Jiangxi borders Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to the northwest.

Jiangxi was outside the sphere of influence of early Chinese civilization during the Shang Dynasty (16th to 11th centuries BC). It is likely that peoples collectively known as the Yue inhabited the region. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the northern part of modern Jiangxi formed the western frontier of the state of Wu. After Wu was conquered by the state of Yue (a power based in modern northern Zhejiang) in 473 BC, the state of Chu (based in modern Hubei) took over northern Jiangxi and there may have been some Yue influence in the south. Chu subjugated Yue in 333 BC, and was in turn subjugated by the state of Qin in 221 BC. Qin established the Qin Dynasty in that same year, the first unified Chinese state.

It was named Jiangxi province in Qing Dynasty (1368-1644), which has remain ever since. The Jinggang Mountains were the first rural revolutionary base area set up by the late Chairman Mao Zedong in 1927; Nanchang, a heroic city where the " August 1st" Uprising took place in 1927, the day is regarded as the founding of People's Liberation Army (PLA); Ruijin, the site for the central work-peasant democratic government during the Second Revolutionary War; and Anyuan, one of the birthplace of the Chinese worker's movement led by Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi.

Jiangxi is the main area of concentration of the Gan varieties of Chinese, spoken over most of the northern two-thirds of the province. Examples include the Nanchang dialect, Yichun dialect and Ji'an dialect. The southern one-third of the province speaks Hakka. There are also Mandarin, Huizhou, and Wu dialects spoken along the northern border.

Jiangxi Opera, also called "Yiyangqiang" or "Ganju", originated in Yiyang county of Jiangxi Province. It is one of the four oldest traditional operas of China. It had two schools called "raoheban" and "xinheban", which combined together in 1950. After entering Nanchang, the provincial capital city, and with the establishment of Jiangxi Opera Troupe, "yiyangqiang" was renamed Jiangxi opera.

The reason why there is rarely any cold or raw dishes in Jiangxi cuisine is due to another characteristic of the cuisine: it is the number one Chinese cuisine that utilizes the tea oil as its primary cooking oil. However, if the raw tea oil is consumed uncooked, it would cause severe stomach problems for most people. As a result, any dish that uses the oil is cooked, as in other part of China where tea oil is used as primary cooking oil. However, Jiangxi cuisine is unique in that the other one seventh of total Chinese populations in other parts of China uses tea oil in the main cooking oil, but it is supplimented by variety of cooking oil of other type, and in fact, tea oil is not a majority despite being number one. In Jiangxi, on the other hand, the tea oil is used almost exclusively as the only cooking oil of Jiangxi cuisine, and the only other cooking oil used is the oil from rapeseed, but it only consisted a minor portion.