rebellion was suppressed, foreign qi and eunuchs lost their authority in internal fighting, and in the first year of the Yonghan dynasty (189), Dong Zhuo took control of the imperial court.
Dong Zhuo had a brutal life, full of selfish desires and ambitions. From the beginning of Longxi to the time he led his army into Beijing to manipulate the central government, he always considered and calculated how to satisfy his selfish desires and ambitions. In order to achieve his goal, Dong Zhuo unscrupulously played with power, trampled on the law, destroyed the economy, and mutilated the people, and his various perverse actions caused extreme chaos in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and brought great damage to the stability of the country and society. Although the decline and eventual collapse of the Eastern Han regime was caused by many complex factors, Dong Zhuo undoubtedly accelerated and promoted the demise of the Eastern Han regime.

In the third year of Chuping (192), Dong Zhuo was killed by Lü Bu, and Li Wei and Guo Qian controlled the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Later, Li Wei, Guo Qiang, and Zhang Ji repented and united to pursue Emperor Xian of Han, fighting several battles with Yang Feng, Dong Cheng and others. Emperor Xian of Han fled all the way, embarrassed, and arrived in Anyi to make peace with Li Wei and others. Soon, Emperor Xian of Han was welcomed by Cao Cao to the Xu capital. In the third year of Jian'an (198), Cao Cao sent his counselor Pei Mao to summon the Guanxi general Duan Yi and others to conquer Li Wei and destroy the three tribes.
Cao Cao, relying on the political advantage of "holding the Son of Heaven to order the princes", after many years of southern conquests and northern wars, successively eliminated Lü Bu, Yuan Shu and other separatist forces, lowered Zhang Xiu, chased Liu Bei, controlled Yanzhou, Yuzhou, Xuzhou, and Sizhou, and later appointed the adviser Xu Yu in the Battle of Guandu to burn the military food of Yuan Shao's forces, defeated the powerful separatist force Yuan Shao in Hebei, and finally unified the north.

In 208, after Cao Cao unified the north, he took advantage of Liu Biao's death to lead his army south, and his son Liu Wei surrendered to Cao Cao, and Liu Bei left Xinye and went south to Jiangling, but was overtaken and defeated by Cao Jun on the way, and fled to Xiakou.
At this time, Lu Su went to the reserve to inquire about the situation, and Liu Bei also sent Zhuge Liang to Jiangdong, and the two sides formed an alliance to resist the Cao army. The combined forces of Sun and Liu defeated the Cao army at Chibi, and after the Cao army retreated to the north, they pacified the combined forces of Ma Chao and Han Sui in the northwest and unified the north. Promote the formation of a situation of three countries. Sun Quan and Liu Bei also began to fight for Jingzhou separately.
Liu Bei successfully forced the surrender of the four counties of Jingnan; Sun Quan's general Zhou Yu also sent troops to Jingzhou's southern county, successfully taking the northwestern area as territory. In 211, Liu Bei led his troops into Yizhou and gradually occupied the territory of Liu Zhang.
In 219, Liu Bei captured Hanzhong from the Cao army, and Guan Yu also attacked the Cao army, but Sun Quan sent Lü Meng to attack and kill Guan Yu, occupying most of Jingzhou, and holding the Han army across the Three Gorges. In 222, Zhang Fei was killed, Liu Bei sent troops to fight Wu at Yiling, and in the battle of Tingting, he was defeated by the Wu general Lu Xun and returned to Yizhou, and Liu Bei died soon after in the city of White Emperor.
Soon after, with the efforts of Zhuge Liang and Sun Quan, Shu Han and Eastern Wu resumed their alliance and jointly resisted Cao Wei, and the situation of the three kingdoms was formally formed.
Although there were still frequent wars between the north and the south, sometimes on a relatively large scale, on the whole, the strength was roughly balanced, and the peak momentum was maintained for more than 40 years.

Because of natural disasters and wars, society has been damaged, resulting in economic recession and a large amount of agricultural land abandoned. Some of the powerful clans led their clansmen to build forts to defend themselves. After engaging in production activities around it, it gradually became a self-sufficient manor system. Both the Wubao and the manor system influenced the economic model of the later Wei and Jin dynasties. Due to the collapse of the Eastern Han court, no one reforged worn copper coins, plus a large amount of private money appeared. After the establishment of the Three Kingdoms, the newly issued copper coins were not widely used, so they had to officially use physical goods such as cloth valley chestnuts as the main currency.
After the Yellow Turban Rebellion, natural disasters and famines occurred in the Central Plains, such as: "In the spring and first month of the third year of Jianning, Hanoi people ate women, Henan people ate women" and other records. After Dong Zhuo took power, he indulged the soldiers to commit adultery with women and steal property. In the face of the joint crusade of the Kwantung Army, they unexpectedly "migrated millions of Luoyang people to Chang'an, burned palaces and temples, and lived in official residences, and there were no remnants within 200 miles", so that the people were full of grievances and the population was greatly reduced. When Cao Cao conquered Xuzhou, "where hundreds of thousands of men and women were killed, chickens and dogs were left unlimited, and Surabaya did not flow for it, and it was a city protection in five counties, and there was no trace of restoration." Li Wei and others were in Guanzhong, "when there were still hundreds of thousands of households in the three auxiliary people, they sent troops to rob the city, attacked the city, and the people were hungry, and in two years they ate a little." Liu Yan and Liu Zhang of Yizhou and Liu Biao of Jingzhou suppressed the rebellion, and Yangzhou was reduced in population due to the war of Sun Ce and others.
During this period, the common people have suffered from war for a long time, the people have suffered unspeakably, and the common people are living in misery.