Ancient China During the
Spring and Autumn period of the
Eastern Zhou dynasty, the
hegemon Fuchai of
Wu constructed the
Han or
Hangou Canal Hángōu) to improve his supply lines from his center of power around present-day
Suzhou to the
North China Plain, where he was engaged in an ongoing conflict with
Qi. Taking advantage of the many streams and lakes of the
Jianghuai Plain, the canal connected the
Yangtze River within present-day Yangzhou to the
Huai River within present-day
Huai'an by 486BC. The next year, Fuchai established a fortress to protect the southern end of the new canal at
Hancheng. Following the
Chinese urban design principles of the time, it was constructed as a 3
li by 3
li square about above the water level on the Yangtze's northern
bank, with the Han Canal forming a
moat around the southern and eastern sides of the city. The town was intended to stall any possible counterattack from Qi down the canal, giving time to raise reinforcements from Suzhou and Wu's other lands in the
Yangtze Delta.
Imperial China Under the
Eastern Han dynasty, the area was organized as the
Guangling Commandery of
Xu Province. Its seat of governmentalso known as
Guanglingwas also near the confluence of the Yangtze and the Han Canal, although at a slightly different location than the former Wu fortress. Under the
Sui, Guangling was reorganized as
Yang Province (
zhou) in the year AD 590. Its seat of government took the new name as well. Prospering as the
Emperor Yang (r.604–617) connected the Han Canal to other waterways north and south to form the core of the
Grand Canal, Yangzhou became the southern capital of China under the name
Jiangdu. With the failure of
his invasions of
Korea and a series of natural disasters, Emperor Yang abandoned to north entirely in 616 and made Jiangdu his primary capital until his assassination in 618. Restoring the former name Guangling, the
Tang made the city a major port for foreign trade and turned it into a leading economic and cultural center. Many foreign merchants lived in the city, including many
Koreans,
Arabs, and
Persians. Thousands of
Muslim Arab, Persian and other foreign merchants were
massacred in 760 by forces under
Tian Shengong, sent to suppress the city's rebellion. Jiangdu served briefly as the capital of a
revived Wu Kingdom during the
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. After the 1127
Jingkang Incident led to the
Jurchen-led
Jin conquest of
Kaifeng, the
Song used Yangzhou as their capital in 1128 and 1129. Song troops under
Du Chong Dù Chōng, d.1141) breached the southern
embankments of the
Yellow River in an effort to stop the southward of
Jin army, but the resulting
avulsion caused the river to swing south of the
Shandong Peninsula and
capture the
Si River and lower
Huai. The Grand Canal was truncated for decades and the
Southern Song moved to
Lin'an (present-day
Hangzhou, Zhejiang). In 1280, during the
Yuan, Yangzhou was the site of a massive
gunpowder explosion when the bomb warehouse of the
Weiyang arsenal accidentally caught fire. The blast killed over a hundred guards, hurled debris from buildings into the air that landed 10
li away, and could be felt 100
li.
Marco Polo claimed to have served
Kubilai Khan in Yangzhou shortly thereafter, variously placed at 1282–1285 or 1282–1287. Although some versions of Polo's memoirs imply that he was the governor of Yangzhou, it is more likely that he was an official in the salt industry if he was employed there at all. Surviving Chinese texts do not mention him at all. It is well documented, however, that
Kublai Khan trusted foreigners more than Chinese/Han subjects in internal affairs Arabic inscriptions during the 13th and 14th centuries similarly indicate a revival of the Muslim community. . After the fall of Beijing and northern China to the
Manchus in 1644, Yangzhou remained under the control of the short-lived
Southern Ming based in
Nanjing.
Qing forces led by
Prince Dodo reached Yangzhou in the spring of 1645, and despite the heroic efforts of its chief defender,
Shi Kefa, the city fell on May 20, 1645, after a brief siege. The
Yangzhou massacre followed;
Wang Xiuchu's contemporary account alleged that the number of victims was close to 800,000, but that number is certainly an exaggeration. Shi Kefa himself was killed by the Manchus when he refused to switch his allegiance to the Manchurian Qing regime.
Han bannermen were responsible for most of the atrocities in Yangzhou but they were nevertheless labelled as Manchus by other Han. The city's rapid recovery from these events and its great prosperity through the early and middle years of the Qing dynasty were due to its role as administrative center of the Lianghuai sector of the government salt monopoly. As early as 1655, the Dutch envoy
Johan Nieuhof described the city of Yangzhoufu ( in his transcription): Famed at that time and since for literature, art, and the gardens of its merchant families, many of which were visited by the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors during their Southern Tours, the Qing-era Yangzhou has been the focus of intensive research by historians. The
Yangzhou riot in 1868 was a pivotal moment of
Anglo-Chinese relations during late Qing China that almost led to war. The crisis was fomented by the
scholar-officials of the city, who opposed the presence of foreign
Christian missionaries there. The riot that resulted was an angry crowd estimated at eight to ten thousand who assaulted the premises of the British
China Inland Mission in Yangzhou by looting, burning and attacking the missionaries led by
Hudson Taylor. No one was killed, however several of the missionaries were injured as they were forced to flee for their lives. As a result of the report of the riot, the British consul in
Shanghai,
Sir Walter Henry Medhurst took seventy
Royal Marines in a
man-of-war and steamed up the Yangtze to Nanjing in a controversial show of force that eventually resulted in an official apology from
Viceroy Zeng Guofan and financial restitution made to the injured missionaries.
Modern China From the time of the
Taiping Rebellion (1853) to the beginning of the Reform Era (1980) Yangzhou was in decline, due to war damage, neglect of the Grand Canal as railways replaced it in importance, and stagnation in the early decades of the PRC. During the
Second Sino-Japanese War, it endured eight years of Japanese occupation and was used by the enemy as a site for internment camps. About 1200 civilians of Allied nationalities (mostly British and Australian) from Shanghai were transported here in 1943, and located in one of three camps (A, B, and C). Camps B and C were closed down in September, 1943, after the second American-Japanese prisoner exchange, and their inhabitants transferred back to Shanghai camps. Camp C, located in the former American Mission in the north-west of the city, was maintained for the duration of the war. Among early plans for railways in the late Qing was one for a line that would connect Yangzhou to the north but this was jettisoned in favor of an alternative route. The city's status as a leading economic center in China was never to be restored. Not until the 1990s did it begin to regain some semblance of prosperity, benefitting from national economic growth and a number of targeted development projects. With the canal now partially restored, and excellent rail and road connections, Yangzhou is once again an important transportation and market center. It also has some industrial output, chiefly in cotton and textiles. In 2004, a railway linked Yangzhou for the first time with Nanjing. ==Geography==