China’s Three Kingdoms left fewer people than legend suggests
After the Han collapsed, China was divided from 220 to 280 among three rival states: Wei, founded by the Cao clan, Shu Han in the west, and Wu in the east. A Jin census in 280 counted about 16.2 million people in 2.46 million households—far below late Han totals.
Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu split China from 220 to 280 AD, between the fall of the Han and the Jin reunification. Historians disagree on the start: some pick the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184, Dong Zhuo’s seizure of the throne in 189, or Cao Cao’s capture of the emperor in 196. Strictly, three rival emperors coexisted only from 229, when Wu’s ruler took the title, until Wei conquered Shu in 263. Jin then usurped Wei in 266 and conquered Wu in 280.
The rot began long before. After Emperor He died in 105, a run of child emperors left power with in-laws and eunuchs, and officials who protested under Emperors Huan and Ling were executed. In 184 the Taoist leader Zhang Jiao raised the Yellow Turbans, with 36 bases and hundreds of thousands of followers. In 188 governors gained their own armies, and several soon broke away from the court. In September 189 Dong Zhuo marched into burning Luoyang and replaced the emperor, until his bodyguard Lü Bu killed him. Cao Cao then crushed rivals one by one, executing Lü Bu in 198.
The cost was enormous. A Jin census in 280 counted 2,459,840 households and about 16.2 million people, against roughly 56.5 million in Han records, though the survey was surely incomplete. Plague, famine, and war all played their part.
Invention continued anyway. Shu chancellor Zhuge Liang is credited with the wooden ox, perhaps an early wheelbarrow, and a better repeating crossbow, while Wei engineer Ma Jun built chain pumps, a water-powered puppet theatre, and a south-pointing chariot steered by differential gears. Chen Shou’s Records of the Three Kingdoms (about 290) is the main source, and Luo Guanzhong’s Ming-era novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms made the era legendary.
Source: Three Kingdoms
