For most of its history, China was organized into various dynastic states under the rule of hereditary monarchs. Beginning with the establishment of dynastic rule by Yu the Great c. 2070 BC, and ending with the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor in AD 1912, Chinese historiography came to organize itself around the succession of monarchical dynasties. Besides those established by the dominant Han ethnic group or its spiritual Huaxia predecessors, dynasties throughout Chinese history were also founded by non-Han peoples.

Yu the Great or Yu the Engineer was a legendary king in ancient China who was famed for "the first successful state efforts at flood control," his establishment of the Xia dynasty which inaugurated dynastic rule in China, and his upright moral character. He figures prominently in the Chinese legend titled "Great Yu Controls the Waters". Yu and other "sage-kings" of ancient China were lauded for their virtues and morals by Confucius and other Chinese teachers. He is one of the few Chinese monarchs who is posthumously honored with the epithet "the Great".