The ENTIRE History of CHINA [No AI]

China! China? No, wrong. This big, mysterious country place with a massive history only officially got named China in the year 1912. Before that it had many funny names such as the Qing Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, the Han Dynasty and the Nothing Dynasty. Let's start here. Historically Facts, part 19. Before 2070 BC there was no China. There was just a massive untamed river valley that liked to flood and wipe out entire civilizations. Kinda annoying, said Yu the Great. So Yu decided to make that river his own. He spent the next 13 years of his life building dams, digging canals and drinking excess water to tame this feared Yellow River. The people loved him so much for doing all of this that as a thank you they made him a king, sparking the Xia Dynasty, the first dynasty of many. Cool you might think, but now you probably have two questions. First what does it mean that the place now has a king? And secondly, if he is a king, then why is it the Xia dynasty and not the Xia kingdom? Well first about what changes now that we have a king walking about. Of course there is now a tax collector for public projects. But more importantly, before you came along, leadership was based on performance. You handed the stick to whoever was the smartest or best at the job. But now it's automatically given to the eldest son, even if Even if he is the reincarnation of Satan himself, oh boy I sure wonder if that could cause any issues in the future. And to answer why it's a dynasty and not a kingdom, we have to understand that a kingdom is like a business, a legal entity, and a dynasty is a family. In Europe, when for example the house of Tudor took over England or the house of Bourbon took over France, the country was still called England or France. The name of the country is tied to the land, the people and the language. But in ancient China, The concept of a nation as a fixed legal entity didn't exist yet. The state was the family. When the family gets changed, so will the entire state. And that is why Xia, when the last son got killed in a brutal civil war for being simply cartoonishly evil, Xia was completely wiped off the throne and the Shang dynasty took its place. The Shang weren't much better than the Xia, but they did start mastering bronze art to an to an extreme and invented China's earliest written language on bones. They believed the way a bone cracks could predict the future, don't ask. After the last son of the Shang dynasty made a literal pool or rather a lake of wine and a forest of meat, a new family gathered support, promised to be better and marched into the royal palace. Welcome to the Zhou dynasty. But also, hello Ba and Shu? They were two young kingdoms that were in insanely fertile valleys. And also, they made these massive alien looking bronze masks? Imagine China is creepy, okay? Back at the Zhou Dynasty, the new king had an amazing idea. He came up with the Mandate of Heaven. He basically argued that heaven gives you the legal license to rule the country, but if you get corrupt and start building luxury meat forests, heaven gets pissed, sends massive floods or famines and revokes your license. This gave anyone the rightful green light to violently overthrow you whenever they felt like it. For a good amount of time the Zhou were actually doing great. They built a stable system and things were so peaceful that it sparked a massive golden age of philosophy, becoming the dynasty that would eventually give us legendary thinkers like Confucius and Laozi. But remember that pesky eldest son rule? It struck again. Since the Zhou dynasty had grown rapidly, one person couldn't rule over the whole area anymore. So they employed local lords to give them the minute details. Which meant that the moment the eldest son deemed incompetent, the Zhou dynasty completely lost control of their local warlords. The local landlords stopped paying taxes and started attacking neighboring lords to grow their own region. Very quickly had in the North Jin, acting like the big heavy bully on the block, down south There was Chu, a massive, aggressive powerhouse that didn't care about Zhou's rule. On the east coast sat Qi, getting insanely rich off trade. And way out on the world western frontier was Qin, a bunch of battle-hardened fighters everyone else looked down on. The Zhou king tried to act tough and bring those booming neighborhoods to heel around 710 BC, but after a literal arrow in the shoulder, the Zhou king stopped bothering. The son of heaven getting clapped by his own subordinate completely destroyed the dynasty's street cred and everyone realized the king was a total joke. With zero central authority left to stop the warlords, the neighbors quickly started to outgrow the Zhou dynasty and the giant bully Jin eventually grew so much that they fractured from the inside out, splitting into three brand new states. Han, Zhao, which sounds way too much like Zhou dynasty, ...and Wei. Combined with the others, the region completely broke apart into a 200... That 50 year long 7 way battle royale. Before this battles were gentlemanly, small scale duels fought by wealthy nobles riding fancy bronze chariots who cared more about honor than body count. But from here on out, it was total, ruthless mobilization. Chariots were ditched for massive armies of hundreds of thousands of conscripted peasants that sometimes fought the same battle for two years in a row. They were armed with game-changing new technology, mass-produced iron swords that were stronger than old bronze, and the state-of-the-art crossbow, which featured an advanced bronze trigger mechanism that allowed a random, untrained farmer to pierce a noble's armor from a distance. Now, please quiet up, it's starting. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets now! Who's coming out on top in this battle royale? Let's find out shall we? For the first 150 years this deadly new tech resulted in a total stalemate. Seven equally matched kingdoms locked in a bloody deadlock where armies slaughtered thousands but the borders barely budged. Qin finally broke the game in 316 BC by conquering Ba and Chu, weaponizing their isolated, fertile valleys into an endless grain supply to fuel their ruthless automated war machine. Qin grew so terrifyingly strong In 256 BC they decided to finally clean up the map. They marched right into the royal capital, kicked the helpless Zhou king of the throne and stole the sacred bronze cauldrons that symbolized the mandate of heaven, officially killing the Zhou dynasty. By 230 BC Qin unleashed a lightning fast map wipe. They instantly crushed Han right next door, bribed the corrupt Zhao court into executing their own best general, and literally redirected the Yellow River to flood Wei into a watery surrender. Then they mobilized a massive 600,000 man army to tear apart the southern giant Chu, before sweeping north to easily steamroll Yan. By 221 BC the very last state standing, Qi, was so utterly terrified by the nationwide body count that they just opened their front gates and surrendered without firing a single arrow. Letting the king of Qin crown himself Qin Shi Huang, which means the first emperor. Qin turned from a small duchy to a kingdom and for the first time ever to an empire. Why is it an empire? Because he wanted to be emperor, not a king. And emperors can't have kingdoms. China was finally whole again and the Qin dynasty grew their borders massively. And about 15 years later it all fell apart and it was time for yet another civil war. You see, the first Chinese emperor was nothing like the Roman first emperor. Augustus cared for longevity while Qin Shi Huang only cared about suppressing, forced labor and immortality? It's no wonder he ordered the construction of a massive terracotta army to protect his mausoleum. Supposedly the 8000 big army with another 890 horses would transcend with the emperor to the afterlife to protect him there, to slay the demons you know and so he can rule there. Also, fun fact, since Qin Shi Huang wanted to live forever he spent his final years chugging toxic mercury pills that his court doctors swore were an elixir of immortality, instead their mercury drove him completely insane and killed him at the age of 49. Yikes. The moment his body was cold, his top officials hid his death, let his corpse literally rot in a wagon surrounded by rotting fish to mask the smell, and forged a letter forcing his smartest eldest son to commit suicide. They put an easily manipulated younger son on the throne, but the magic was gone. Within 3 years the entire empire woke up from its nightmare of forced labor, threw the mandate of heaven right back at the Qin's face and erupted into massive peasant rebellions. A random illiterate village sheriff named Liu Bang ended up leading the charge, marching straight into the imperial capital and burning Qin Shi Huang's glorious palace to the ground in 206 BC. Goodbye unified China. A terrifying, elite general named Xiang Yu, from the old royal family of the sovereign giant Chu, basically seized the ashes of the empire and appointed himself the supreme overlord. He sliced the country up into 18 separate puppet kingdoms, handing them out to his favorite generals while keeping the best land for himself. But remember our illiterate village sheriff Liu Bang? He was handed a rugged, isolated piece of territory out west called Han. No one was happy and at the absolute center of the civil war was the relationship between the two top dogs. The ultimate highborn military chief Xiang Yu and our cunning underdog peasant Liu Bang. At first they were technical allies, but Xiang Yu quickly realized Liu Bang was way too dangerous. He literally invited Liu Bang to a friendly dinner party, the infamous Hongmen feast, with a secret order for his guards to execute a sword dance and accidentally chop Liu Bang's head off mid meal. Liu Bang, caught on, faked a bathroom emergency and sprinted back to his army. From there the betrayal went into overdrive. Warlords who swore loyalty to Xiang Yu were bribed or outmaneuvered by Liu Bang. Yu's generals deserted left and right. Liu Bang's master strategist Han Xin systematically flipped or conquered the other puppet kingdoms from under Xiang Yu's nose. By playing the slow, dirty political long game while Xiang Yu relied on pure brute force, Liu Bang completely isolated his rival. By 202 BC, Liu Bang traps Xiang Yu at the At the battle of Gaixia, out of options and surrounded, the great general took his own life. Letting Liu Bang glue the pieces back together to officially spark the Han dynasty. A golden era so legendary that many Chinese people still call themselves Han Chinese. Oh and I guess there were these two still? Liu Bang was way too exhausted from fighting to deal with them. So he basically sent them a letter saying, look just say I'm technically your boss and we're cool. They agreed, but the peace didn't last forever. When Emperor Wu came around, it was time for expansion. He first expanded the empire westward and a couple years later threw a massive army at the southern kingdoms, absorbing and assimilating them, followed by expanding basically each direction once again. But expanding a massive empire in every direction gets insanely expensive. To pay for his massive war addiction, Emperor Wu opens up the legendary Silk Road, but the But the Silk Road didn't generate enough money. So, he also placed heavy government monopolies on basic everyday essentials like salt and iron, leaving the peasants dirt poor and restless. Over the next decade, the Han emperors grew increasingly weak, out of touch and easily manipulated by their plotting court officials. Speaking of which, let's talk about court life. If you think modern politics is toxic, ancient Chinese court life was on a completely different Because the eldest son rule kept creating new child emperors, the imperial palace became a literal snake pit run by two incredibly weird, power-hungry factions who spent all day backstabbing each other. On one side you had the emperor's in-laws. Every time a toddler became emperor, his mom would panic. She didn't want the regular politicians overthrowing her kid, so she did what any protective mom would do. She handed the top military and government positions to her own brothers and dad. These male relatives acted as regents, running the entire empire from the shadows and getting filthy rich while the actual emperor was still playing with toys. But on the other side of the palace corridors stood the eunuchs. These were castrated male servants who were the only men allowed to sleep inside a private Private Inner Palace to look out. After the royal family. Because they were the ones feeding the toddler emperors, playing with them and literally raising them, the young kids grew up trusting the eunuchs way more than their own power tripping uncles. This setup triggered a bloody multi-generational cycle of murder. The in-laws would try to bully the teenage emperor to gain benefits. The emperor would sneak into a back room with his favorite eunuchs to hatch a plan. The eunuchs would use the imperial guard to launch a midnight coup and execute the in-laws. And then the eunuchs would hold the real power until the emperor died and a brand new in-law family arrived to slaughter them all over again. Yeah, it's a mess. After celebrating the year zero, the Han dynasty was in trouble. By 9 AD, a smooth-talking, fiercely ambitious in-law named Wang Mang decided he was done playing the cycle. He had spent decades acting like the most humble, generous scholar in China to win over the public. And the second he saw us opening, he warmed his way into the inner circle. Poisoned, a toddler emperor stabbed the Han dynasty right in the back and snatched the crown for himself to start the Xin empire. Now Wang Mang was an ambitious emperor, but he was also kind of too ambitious. He wanted to build a proto-socialist utopia. So he claimed all land from the people and gave it to the government. And also abolished slavery unless you still enslaved people. Then out of revenge you would become a slave. But somehow the rich really didn't like that. So, the old Han royal family The Han dynasty was back baby, and so were the literal baby emperors. So while the in-laws and eunuchs were busy stabbing each other again, a massive storm was brewing on the outside. In the year 184 AD, a charismatic, doomsday cult leader named Zhang Jue looks at the corrupt government, looks at the starving population, and decides it's prime time for a revolution. Zhang Jue had spent years travelling the countryside pretending to cure plagues with magic water, building up a massive following of desperate, easily brainwashed people. He launches the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Peasants all across the country wore those yellow turbans and trashed the country. The elite palace officials absolutely soil themselves. I mean if anyone paid attention they could have seen this coming miles away, but whatever. Point is, they have no army ready and if they don't stop the rebellion it's literally game over. So they play the regional warlords card. Oh boy, I sure wonder if the same thing will happen that caused the country to fall apart about a thousand years ago. The warlords gain full military power, successfully slaughter the rebels in the millions, clean Clean their swords and while doing so So look at the helpless child emperor and say, wait a minute. Why are we taking orders from a child and a bunch of palace servants, when we have all the actual armies? A notoriously brutal, heavy-set warlord named Dong Zhao decided to answer that question first. He marches his battle-hardened army straight into the capital, hijacks the palace, kicks the current kid emperor off the throne and installs an even younger puppet toddler. And just to seal his villain status, he literally burns the glorious capital city to the ground. Dong Zhao thinks he is completely invincible, He was invincible because he just hired the ultimate undisputed god of war as his personal bodyguard. A towering, terrifying warrior named Lu Bu. Lu Bu rode a lightning fast horse named Red Hare, carried a massive crescent halberd and possessed maximum combat stats. In battle he was an absolute force of nature. It literally took multiple legendary heroes fighting him at the exact same time just to make him sweat. But while Lu Bu had maxed out attack power, his loyalty stats were entirely in the gutter. He was a complete wildcard who changed sides constantly for personal gain. The rest of the regional warlords, furious that Dong Zhao stole the emperor, formed a massive, chaotic coalition and realized they couldn't beat Lu Bu with swords. So they beat him with… Politics. They successfully bribed and manipulated Lu Bu into turning on his own boss. Lu Bu straight up assassinated Dong Zhao, leaving the capital in absolute shambles. Before Lu Bu himself wandered off to betray like 5 other people, the coalition wanted to get rid of him first. Lu Bu barricaded himself into his stronghold city and wanted to wait to see Cao Cao. But the legendary Cao Cao had a better plan. He diverted the local rivers to flood the city, causing a rebellion from within and days later… Lu Bu's officials tied him to a chair and delivered him personally to Cao Cao. Lu Bu promised to definitely not betray him, but Cao Cao didn't buy it. He ordered his guards to strangle Lu Bu and chopped off his head, just to be sure. With Dong Zhao dead and Lu Bu out of the picture, the Han dynasty completely dissolved into absolute nothingness. Oh my god, again guys? What is it with you and civil wars? I'll make it short this time, because I don't want to do this again. Boom, bop, pow. Imagine what just happened is basically everyone killing each other and kingdoms absorbing each other as well and here we are. Welcome to the Three Kingdoms period. In the north we have Wei, led by the brilliant, poetry-writing warlord Cao Cao. In the west sits Shu, led by Liu Bei, a charismatic former shoe seller who claimed he has royal blood. And down south along the Yangtze river is Wu, led by Sun Quan. Because Wu is sitting on an absolute gold mine of natural resources, their economy is booming. Anyway, for the next few decades these three states try absolutely everything to wipe each other off the map. They launch massive invasions, burn entire navies at the legendary Battle of Red Cliffs, and deploy brilliant, fan-feather-waving strategists to outsmart each other. But no matter how many millions of soldiers they threw into the meat grinder, the border is barely budged. It is a total, bloody exhausting three-way stalemate. Oh boy, father, please tell me who wins this legendary battle royale. Well, little LeBoubou, the truth is, in war, there are no winners. Alright, none of the three players won. While the three royal families are entirely focused on stabbing each other in the front, a wealthy family inside the state of Wei was ready for a coup. They dethroned the king and basically blitzkrieg Shu and Wu whole. China is finally whole again. Guys, seriously? At least let me finish my damn sentence! See, the first emperor of Jin made a classic, terrible rookie mistake. To secure his throne, he hands out massive private armies to dozens of his royal uncles and cousins. Oh double boy, I sure wonder if handing out giant armies to competitive family members could cause an issue in the future. The moment the emperor dies, kaboom, all those uncles immediately turn their weapons on each other in a catastrophic 16 year long broil battle royale called the war of the eight princes. They tear the newly unified empire to shreds from the inside out, completely bankrupting the state and destroying their own military. Sensing total blood in the water, five massive nomadic tribes from the northern steppes look down at the burning, defenseless country, smash right through the Great Wall and conquer the entire northern half of China. Because of this, for the next 250 years, the north and south are completely fractured, entering a chaotic dark age of short-lived kingdoms, changing dynasties and endless warfare. I mean, you know, you get the gist by now. But the dream of a unified empire never truly dies. By 581 AD, a battle-hardened northern general named Zhang Jian finally crushes the rival states, reunites the north and south and sparks the ultra-short but hyper-efficient Sui dynasty. Determined to make the country never fracture again, the Sui emperor forces millions of peasants into brutal hard labor to build the Grand Canal. A colossal, 1800 kilometers artificial river connecting the yellow north to the wealthy south, creating a literal economic superhighway. But remember what happens when you force millions of peasants into brutal labor? The people throw the mandate of heaven right back in your face. In 618 AD the Sui dynasty is violently overthrown after just 37 years and to no one's surprise shattered into a million pieces again. But their economic superhighway is left completely intact, god bless. 10 years of civil war happens again and at last the Tang dynasty reigns from here on out. The Tang took everything the previous dynasties built and went full economy focus. They were good, but a bit too in love. Specifically with Wu Zetian. We made a video of her story where I absolutely botched each Chinese pronunciation, so watch it if you want to make fun of me in the comment section. Anyway, she took over the entire empire, became the first female emperor, and then died and the place became Tang again. Boring! Where are the wars? We want more drama, more China falling apart! Fine, okay. The Tang were pretty good at their job, but they did lose a lot of land and then regained it. Oh, oh god, not again guys, what the hell? In 907 AD, a frustrated military governor decided he was done taking orders, assassinated the last Tang emperor and completely shattered the country into yet another chaotic mess. This time it was the 5 dynasties and 10 kingdoms period. And most interestingly, after the shatter, the battlefield grew. In the north, looking down at this burning dumpster fire from the windswept steppes, was a guy named Abaoji. He had just united the fierce nomadic Khitan tribes, declared himself Grand Khan and founded the Liao dynasty. Now normally nomadic tribes would just wait for China to collapse, ride in to plunder some grain and head back home. But Abaoji was here for the long run. He quickly solidified the mountainous border of northern China and taxed the locals to supply his massive army of horseback archers. Meanwhile down below, one of the warlords in the Song dynasty was fighting for their lives. They captured neighbor after neighbor and finally managed to reunite China yet again. Aside from the northern part. The Grand Khan had taken the high grounds in the mountains and the Song dynasty just wasn't strong enough to beat them. Don't get me wrong, they were rich. But money can't stop these horses from approaching rapidly. They ended up paying the Liao just to not get invaded. And that was the state of affairs till 1115. Enter the Jurchens. They were a rugged forest people living even further north who were sick and tired of being bullied by the Liao. In 1115 their leader Aguda declared, screw this, started the Jin Dynasty and launched a massive rebellion against the Liao. The Song dynasty, looked up from their massive piles of porcelain money, saw the Liao getting punched in the face and thought, this is our chance! If we team up with these new Jin guys, we can finally get our mountains back! It was the ultimate, the enemy of my enemy is my friend play. They signed a secret alliance, attacked the Liao from both sides, and by 1125, the great Liao dynasty was completely wiped off the map. The Song Dynasty was hyped. They were high-fiving, celebrating and getting ready to move back into their old northern territories. But they forgot one tiny detail. They might have won, but they had also shown the terrifyingly powerful Jin army exactly how weak and defenseless the Song military actually was. The Jin looked at the Song, looked at the empty mountain borders and realized, wait, the Liao were protecting you guys from us, and now they are gone. Instantly the Jin broke the alliance, turned their horses south and unleashed a lightning fast invasion into the flat Chinese plains. By 1127, within two years, they marched straight into the glorious Song capital of Kaifeng, kidnapped the Song emperor, kidnapped his dad, the former emperor, stole the entire royal treasury and dragged them all north in chains. So now the map is split again. Jin in the north, Song in the south, and most terrifyingly, in a small-time Mongol tribe, a guy named Temujin was just born. And he is about to rename himself to Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan went after the Jin first in 1211. The Jin emperors totally underestimated him, thinking the Mongols were just another nomadic nuisance. They were dead wrong. The Mongols bypassed the Great Wall, utilized captured Chinese engineers to build terrifying siege weapons and by 1215 they absolutely leveled the Jin capital of Zhongdu, which Kinda makes China whole again, since, you know, the other half just got literally nuked by horsemen. But also, is this the end of China? How can they stop this terrifying Khan army? Well, the Song possessed a massive navy and a landscape covered in wide rivers, muddy rice paddies and heavily fortified mountain castles. The absolute worst terrain imaginable for Mongol cavalry. This turned into one of the longest, most brutal campaigns in Mongol history, dragging on for over 40 years. This endless meat-grinder of bodies changed when Kublai Khan, Genghis's grandson, took the reins. Realizing horses wouldn't cut it, Kublai built his own massive navy, hired Middle Eastern engineers to construct giant counterweight trebuchets that hurled massive rocks and fought a grueling five-year siege just to capture the twin fortress cities of Xianyang and Fengcheng, The ultimate gateways to the south of China. With the gateway smashed, the Mongols poured down the Yangtze River. In 1279, the final showdown happened at the naval battle of Yamen. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, the Song navy was annihilated. Seeing that all hope was lost, a loyal court official grabbed the seven-year-old boy emperor because of course there were still child emperors ruining everything and jumped off a cliff into the ocean, ending the Song dynasty forever. For the first time in the entire history of China, nomadic outsiders didn't just conquer a piece of the map, no, they conquered the entire place. Kublai Khan crowned himself emperor and founded the Yuan dynasty, ruling this massive empire from his new capital in Beijing. And finally, the Mongol Empire was whole again... Wait a minute, no. Whatever, you get it. The Mongols set up a strict system where Mongols were at the top and the sovereign Chinese were at the absolute bottom. And to make things even worse, they kept printing paper money until the economy literally caught fire. By the 1340s, a terrible combination of massive plagues, catastrophic Yellow River floods, there it is again, and starving peasants triggered the… no, not that one, we already did that one… yeah, the Red Turban Rebellion. Out of the chaos of this time emerged another absolute underdog, a dirt poor, illiterate orphan monk named Zhu Yuanzhang. He joined the rebels, proved to be a tactical genius, marched straight into what we call nowadays Beijing in 1368, and kicked the Mongols right back into the northern steppes. Say goodbye to the Chinese Yuan and hello to the Ming Dynasty. The Ming decided they were done with outsiders. They rebuilt the Great Wall into the massive stone monster you see today, just to ensure the Mongols never came back. They also went full isolationist mode, aside from a literal treasure boat that the Emperor flexed with to the Africans out of all people. But ahem. Remember the oldest son rule? Yep, it came back to bite them. By the early 1600s the Ming emperors grew weak, locked themselves inside the forbidden palace and let corrupt court officials run the state into bankruptcy. When a massive famine hit and the peasants revolted yet again, the Ming emperors literally kept killing themselves instead of reorganizing and fighting back. So a desperate Ming general made the ultimate boneheaded play. He opened the gates of the Great Wall to invite a Manchu rider. This riding group of warriors from the north called the Manchus to help crush the rebels. Yeah, you know where this is going. The Manchus walked through the gates, crushed the rebels, looked at the empty Ming throne and said, thank you, we'll take it from here. Welcome to the Qing Dynasty. The Manchus forced all Chinese men to shave their foreheads and wear their hair in a long braid called a queue to prove loyalty. If you refused, you literally lost your head. Despite the edgy start, the Qing actually grew the empire to its absolute biggest geographical Swallowing up Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Mongolia. Just look how massive they grew the empire. Things were finally stabilizing and as long as you got the state approved haircut, you lived happily ever after. Oi mate, you want drugs? By the 1800s Europe had industrialized and British merchants arrived with a highly addictive drug called opium. When the Qing tried to ban it, the British sent modern steamships and gunned down the ancient Chinese navy, sparking the Opium Wars. I promise we will make a video about it in the future, stop asking about it, please. The Brits stole Hong Kong in 1842 and kicked off a century of humiliating treaties. Combine foreign invasions with the most devastating civil war in human history, the Taiping Rebellion, led by a guy who genuinely believed he was the literal younger brother of Jesus Christ, and the Qing Dynasty was terminal. It was still sorta whole, but for the next 50 years, the Qing Dynasty would grow weaker, smaller and the rebellions kept trying to create their own country. By 1908, the dynasty cycle reached its ultimate poetic end. A two-year-old toddler named... Puyi was crowned emperor. With a child on the throne, a bankrupt economy and a military that had completely lost faith in the Mandate of Heaven, yes it still exists, a wave of modern revolution swept the country. On February 12th 1912 the last child emperor officially abdicated, destroying the 4000 year old dynastic cycle forever and replacing the family owned states with a modern nation state. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how this big mistake happened. A mysterious country place with a massive history of bloody battle royales, glowing claypots and incompetent eldest sons finally, officially got named China. But wait, there is one more falling apart segment that we have to tackle. Ready for lucky number 7? Because there was no real boss in Beijing after the last child emperor, the entire country fractured into dozens of… I mean, you know what it turned into. You had generals nicknamed Dogmeat General and the Jade Marshal printing their own money, maintaining their own massive private armies and blasting each other for control of different provinces. All kinds of funky new ideologies started popping up, which naturally caused many clashes. This kept going and was only briefly paused by the invasion of Japan during World War 2. The moment the Japanese were defeated, it was right back to fighting for who gets to lead the country. Finally, in 1949, under Mao Zedong, the People's Republic of China was founded. And that, my friends, is how China fell apart and glued back together 7 whole times. This video was insanely complicated to make and simplify. So please, subscribe! And if you want to do even more, consider becoming a member. Thank you for watching and see you in the next video. Bye bye!