 However, historians often focus on the location of the capital on an east–west axis.The Jin dynasty (265–420) briefly unified the Chinese empire, in 280, but from 291 to 306 a multi-sided civil war known as the War of the Eight Princes raged through northern China, devastating that part of the country.For the first thirteen years this was a deadly violent and all-out struggle for power among at least eight princes and various dukes of Jin.