By Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC), Hubei was home to the powerful state of Chu. Chu was nominally a tributary state of Zhou Dynasty (1046-256BC), and it was an extension of the Chinese civilization that had emerged some centuries before in the north; but it was also culturally unique, and was a powerful state that held onto much of the middle and lower Yangtze River, with power extending northwards into the North China Plain.
During the Warring States Period (475-221BC) Chu became the major adversary of the upstart state of Qin to the northwest (in what is now Shaanxi Province), which began to assert itself by outward expansionism. As wars between Qin and Chu ensued, Chu lost more and more land: first its dominance over the Sichuan Basin, then (in 278 BC) its heartland, which corresponds to modern Hubei. In 223 BC Qin chased down the remnants of the Chu regime, which had fled eastwards, as part of Qin's bid for the conquest of all China.
Qin founded the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC) in 221 BC, the first unified state in China. Qin was succeeded by the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD) in 206 BC, which established the province (zhou) of Jingzhou in what is now Hubei and Hunan. Near the end of the Han Dynasty in the beginning of the 3rd century, Jingzhou was ruled by regional warlord Liu Biao. After his death, Liu Biao's realm was surrendered by his successors to Cao Cao, a powerful warlord who had conquered nearly all of north China; but in the Battle of Red Cliffs, warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan drove Cao Cao out of Jingzhou. Liu Bei then took control of Jingzhou; he went on to conquer Yizhou (the Sichuan Basin), but lost Jingzhou to Sun Quan; for the next few decades Jingzhou was controlled by the Wu Kingdom (222-280), ruled by Sun Quan and his successors.
The incursion of northern nomadic peoples into northern China at the beginning of the 4th century began nearly three centuries of the division of China into a nomad-ruled north and a Han Chinese-ruled south. Hubei, which is in southern China, remained under southern rule for this entire period, until the reunification of China by the Sui Dynasty (581-618) in 589. In 617 the Tang Dynasty (618-907) replaced Sui, and later on the Tang Dynasty placed what is now Hubei under several circuits: Jiangnanxi Circuit in the south; Shannandong Circuit in the west, and Huainan Circuit in the east. After the Tang Dynasty disintegrated in the 10th century, Hubei came under the control of several regional regimes: Jingnan in the center, Wu (902-937) to the east, and the Five Dynasties (907-960) to the north.
The Song Dynasty (960-1279) reunified China in 982 and placed most of Hubei into Jinghubei Circuit, a longer version of Hubei's current name. Mongols conquered China fully in 1279, and under their rule the province of Huguang was established, covering Hubei, Hunan, and parts of Guangdong and Guangxi.
The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) drove out the Mongols in 1368, and their version of Huguang province was smaller, and corresponded almost entirely to the modern provinces of Hubei and Hunan combined. The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) which had conquered China in 1644 split Huguang into the modern provinces of Hubei and Hunan in 1664. The Qing Dynasty continued to maintain a viceroy of Huguang, however; one of the most famous was Zhang Zhidong, whose modernizing reforms made Hubei (especially Wuhan) into a prosperous center of commerce and industry. The Huangshi and Daye area, south-east of Wuhan, became an important center of mining and metallurgy.
In 1911 the Wuchang Uprising led by Sun Yat-sen took place in modern-day Wuhan, overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and establishing the Republic of China (1912-1949). During World War II the eastern parts of Hubei were conquered and occupied by Japan while the western parts remained under Chinese control.
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