The
Sixteen Kingdoms, less commonly the
Sixteen States, was a period in
Chinese history from 304 to 439 in which the political order of
northern China fractured into a series of short-lived sovereign states, most of which were founded by
ethnic minority peoples who had settled in northern China during the preceding centuries and participated in the overthrow of the
Western Jin Dynasty in the early 4th century. The period ended with the unification of northern China by the
Northern Wei in the early 5th century.