Jiangsu historical timeline

Jiangsu has been repeatedly the political and economic centre of China, and repeatedly the scene of its worst violence.

Wu and the canal

The state of Wu was based here in the first millennium BC, and Suzhou was founded in 514 BC. The first sections of what became the Grand Canal were cut then; the Sui completed the full route around 609, linking the rice-growing south to the northern capitals and binding China together economically in a way that shaped everything after.

Six dynasties at Nanjing

When the north fell to invaders, the Chinese court repeatedly relocated to Nanjing, which served as capital six times across the third to sixth centuries and again under the early Ming from 1368. The Ming founder built the city wall, over thirty kilometres of it, and it is the longest ever constructed around a city.

The Taiping

The Taiping Rebellion made Nanjing its capital from 1853 to 1864. The war that ended it was among the deadliest conflicts in human history, with estimates of twenty million dead or more, and the lower Yangtze was devastated.

1937

After the city fell to Japanese forces in December 1937, Japanese troops killed an estimated two to three hundred thousand civilians and disarmed soldiers over about six weeks, with mass rape on an enormous scale. The Nanjing Massacre remains one of the most contested and most deeply felt episodes in East Asian relations.

Since

Reform-era industrialisation made Jiangsu one of China’s wealthiest provinces, and Suzhou one of its largest manufacturing centres.