Page 36 - All About History - Issue 08-14

What was it? When did it
The Three Kingdoms take place?
The Three Kingdoms period
period, also referred begins with the foundation of
to as the Period of the state of Wei in 220 CE and
closes with the conquest of the
Disunity, was one of state of Wu by the Jin Dynasty.
China’s bloodiest eras. The time frame of 220-263
CE was characterised by the
Following the collapse formation of a militarised
of the central ruling tripartite segregation of China’s
central regions, while a series
Han Dynasty, the states of brutal battles dominated the
of Wei, Shu and Wu period of 263-280 CE.
fought each other for six
turbulent decades.

Blufer’s Guide

Three Kingdoms

CHINA, 220-280 CE Romanticised

memory
General Guan Yu was a famous soldier of the Shu
Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period The Three Kingdoms
period crippled the country
A statue of Guan Yu in the Three economically and culturally,
Kingdoms temple in Chengdu
with millions of people
killed or forced to migrate
out the country, but is today
Far from remembered largely due to its
minted romanticisation in numerous
works of later fiction. The most
When the imperial court famous example of this is Luo
collapsed and the Han Guanzhong’s Romance of the
Dynasty fell, so did the Three Kingdoms, a novel that
imperial mint, with no new dramatises the lives of the
coins created. As such, in feudal lords and their retainers
221 CE, Cao Wei – the leader as they vie for control.
of the remnants of the
Han that had since largely
transformed into the state
of Wei – officially declared
that silk cloth and grain
was the main currency.
Despite this many new
coins were secretly minted.
36
A statue dedicated to Liu Bei, founder
and first ruler of the state of Shu Han