The history of Tianjin city begins with the opening of Sui Dynasty's Big Canal. Tianjin became the home and water dock  for food and silk transportation from the south to north since mid-Tang Dynasty. It had been known as 'Zhigu Stockade' in Song, Jin Dynasties, and changed into 'Haijin Town' in Yuan Dynasty. At that time, it was one of the most important military towns and canal-food transportation center.

In the second year of Yongle in Ming Dynasty (1404), the city was established with defence walls and then called ' Tianjin Wei'. Since 17th century, its economy and society developed fast, and the city's size had been enlarged continually. In 1860, it was appointed as a business and communication center. Being the second largest industry and business city and the finance, trade center of the north, its industrial production and trade volume listed merely next to Shanghai.

In 1931, there were over 17,000 firms in Tianjin and about 4,000 industrial and handicraft shops that mainly dealt with machine-repairing. The export volume was 25% of the nation's total amount. In 1935, Tianjin had ten domestic-invested banks, 93 branches and offices and 16 foreign-invested ones.

When the People's Republic of China established in 1949, Tianjin City's area was 61km2 with 1,790,000 residents. Then in 1973, after several times administrative area modifications, the present administrative distribution of districts, counties etc., were set up.