The Yellow River, Lüliang Mountains and the eastern end of the Qinling separate the region from the (then) politically orthodox Central Plain, which is located east of the strategic Hangu Pass and therefore was historically referred as the Guandong ("east of the pass") region by the Qin people, who later conquered the eastern states and unified China as a centralized empire — the Qin dynasty — for the first time during the 3rd century BC.

[1] The Guanzhong region became the heartland of the Zhou after Jī clan leader Gugong Danfu relocated his people south from Bin (modern day Binzhou, Shaanxi) to evade the violent raidings by Xunyu, Xianyun and Di nomads.

The Yíng clan, then a minor marcher vassal based in the Longxi Basin as a buffer state on the western frontier of the Chinese civilization, sent troops to escort King Ping of Zhou along the journey.

In gratitude, King Ping granted a mid-level nobility to the Yíng leader, Count Xiang, and promised him authority to permanently claim any lands his clan can recapture from the nomads.

The resultant Qin state then spent the next few centuries fighting off various nomads to its north and west and eventually consolidated its base in the Guanzhong Plain and the Loess Plateau.

However, merely four months later, Liu Bang returned with his newly appointed generalissimo Han Xin and reconquered the Guanzhong region, and used it as his base to eventually defeat Xiang Yu in the subsequent civil war.

By the Tang dynasty the economic center of China had shifted south to the Yangtze basin and Guanzhong became increasingly dependent on supplies transported via the Grand Canal.