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East Asia · The Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern and Southern dynasties

Chen Dynasty

557–589

The Chen (557–589), founded by Chen Baxian (Emperor Wu) after the Liang collapse, was the last and weakest of the Southern Dynasties, capital Jiankang, its territory reduced. It was conquered in 589 by the Sui, reunifying China after nearly three centuries of division; the last ruler Chen Shubao (a famed poet-aesthete) was captured.

Existed
557–589
Shown on the map
AD 561–591
Peak area
1.0M km²
Region
East Asia

Overview

The Chen (557–589), founded by Chen Baxian (Emperor Wu) after the Liang collapse, was the last and weakest of the Southern Dynasties, capital Jiankang, its territory reduced. It was conquered in 589 by the Sui, reunifying China after nearly three centuries of division; the last ruler Chen Shubao (a famed poet-aesthete) was captured.

Common questions

What was the Chen Dynasty?
The Chen (557–589), founded by Chen Baxian (Emperor Wu) after the Liang collapse, was the last and weakest of the Southern Dynasties, capital Jiankang, its territory reduced. It was conquered in 589 by the Sui, reunifying China after nearly three centuries of division; the last ruler Chen Shubao (a famed poet-aesthete) was captured.
When did the Chen Dynasty exist?
The Chen Dynasty existed 557–589. On this map it is drawn AD 561–591.
How large was the Chen Dynasty?
At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Chen Dynasty covered about 1 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.

Sources

This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia article for each polity as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, chinaknowledge.de, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and university sources, and the academic works it lists. The article this entry is anchored on:

This entry was last updated .

This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made

Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.

Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).

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