The least notable of every dynasty to rule from Jiankang, by its own historian's judgment - five rulers in thirty-two years, remembered chiefly for the reunification of China that followed its own conquest rather than for anything it achieved while it stood.
Conquest589Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881)
Languages of administration
Classical Chinese
Writing system: Chinese characters
Core region
The lower Yangtze valley and southern China
How it was governed
1 of 4 coded
Army raised byHow the fighting force was recruited, not how it fought.
No cited figure
Revenue fromWhat the state lived on. The values are unranked: the field cannot express which mattered most.
No cited figure
Succession byThe rule in force, not the outcome. A rule repeatedly violated is still the rule.
No cited figure
Right to rule fromThe ground publicly asserted — on coins, in the khutba, in titles.
conquestThe right of the sword, asserted as such
Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881)
Each line is drawn from a source that addresses the question directly. A line reads No cited figure where no source consulted does — never because the answer seemed obvious.
Turning points
2 hinges
557589
557
Chen Baxian founds the ChenSuccession crisis
Chen Baxian, a lieutenant who had risen against Hou Jing's rebellion alongside the future Liang emperor Yuandi, murdered the last Liang ruler, Jingdi, and founded a dynasty named for his own former principality - a reign so brief, boulger-china-1881 notes, that his own sudden death within three years "threw things again into confusion."
Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881)
589
The Sui conquest ends the Southern DynastiesBattle
Sui forces under Yang Jian crossed the Yangtze, entered the Chen capital, and deposed Houzhu, who survived twenty-four more years in private life - closing, in boulger-china-1881's own words, "the least notable of all the families which have ruled in China" and, with it, the whole century and a half of division the Southern Dynasties had shared with the north.
Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881)
Chapters
3 in order · about 3 minutes
The least notable family
formationDrafted from Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881)
Chen Baxian had made his name fighting to restore order after Hou
Jing's rebellion tore apart the Liang dynasty he served, joining Xiao
Yi in driving the rebel from power before turning, within a few years,
on the Liang ruling house itself. In 557 he murdered the last Liang
emperor, Jingdi, and founded his own dynasty, naming it Chen after the
principality he had held as a semi-independent lord. He consolidated
his new throne by putting down several small uprisings and negotiating
terms with one of their principal leaders rather than fighting every
rebellion to the finish - a pragmatic beginning that gave the new
dynasty, briefly, every appearance of settling into a stable
existence. It did not last: Chen Baxian died suddenly within three
years of his own accession, and Boulger records that the loss "threw
things again into confusion," since the new emperor had no son and
had named a nephew, Wenti, as his successor instead.
An uneventful reign and a deposed boy
Wenti's own eight-year reign proved, in Boulger's own description,
singularly uneventful - competent enough to defeat several attempts to
revive the fallen Liang and to punish his own general Zhaodi
(Chowti) for breaking his oath of loyalty, but marked by nothing
resembling real distinction. He earned his subjects' genuine
affection without any particularly brilliant act, and when he died in
567 his son Boqing (Petsong) succeeded him only to be deposed by his
own uncle after two years on the throne - the same pattern of short,
interrupted successions that had already ended the Song, the Qi and,
within a decade, would end the Liang as well. By the time Xuandi, a
nephew of the dynasty's own founder, took the throne, the Chen had
already burned through three rulers in a dozen years, and a
fourth-century-and-a-half pattern of division showed no sign of
resolving in the south's own favour.
Wendi of Chen in the Thirteen Emperors scroll attributed to the seventh-century painter Yan Liben.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston · Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881) · Yan Liben (attributed) · Public domain
Fourteen years of survival
peakDrafted from Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881)
Xuandi gave the Chen their longest reign, fourteen years of continued
war against the northern kingdom of Zhou, the state that had emerged
from the final collapse of the old Northern Wei. It was, even by
Boulger's own account, a period of survival rather than achievement -
the dynasty held its own without ever meaningfully expanding it, one
ruler among several small, contending states in an age that had, by
this point, been fractured for more than a century and a half. It was
the fullest reign any Chen ruler would get, and the closest this
dynasty came to the kind of peak era its four predecessors on the same
throne had each, in their own troubled way, briefly managed. The
throne passed on Xuandi's death in 582 to his son Houzhu, whose own
short reign would close out both his family's rule and the entire era
of division the Chen's four predecessor dynasties had shared with the
rival kingdoms of the north.
Xuandi of Chen in the Thirteen Emperors scroll attributed to Yan Liben.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston · Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881) · Yan Liben (attributed) · Public domain
Crossing the Yangtze
endDrafted from Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881)
By the 580s a new power had absorbed the north entirely. Yang Jian, a
general who had taken the throne of the northern Zhou state and
founded his own Sui dynasty, spent years consolidating his authority
before turning south. In 589 his forces crossed the Yangtze, entered
the Chen capital, and subdued a country Boulger describes as having
welcomed its own conqueror rather than resisting him. Houzhu was
deposed and withdrew into private life, where he lived on for
twenty-four more years - long enough to outlast by decades the
dynasty whose own collapse he had presided over.
Houzhu of Chen in the Thirteen Emperors scroll attributed to Yan Liben.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston · Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881) · Yan Liben (attributed) · Public domain
The dynasty history forgot to praise
Boulger's own final verdict on the Chen is the bluntest judgment he
passes on any ruling house in this whole period: "certainly the
least notable of all the families which have ruled in China." Five
rulers in thirty-two years, none but the founder judged worthy of his
position, closing not in some singular catastrophe but in a
conquest the population itself seemed relieved to accept. What made
589 significant was never the Chen's own fall in isolation, but what
it opened: the reunion, under Yang Jian's new Sui dynasty, of an
empire that had been divided into hostile, independent states since
the collapse of the Han - the north and south finally answering, after
a century and a half apart, to a single throne again.
Houzhu as a Timurid painter at Herat imagined him, in a manuscript of about 1425–26.
Boulger, The History of China, Volume I (1881) · Unknown · Public domain
Chen Baxian, a lieutenant who had helped drive Hou Jing from power, murdered the last Liang emperor, Jingdi, and founded his own dynasty in the Liang's place.
Sui armies crossed the Yangtze and took the Chen capital, a conquest the population itself seemed relieved to accept - reuniting, under Yang Jian's new dynasty, an empire that had been divided into hostile states since the Han's own collapse more than three and a half centuries earlier.
The shaded band is this polity’s span; the dark part of each bar is the stretch the two shared.
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Extent
The historical-basemaps snapshots are world maps at fixed years, and none of the ones falling inside this polity's lifetime names it among the polities it draws.
Rating
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Reach
No cited figure
Longevity
32 years
5th percentile
Demographic weight
No cited figure
Influence
Three separate counts. This site never publishes a single influence number of its own; the sliders on the rankings view fuse them only in your view.
Descendant scripts
No cited figure
Religions carried
No cited figure
Successor claims
No cited figure
Weighted total
5th percentile
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