In 701 AD, per the reforms of the Taihō Code, Koshi was divided into three separate provinces: Echizen, Etchū, and Echigo.

During the Nara period, the poet Nakatomi no Yakamori was exiled to Echizen, where he wrote some of his 40 poems collected in the Man'yōshū, including his love letters to Sanuno Otogami no Otome.

During the Heian period, the provincial governor of Echizen, Fujiwara no Tametoki, was the father of the celebrated author Murasaki Shikibu.

The province was often used as a launching point for the shogunate's attack against the capital, and Echizen became the stage for a number of decisive battles of the war.

Under Asakura Yoshikage, Echizen enjoyed a peace and stability far greater than the rest of Japan during this chaotic period, partly due to his negotiations with the Ikkō-ikki.

When Oda Nobunaga invaded Echizen, he defeated the Asakura clan, burned Ichijōdani Castle to the ground and re-established the provincial capital at Echizen-Fūchu, divided among his generals Fuwa Mitsuharu, Sassa Narimasa, and Maeda Toshiie.

[3] During the early years of the Tokugawa shogunate, many nobles and aristocrats moved to Fukui city in hopes to win the favor of Hideyasu, who was widely expected to become the new shōgun.

However, Echizen remained a strategically important military and political base; the Tokugawa shōguns needed loyal daimyō in the provinces surrounding the imperial capital, and Echizen served as a powerful buffer between Kyōto and the Maeda clan of Kaga, who were not among the fudai (hereditary Tokugawa allies).

During the Bakumatsu period, Matsudaira Shungaku, the 17th daimyō of Fukui Domain plays a major role in national politics, and acted as an intermediary to negotiate the surrender of pro-Tokugawa forces to the Meiji government at the end of the Boshin War.

However, with the Meiji Restoration, the centre of political power shifted completely from Kyoto to Tokyo, and Echizen increasingly became a backwater.