Prehistory The
Yuanmou Man, a
Homo erectus fossil unearthed by railway engineers in the 1960s, has been determined to be the oldest-known hominid fossil in China, dating back to an estimated 1.7 million years ago. By the
Neolithic period, there were human settlements in the area of
Lake Dian. These people used stone tools and constructed simple wooden structures.
Dian Kingdom , 3rd century BC|alt=|left Around the 3rd century BC, the central area of Yunnan around present day
Kunming was known as
Dian. The
Chu general () entered the region from the upper
Yangtze River and set himself up as "King of Dian". He and his followers brought into Yunnan an influx of Chinese influence, the start of a long history of migration and cultural expansion.
Qin and Han dynasties In 221 BC,
Qin Shi Huang unified China and extended his authority south. Commanderies and counties were established in Yunnan. An existing road in
Sichuan – the "Five Foot Way" – was extended south to around present day
Qujing, in eastern Yunnan. In 109 BC, the
Han dynasty conquered Dian during its
southern expeditions. Under orders from
Emperor Wu, General () was sent south to Yunnan, eventually establishing the
Yizhou commandery. By this time, agricultural technology in Yunnan had improved markedly. The local people used bronze tools, plows and kept a variety of livestock, including cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs and dogs. Anthropologists have determined that these people were related to the people now known as the
Tai. They lived in tribal congregations, sometimes led by exiled Chinese. During the
Three Kingdoms, the territory of present-day Yunnan, western
Guizhou and southern Sichuan was collectively called
Nanzhong. The dissolution of Chinese central authority led to increased autonomy for Yunnan and more power for the local tribal structures. In AD 225, the famed statesman
Zhuge Liang led three columns into Yunnan to pacify the tribes. His seven captures of
Meng Huo, a local magnate, is mythologized in the
Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Cuan Kingdom In the 4th century, northern China was largely overrun by nomadic tribes from the north. In the 320s, the Cuan () clan migrated into Yunnan.
Cuan Chen () named himself king and held authority from
Lake Dian, then known as
Kunchuan. Henceforth the Cuan clan ruled eastern Yunnan for over four hundred years. International trade flowed through Yunnan. An ancient overland pre-
Tang trade route from Yunnan passed through
Irrawaddy in Burma to reach
Bengal. Yunnan was inhabited by so-called barbarians not fully under the control of the Tang government and the route, though ancient, was not used much in pre-Tang times, and Chinese attempts to control the route were disrupted by the rise of
Nanzhao.
Nanzhao period Yunnan was settled by several local tribes, clans, and cultures before the 8th century. Around
Lake Erhai, namely, the
Dali area, there emerged six
zhao: Mengzi (), Yuexi (), Langqiong (), Dengdan (), Shilling (), and Mengshe ().
Zhao () was an indigenous non-Chinese language term meaning "king" or "kingdom." Among the six regimes Mengshe was located south of the other five; therefore given the new, larger context, it was called Nanzhao (Southern Kingdom). By the 730s Nanzhao had succeeded in bringing the Erhai Lake–area under its authority. In 738, the western Yunnan was united by
Piluoge, the fourth king of Nanzhao, who was confirmed by the imperial court of the
Tang dynasty as
king of Yunnan. Ruling from
Dali, the thirteen kings of Nanzhao ruled over more than two centuries and played a vital role in the dynamic relationship between the Tang dynasty and the
Tibetan Empire as a
buffer state. By the 750s, Nanzhao had conquered Yunnan and became a potential rival to Tang China. The following period saw several conflicts between Tang China and Nanzhao. In 750, Nanzhao attacked and captured Yaozhou, the largest Tang settlement in Yunnan. In 751, Xianyu Zhongtong (), the regional commander of Jiannan (present-day
Sichuan), led a Tang campaign against Nanzhao. The king of Nanzhao, Geluofeng, regarded the previous incident as a personal affair and wrote to Xianyu to seek peace. However, Xianyu Zhongtong detained the Nanzhao envoys and turned down the appeal. Confronted with Tang armies, Nanzhao immediately turned its allegiance to the
Tibetan Empire. The Tubo and Nanzhao agreed to be "fraternal states"; Geluofeng was given the titles zanpuzhong ("younger brother"). The Nanzhao-Tubo alliance ensured a disastrous defeat for Xianyu's expedition, with the Tang general's army of 80,000 men being reduced to a quarter of its original size. Tang China did not give up after one failure. In 753, another expedition was prepared, but this was also defeated by Nanzhao. In 754, the Tang organized an army of more than 100,000 troops that advanced to the Dali plain, resulting in only another slaughter. By the end of the eighth century, Tang was no longer a major threat to Nanzhao. ), recovered from the
Qianxun Pagoda,
Dali Kingdom Nanzhao's expansion lasted for several decades. In 829, Nanzhao suddenly plundered
Sichuan and entered
Chengdu. When it retreated, hundreds of Sichuan people, including skilled artisans, were taken to Yunnan. In 832, the Nanzhao army captured the capital of the
Pyu kingdom in modern upper
Burma. Nanzhao also attacked the
Khmer peoples of
Zhenla. Generally speaking, Nanzhao was then the most powerful kingdom in mainland Southeast Asia, and played an extremely active role in multistate interactions. In 859, Nanzhao captured
Bozhou, and this event exacerbated the Nanzhao-Tang clashes. When the Tang governor of
Annam took Bozhou back in the following year, Nanzhao, with the help of native peoples, occupied Hanoi as the Tang army moved to Bozhou. When the Tang forces returned, Nanzhao troops retreated from
Hanoi but attacked and plundered
Yongzhou. In the winter of 862, Nanzhao, allying with local groups, led an army of over 50,000 men to invade Annam again. It is reported that the Tang forces lost over 150,000 soldiers (either killed or captured by Nanzhao) in the two Annam battles. The autumn of 866 saw Tang victory in Hanoi and soon all of the Nanzhao forces were driven away. But Tang China had lost its ability to attack Nanzhao. While Nanzhao was being defeated in Annam, it still occasionally attacked Sichuan. In 869, Shilong (), the eighth king and the first empire of Nanzhao, invaded Sichuan. In 874, Nanzhao attacked Sichuan again. In 902, Zheng Maisi, the
Qingpingguan (,"Prime Minister") of Nanzhao, murdered the infant king of Nanzhao, and established a new kingdom called
Dachanghe. Nanzhao, a once-powerful empire, disappeared. In 928, Yang Ganzhen (楊干貞) usurped the Dachanghe king and established Zhao Shanzheng, a
qingpingguan as emperor of Datianxing (大天興). In 929, Yang Qianzhen abolished Zhao Shanzheng and established himself as Emperor of Dayining (大義寧).
Dali Kingdom and Yuan dynasty of Dali|alt=Refer to caption|left In 937,
Duan Siping overthrew the Dayining Kingdom and established the
Dali Kingdom. The kingdom was conquered by the
Mongol Empire in 1253 after Dali King Duan Xingzhi defected to the Mongols. The Duans were incorporated into the Mongol administration as
Maharajas of the new province. The Mongolian prince sent to administer the region with them was killed. In 1273,
Kublai Khan reformed the province and appointed the
semu Ajall Shams al-Din Omar as its governor. During the
Yuan dynasty, Yunnan included significant portions of
Upper Burma after the
First Mongol invasion of Burma in the 1270s and 1280s. The withdrawal of garrison troops from Burma in 1303 gave local leaders the freedom to expand their own power bases, eventually leading to the rapid rise and rebellion of
Möng Mao in the 1340s. With the fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1368, the Ming dynasty destroyed the Yuan loyalists led by
Basalawarmi and the remnants of the House of Duan in the
Ming conquest of Yunnan by the early 1380s.
Ming and Qing dynasties The Ming installed
Mu Ying and his family as hereditary aristocrats in Yunnan. in 1795. During the
Ming and
Qing dynasties, large areas of Yunnan were administered under the
native chieftain system. Under the Qing dynasty a
war with Burma also occurred in the 1760s due to the attempted consolidation of borderlands under local chiefs by both China and Burma. Yunnan was a destination for Han Chinese during Yuan rule. Migrants moved into the area during Ming and Qing rule. During the Ming dynasty, 3 million Han Chinese mostly from
Nanjing (the original Nanjing population was later largely replaced by Wu-speakers), and some from Shanxi and Hebei, settled in Yunnan. Although largely forgotten, the bloody
Panthay Rebellion of the
Muslim Hui people and other local minorities against the
Manchu rulers of the
Qing dynasty caused the deaths of up to a million people in Yunnan. The Manchu official Shuxing'a started an anti-Muslim massacre, which led to the rebellion. Shuxing'a developed a deep hatred of Muslims after an incident in which he was stripped naked and nearly lynched by a mob of Muslims. He ordered several Muslim rebels to be
slowly sliced to death.
Tariq Ali wrote about the real incident in one of his novels and claimed the Muslims who had nearly lynched Shuxing'a were not Hui but belonged to another ethnicity. Nevertheless, the Manchu official blamed all Muslims for the incident. A British officer testified that the Muslims did not rebel for religious reasons and that the Chinese were tolerant of different religions and were unlikely to have caused the revolt by interfering with the practice of Islam. Loyalist Muslim forces helped Qing forces crush the rebel Muslims. The Qing armies massacred only Muslims who had rebelled or supported the rebels and spared Muslims who took no part in the uprising. In 1894,
George Ernest Morrison, an
Australian correspondent for
The Times, traveled from
Beijing to British-occupied
Burma via Yunnan. His book,
An Australian in China, details his experiences. The
1905 Tibetan Rebellion in which Tibetan Buddhist Lamas attacked and killed French Catholic missionaries spread to Yunnan.
Post-Imperial Yunnan was transformed by the events of the
Second Sino-Japanese War, which caused many east coast refugees and industrial establishments to relocate to the province. It assumed strategic significance, particularly as the
Burma Road from
Lashio, in
Burma to
Kunming was a fought over supply line of vital importance to China's war effort. University faculty and students in the east had originally decamped to
Changsha, capital of
Hunan. But as Japanese forces were gaining more territory they eventually bombed Changsha in February 1938. The 800 faculty and students who were left had to flee and made the 1,000 mile journey to
Kunming, capital of Yunnan in China's mountainous southwest. It was here that the
National Southwest Associated University (commonly known as Lianda University) was established. For eight years, staff, professors and students had to survive and operate in makeshift quarters that were subject to sporadic bombing campaigns by the Japanese. There were dire shortages of food, equipment, books, clothing and other essential needs, but they managed to conduct the running of a modern
university. Over those eight years of war (1937–1945), Lianda became famous nationwide for having and producing many, if not most, of China's most prominent academics, scholars, scientists and intellectuals. Both of China's only
Nobel laureates in physics Yang Chen-Ning and
Tsung-Dao Lee studied at Lianda in Kunming.
Naturalists Thousands of plant, insect and mammal species were described in the 19th century by scientists of the
French National Museum of Natural History, Paris, in connection with permanent settlements of missionaries of the in north-west Yunnan, among them noticeably
Jean-André Soulié and
Felix Biet. From 1916 to 1917,
Roy Chapman Andrews and
Yvette Borup Andrews led the Asiatic Zoological Expedition of the
American Museum of Natural History through much of western and southern Yunnan, as well as other provinces of China. The book,
Camps and Trails in China, records their experiences. Other notable explorers include
Heinrich Handel-Mazzetti;
George Forrest;
Joseph Francis Charles Rock, who from 1922 to 1949 spent most of his time studying the flora, peoples and languages of southwest China, mainly in Yunnan; and
Peter Goullart, a
White Russian who studied
Naxi culture and lived in
Lijiang from 1940 to 1949. == Geography ==