Changsha has a history of more than 2,400 years of urban construction, and the name “Changsha” first appeared in the Hunan tofu Zhou Shu written in the pre-Qin era. Changsha is now one of the core cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Belt and Road Initiative, and also a pioneering area for China-Africa economic and trade cooperation. In the 2nd century AD, historian Ying Shao wrote that the Qin use of the name “Changsha” for the area was a continuance of its old name.
The name originally described the area. The Chu metropolis was known as Qingyang. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Changsha developed with the proliferation of Longshan culture, although there is no firm evidence of such a link. Later Chinese legends related that the Flame and Yellow Emperors visited the area.
Sima Qian’s history states that the Yellow Emperor granted his eldest son Shaohao the lands of Changsha and its neighbors. Yue culture spread into the area around Changsha. During the succeeding Warring States Period, Chu took control of Changsha. Its capital, Qingyang, became an important southern outpost of the kingdom. Changsha was a staging post for expeditions south into Guangdong that led to its conquest and the establishment of the Nanyue kingdom. Linxiang was the capital of the kingdom of Changsha.
Linxiang had city walls to protect it against uprisings and invasions. The famous Mawangdui tombs were constructed between 186 and 165 BC. 1970s, was found to have been very well preserved. More importantly, the tombs included the earliest surviving copies of the Tao Te Ching and other important literary and historical documents. Following the turmoil of the Three Kingdoms, Emperor Wu of Jin granted Changsha to the sixth son of a general of the imperial family named Sima Yi. Under the Tang, Changsha prospered as a center of trade between central China and Southeast Asia but suffered during the Anshi Rebellion, when it fell to the rebels. During the Mongol conquest of the Southern Song, Tanzhou was fiercely defended by the local Song troops.
After the city finally fell, the defenders committed mass suicide. Changsha was the capital of Hunan and prospered as one of China’s chief rice markets. During the Taiping Rebellion, the city was besieged by the rebels in 1852 or 1854 for three months but never fell. The 1903 Treaty of Shanghai between the Qing and Japanese empires opened the city to foreign trade effective 1904. Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, began his political career in Changsha.