Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Lesson Information

Title:: Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms
Period:: 907–960 CE as the principal transition from Tang to Song; some regional kingdoms continued until 979
Previous:: Tang Dynasty
Next:: Song Dynasty

Lesson Orientation

The fall of the Tang Dynasty in 907 did not immediately produce a new unified empire.

Tang political authority had already been weakening for generations. Regional military governors commanded armies, collected revenue, and exercised increasing independence from the imperial court.

When the Tang ruling house finally disappeared, these regional political structures became the foundations of new states.

In northern China, five dynasties succeeded one another rapidly between 907 and 960.

At the same time, numerous kingdoms ruled southern, southeastern, and southwestern regions.

Historians traditionally refer to the most important of these southern and regional states as the Ten Kingdoms.

The resulting political system can be represented broadly as:

Tang decentralization → regional military states → Five Dynasties in the north + regional kingdoms in the south → Song consolidation

Political fragmentation did not mean economic or cultural stagnation.

Several southern kingdoms experienced substantial commercial growth, urban development, agricultural expansion, artistic innovation, and technological change.

The period therefore helped create many of the economic and institutional conditions later associated with the Song Dynasty.

Learning Objectives

After completing this lesson, the learner should be able to:

Explain why political fragmentation followed the fall of Tang.
Describe the role of regional military governors in the late Tang and post-Tang political order.
Identify the Five Dynasties that succeeded one another in northern China.
Explain why northern dynasties changed so rapidly.
Describe the broader political structure represented by the Ten Kingdoms.
Explain why southern China experienced substantial economic development during the period.
Describe the importance of Wuyue and other regional kingdoms.
Explain the relationship between the Later Jin and the Khitan Liao Dynasty.
Describe developments in commerce, printing, painting, and regional culture.
Explain how Later Zhou helped prepare the political conditions inherited by Song.
Describe how Zhao Kuangyin founded the Song Dynasty in 960.
Explain why Chinese political reunification was not complete in 960.

What Was the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period?

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period followed the collapse of the Tang Dynasty in 907.

The period is conventionally dated from 907 to 960 when the emphasis is placed upon the five northern dynasties and the founding of the Song Dynasty.

Several regional kingdoms, however, survived beyond 960.

The final major independent regime associated with the era was conquered in 979.

Two Political Patterns

The term combines two related but different political developments.

In northern China:

five short-lived dynasties succeeded one another rapidly.

In southern and western China:

several regional kingdoms existed at the same time and often survived for considerably longer periods.

The period was therefore not one continuous civil war.

Political conditions differed substantially by region.

The Collapse of Tang Authority

The political fragmentation of the tenth century had deep roots in the later Tang Dynasty.

After the An Lushan Rebellion, regional military governors gained greater control over armies, taxation, administration, and local political networks.

The Tang court remained symbolically important, but its practical authority varied considerably across the empire.

Late Tang Rebellions

Large rebellions during the ninth century further weakened the dynasty.

The Huang Chao Rebellion devastated important regions and damaged the authority of the central government.

Military commanders who helped suppress rebellion often gained even greater regional power.

Zhu Wen

One of these commanders was Zhu Wen.

Zhu Wen eventually gained control over the Tang imperial court.

In 907, he removed the final Tang emperor and established a new dynasty.

The Tang Dynasty had formally ended.

Military Governors and Regional Power

Regional military authority was one of the most important political inheritances from the late Tang.

Military governors could control:

armies;
fortified cities;
tax revenues;
local officials;
transportation routes;
agricultural territories.

When the Tang central government disappeared, these regional power bases could become independent states.

A Structural Problem

A ruler who wanted to control northern China needed powerful armies.

Yet the commanders who controlled those armies could themselves become rivals for the throne.

This created a recurring political cycle:

military commander gains power → establishes dynasty → rival commanders challenge dynasty → new ruling house emerges

This helps explain the rapid succession of northern dynasties.

The Five Dynasties

Between 907 and 960, five dynasties succeeded one another in the northern imperial heartland.

Later Liang: 907–923
Later Tang: 923–936
Later Jin: 936–947
Later Han: 947–951
Later Zhou: 951–960

These dynasties did not control all territory formerly governed by Tang.

Their importance came from their control of much of the northern political heartland and their claims to imperial legitimacy.

Why the Word "Later"?

Several of these dynasties adopted names already used by much earlier ruling houses.

Historians therefore add the word Later to distinguish them from earlier Liang, Tang, Jin, Han, and Zhou dynasties or states.

Later Liang

Zhu Wen established the Later Liang Dynasty in 907 after ending Tang rule.

His new government controlled important parts of northern China but faced powerful rivals.

The new dynasty lacked the broad prestige and political reach once held by the Tang.

Continued Competition

Several military regimes refused to recognize Later Liang authority.

Warfare therefore continued throughout the north.

One of the dynasty's principal rivals was based in the Shanxi region and eventually defeated Later Liang.

Later Tang

In 923, a rival northern regime defeated Later Liang and established the Later Tang Dynasty.

The rulers adopted the Tang dynastic name in part because political legitimacy remained closely connected with memories of the earlier Tang imperial order.

A Militarized Political System

Like the Later Liang, the Later Tang depended heavily upon military commanders and regional political networks.

Internal rivalries remained dangerous.

In 936, another military commander challenged the dynasty and established a new ruling house with assistance from a powerful northern neighbor.

Later Jin and the Khitan

The Later Jin Dynasty was established in 936.

Its rise demonstrated that the political struggles of northern China were connected with a much larger Inner Asian political system.

The founder of Later Jin received important military support from the Khitan, whose rulers had established the Liao Dynasty.

The Sixteen Prefectures

Later Jin transferred strategically important northern territories to the Liao.

These territories included areas controlling important approaches between the northern frontier and the Central Plains.

Control of this region would remain a major strategic problem for later Chinese dynasties.

Liao Intervention

Relations between Later Jin and the Liao eventually deteriorated.

Liao forces invaded and destroyed the Later Jin regime in 947.

Northern Chinese political history could therefore no longer be understood only as competition among governments based inside China.

Later Han and Later Zhou

Later Han

The Later Han Dynasty emerged in 947 after the collapse of Later Jin.

It survived only a few years.

In 951, another military leader replaced it and established the Later Zhou Dynasty.

Later Zhou

Later Zhou was the final of the Five Dynasties.

Its rulers attempted to strengthen central government, increase military effectiveness, and expand control over neighboring territories.

These reforms helped create a stronger northern state.

The Song Dynasty would inherit much of this political and military base in 960.

The Ten Kingdoms

While northern dynasties replaced one another rapidly, several regional states developed across southern, southeastern, southwestern, and central China.

Historians traditionally identify ten principal kingdoms:

Wu;
Wuyue;
Min;
Chu;
Former Shu;
Later Shu;
Jingnan;
Southern Han;
Southern Tang;
Northern Han.

The label should not be interpreted too literally.

More than ten political regimes existed during the broader period, and the traditional list reflects later historical classification.

Different Political Conditions

Many southern kingdoms were more geographically stable than the rapidly changing northern dynasties.

Some ruling houses remained in power for decades.

This stability allowed regional governments to invest in agriculture, cities, trade, infrastructure, religion, and cultural production.

Southern Political and Economic Development

One of the most important long-term developments of the period was the continued rise of southern China.

This process had begun centuries earlier during the Period of Division and continued through the Sui and Tang.

By the tenth century, southern regions contained large populations, productive agricultural zones, major cities, commercial networks, and experienced regional governments.

Agriculture

Regional governments invested in:

irrigation;
water control;
land reclamation;
agricultural expansion;
local infrastructure.

Commerce

Southern cities participated in extensive river, coastal, and maritime commerce.

Merchants connected regional economies with one another and with markets across East and Southeast Asia.

A Larger Historical Shift

Political fragmentation therefore accelerated a long-term change in Chinese economic geography.

The south was becoming increasingly central to the economy of the future Song Empire.

Case Study: Wuyue

The kingdom of Wuyue provides a useful example of the regional development that occurred during the period.

Wuyue controlled important areas in the lower Yangtze delta and southeastern coastal region.

Its rulers governed one of the most commercially and agriculturally productive regions of China.

Water Management

The region depended heavily upon systems of waterways, irrigation, flood control, and coastal management.

Government support for hydraulic infrastructure helped strengthen agricultural production and commerce.

Urban and Commercial Development

Cities in the Wuyue region benefited from river and maritime trade.

These commercial connections would remain important under the Song.

Buddhist Patronage

Wuyue rulers also supported Buddhist institutions, temples, sculpture, and religious construction.

Peaceful Incorporation

Wuyue survived beyond the founding of the Song Dynasty.

Its ruler eventually accepted Song authority in 978 rather than fighting a destructive final war.

The Liao Dynasty and the Northern Frontier

The political history of the tenth century also included the rise of a powerful state beyond and across the traditional northern frontier.

The Khitan established the Liao Dynasty in the early tenth century.

The Liao developed a sophisticated political system capable of governing both mobile pastoral populations and settled agricultural communities.

A Major Regional Power

The Liao was not simply a frontier raiding force.

It was a durable state with:

emperors;
administrative institutions;
cities;
military organization;
diplomatic systems;
agricultural territories;
international relationships.

Its control over important northern territories would significantly shape the strategic environment inherited by the Song Dynasty.

Government and Institutional Continuity

Political fragmentation did not erase the administrative traditions of the Tang state.

Northern dynasties and southern kingdoms continued to use many established forms of government.

These included:

taxation;
household registration;
local officials;
written law;
bureaucratic offices;
military administration;
state ritual.

Regional Variation

Governments adapted these institutions to their own political conditions.

Some regimes were heavily dominated by military commanders.

Others developed stronger civil administrations and commercial revenue systems.

Institutional Survival

This continuity is important because the Song Dynasty did not have to rebuild government from nothing.

It inherited functioning regional institutions that could be absorbed, reorganized, and centralized.

Economy and Commerce

The tenth century witnessed substantial commercial activity despite political fragmentation.

Regional Markets

Cities remained centers of:

craft production;
food distribution;
government administration;
religion;
long-distance trade.

River and Maritime Trade

Southern kingdoms benefited from extensive river systems and access to coastal shipping routes.

Maritime exchange connected Chinese ports with the Korean Peninsula, Japan, Southeast Asia, and wider Asian trade networks.

Commercial Innovation

Earlier Tang developments in commercial credit and money transfer continued to influence the economy.

Expanding trade increased demand for flexible systems of payment, accounting, and financial exchange.

These developments would accelerate dramatically under the Song.

Printing and the Expansion of Written Culture

Woodblock printing had already developed during the Tang period.

During the tenth century, printing became increasingly important for government, religion, scholarship, and literature.

Government Printing

States could use printing to reproduce texts needed for administration and education.

Buddhist Printing

Buddhist institutions were important producers and users of printed texts.

Religious scriptures, images, prayers, and devotional materials could be reproduced more efficiently than through hand copying alone.

Knowledge at Larger Scale

Printing lowered the cost of reproducing identical texts in significant quantities.

The technology would become one of the foundations of the extraordinary expansion of books and education during the Song Dynasty.

Art and Cultural Development

Political division did not prevent major artistic development.

Regional courts became important centers of painting, poetry, religious art, music, and scholarship.

Landscape Painting

The tenth century became especially important in the development of Chinese landscape painting.

Artists explored mountains, rivers, forests, distance, atmosphere, and the relationship between human figures and the natural world.

Regional Courts

Southern courts supported painters, poets, musicians, and scholars.

Competition among courts could therefore encourage cultural patronage even when political unity was absent.

Transition into Song Culture

Several artistic traditions developed during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period became major foundations of Song visual culture.

The Rise of Song

By the middle of the tenth century, the Later Zhou had created one of the strongest northern governments since the fall of Tang.

Its rulers strengthened the military, improved administration, and resumed expansion against neighboring states.

In 960, a Later Zhou military commander named Zhao Kuangyin took power.

He established the Song Dynasty and became Emperor Taizu.

A Different Political Strategy

The new Song government recognized one of the central problems that had repeatedly destabilized the Five Dynasties:

military commanders with independent armies could overthrow dynasties.

Song rulers therefore worked to reduce the political independence of military commanders and strengthen civil administration.

This lesson from the preceding half-century became fundamental to Song political development.

Reunification Was a Process

The founding of the Song Dynasty in 960 is often used as the conventional ending point of the Five Dynasties.

Yet China was not instantly reunified in 960.

Several regional kingdoms remained independent.

Song rulers gradually conquered or absorbed these states over the following years.

Southern and regional governments fell one by one through a combination of military campaigns and negotiated submission.

Northern Han, the final major independent regime associated with the traditional Ten Kingdoms framework, was conquered in 979.

An Incomplete Territorial Restoration

Even after 979, the Song did not recreate the full territorial extent of the earlier Tang Empire.

The Liao Dynasty continued to control strategically important northern territories.

The new Song political world was therefore one of renewed internal consolidation within a larger East Asian system containing several powerful states.

How Do We Know?

Historians reconstruct the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period through written histories, inscriptions, archaeology, art, religious materials, and evidence from neighboring states.

Historical Records

Historical works preserve information about rulers, military campaigns, dynastic succession, diplomacy, officials, rebellion, and political institutions.

Regional Evidence

Because no single state controlled all of China, historians must compare evidence produced by different regional governments.

Archaeology

Cities, tombs, ceramics, coins, religious structures, fortifications, and other remains provide evidence concerning regional economies and political cultures.

Art

Surviving paintings and later copies of tenth-century works provide evidence about court life, artistic patronage, landscape traditions, and cultural change.

Religious Evidence

Buddhist temples, pagodas, printed texts, inscriptions, sculpture, and devotional objects reveal the continuing importance of religious institutions.

International Evidence

The Liao Dynasty and neighboring East Asian states generated their own records and material evidence.

The period is therefore reconstructed through:

historical texts + regional records + archaeology + art + inscriptions + religious materials + international evidence

Think Like a Historian

Consider the following question:

If China was politically fragmented between Tang and Song, should the period be interpreted primarily as a collapse?

Political instability was real.

Northern ruling houses changed rapidly, warfare remained common, and regional military commanders frequently determined political outcomes.

Yet other developments occurred simultaneously.

During the period:

southern agriculture expanded;
regional trade increased;
maritime commerce grew;
cities continued to develop;
printing expanded;
landscape painting flourished;
regional governments developed effective administrative institutions;
the economic importance of southern China continued to increase.

Historians should therefore distinguish between:

political fragmentation and economic, cultural, or technological decline.

The absence of one empire did not prevent significant historical development.

Historical Significance

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period was far more than a short interruption between Tang and Song.

Its historical significance includes:

revealing the political consequences of late Tang military decentralization;
demonstrating the instability created by powerful regional armies;
continuing the long-term economic rise of southern China;
encouraging regional agricultural and commercial development;
expanding maritime and river-based trade;
supporting important developments in printing;
producing major innovations in landscape painting and court culture;
strengthening regional administrative systems later absorbed by Song;
establishing the Liao as a durable northern power;
providing the political lessons that shaped Song centralization.

The period also demonstrates that the fall of a large dynasty does not necessarily destroy the institutions or economy of the society it once governed.

Tang political unity disappeared, but many Tang institutions survived at regional levels.

These institutions continued to evolve until the Song incorporated them into a new imperial system.

The broader historical sequence is therefore:

Tang decentralization → regional states → economic and institutional development → Song consolidation

Key Takeaways

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period followed the collapse of the Tang Dynasty in 907.
Five short-lived dynasties ruled much of northern China between 907 and 960: Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and Later Zhou.
The rapid succession of northern dynasties reflected the political power of regional armies and military commanders.
Several southern and western kingdoms were more stable and survived for decades.
Southern China continued to grow economically through agriculture, cities, river transport, and maritime commerce.
Wuyue became an important example of stable regional government, commercial development, water management, and Buddhist patronage.
The Khitan Liao Dynasty became a major northern power and controlled territories that later became strategically important to Song.
Printing, painting, scholarship, religion, and commerce continued to develop despite political fragmentation.
Zhao Kuangyin founded the Song Dynasty in 960 after taking control of the Later Zhou political system.
Reunification was gradual: several kingdoms survived beyond 960, and Northern Han was not conquered until 979.

Key Terms

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms: The period of political fragmentation following the fall of Tang, conventionally centered on the years 907–960, although several regional kingdoms survived until 979.
Military Governor: A regional military commander who could control armies, taxation, and administration and whose political power contributed to the fragmentation of late Tang and post-Tang China.
Later Liang: The first of the Five Dynasties, established by Zhu Wen in 907 after he ended Tang rule.
Later Tang: The second of the Five Dynasties, ruling the northern political heartland from 923 to 936.
Later Jin: The third of the Five Dynasties, established with important Khitan military assistance and ruling from 936 to 947.
Later Han: The fourth of the Five Dynasties, a short-lived northern ruling house lasting from 947 to 951.
Later Zhou: The final of the Five Dynasties, ruling from 951 to 960 and providing much of the immediate political foundation inherited by the Song.
Ten Kingdoms: A traditional grouping of important regional states that governed southern, western, and other territories during the post-Tang period.
Wuyue: A prosperous regional kingdom in southeastern China known for commercial development, water management, and Buddhist patronage.
Khitan: A people of Inner Asian origin whose rulers established the powerful Liao Dynasty.
Liao Dynasty: A major Khitan-led state founded in the early tenth century that became one of the most important political powers north of the Song Empire.
Sixteen Prefectures: Strategically important northern territories transferred to the Liao during the Later Jin period and later sought by the Song.
Woodblock Printing: A method of reproducing texts and images from carved wooden blocks that expanded substantially during the Tang and post-Tang periods.
Zhao Kuangyin: A Later Zhou military commander who founded the Song Dynasty in 960 and became Emperor Taizu.
Song Dynasty: The dynasty founded in 960 that gradually absorbed most of the remaining regional states and established a more centralized civil government.

Continue the Story

The founding of the Song Dynasty in 960 began a new effort to reconstruct centralized imperial government.

Song rulers inherited one of the most important political lessons of the preceding century:

powerful military commanders could defend an empire, but they could also destroy dynasties.

The Song therefore placed greater emphasis upon civil administration, centralized control of the military, examination-based official recruitment, taxation, and bureaucratic government.

At the same time, the Song inherited a rapidly changing economy shaped by southern agricultural development, commercial expansion, urban growth, printing, and long-distance trade.

Next Lesson: Song Dynasty

Examine how the Song consolidated most of China, expanded civil government, transformed the examination system, accelerated commercial and technological development, and governed within an East Asian political system that also included powerful Liao, Western Xia, and Jin states.

Further Study

The following institutional resources provide additional information about political fragmentation, regional culture, economic development, art, and the transition from Tang to Song.