Generals of the South: the foundation and early history of the Three Kingdoms state of Wu

Abstract

The present volume is concerned with one aspect of that great tradition: the development of the state of Wu, under control of the Sun family, in the territory south of the Yangzi. The establishment of this separate state, and its maintenance for the best part of a hundred years, was a critical factor for the centuries that followed. On the one hand, the independence of Wu prevented Cao Cao, victor of the civil war in the north, from restoring the unity which had been lost by the last emperors of Han. At the same time, however, by confirming and developing a Chinese presence in that frontier territory, the generals of Wu established the conditions not just for their own short-lived political survival, but also for the dynasties which took refuge there after the overthrow of Western Jin at the beginning of the fourth century, and which maintained their cultural heritage through the next three hundred years.