Qin dynasty

Qin (秦) began as a fief of the Zhou, in the west. In 770 BCE its ruler, Duke Xiang, helped the Zhou court flee east and was rewarded with the old Zhou lands in the Wei valley, which he first had to win back from the Rong. Long a minor power, Qin was transformed in the 4th century BCE by the reforms of Shang Yang (商鞅, c. 390–338 BCE), a minister from another state. He wanted a centralised state, a large army and a sound economy, and he imposed harsh laws. He was executed in 338, but his reforms stayed.

Shang Yang is one of the great figures of the current later called the Legalists (法家): for them, order could only come from strict laws, and the state came before everything. Qin's capital, Xianyang (咸阳), stood near modern Xi'an.

Between 230 and 221 BCE, King Zheng of Qin conquered the six other major states one after another: Han fell first, in 230, and Qi last, in 221. For the first time a single power ruled all the former lands of the Zhou. Yet the Qin dynasty (秦朝) lasted only about fifteen years and had just two emperors. Its end is dated either to 207 BCE, when the last ruler surrendered, or to 206, when the capital was destroyed.

Its legacy far outlasted it. The Han who followed took over most of its administration, and the Qin are credited with founding the Chinese imperial system, which lasted until the revolution of 1911.

King Zheng was born in 259 BCE in Handan, capital of the state of Zhao. His personal name was Zheng (政): modern texts often call him Ying Zheng (嬴政), ancient ones rather Zhao Zheng (赵政). According to the Shiji, he became king of Qin at thirteen.

In 221 BCE, master of all China, he was no longer content with the plain title of king (王, wang) and created a new one: huangdi (皇帝), joining the huang of the legendary Three Sovereigns (三皇) and the di of the Five Emperors (五帝). The Shiji records his decision: "We are the First Emperor. Our successors will be counted: Second Generation, Third Generation, down to ten thousand generations, without end." Hence his name, Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), "the First Emperor of Qin". The title of huangdi was used by Chinese rulers for two thousand years; his own line stopped at the second emperor.

He died in 210 BCE, on a tour of the east of his empire. After three attempts on his life, he had become obsessed with immortality. But the picture of a cruel tyrant owes something to the harsh judgements of the Han dynasty, which succeeded the Qin. Sima Qian, our main source, wrote about a century after their fall. Since the mid-20th century, historians have been questioning this portrait and debating what his reforms really were.

For anyone learning Chinese, this is the reform that speaks loudest. Under the Eastern Zhou, each state had come to write characters its own way: scholars speak of the "scripts of the six states" (六国文字). After unification, forms that differed from those of the Qin scribes were dropped, and the Qin script, the small seal (小篆, xiaozhuan), became the standard throughout the empire. The Shiji sums up the policy of 221 like this: "carts, one axle width; writing, the same characters" (车同轨。书同文字。).

Li Si (李斯), later chancellor, played a key role. With other ministers he compiled a primer for learning characters, the Cangjiepian (《仓颉篇》), named after Cangjie, the legendary inventor of writing. It is said to have held 3,300 characters, but it is lost. Steles carved during the emperor's tours also displayed the official forms, and some have survived.

The uniformity was not complete, though: Qin scribes still often used variant forms, and the idea of a strict standard seems to have come later, under the Han. Above all, everyday writing was already changing. In the state of Qin, straighter forms broken into separate strokes gave rise to clerical script (隶书, lishu), which dominated under the Han. A tradition credits its invention to a Qin official, Cheng Miao (程邈), but archaeology shows a gradual evolution. The small seal itself was later used only for seals and calligraphy.

Writing was only one of the fields made uniform. From 221 BCE, according to the Shiji, the emperor unified rules, weights and measures of length (一法度衡石丈尺). Even the distance between cart wheels was fixed, and from 220 a network of imperial roads (驰道) ran out from Xianyang across the empire.

Money changed too. The states had used, among others, coins shaped like spades or knives; Qin imposed everywhere its own round bronze coin with a square hole, the banliang (半两), with a nominal weight of about 8 g and an inscription in small seal script. It was the first single currency for the whole of China.

Administration followed the same logic. Instead of giving kingdoms to his sons, as the Zhou had done, the emperor followed Li Si's advice: the empire was divided into thirty-six commanderies (郡), themselves divided into districts (县), run by officials appointed from the capital. Weapons that did not belong to the state were confiscated and melted down, among other things into twelve great metal statues set up in Xianyang, and, according to the Shiji, 120,000 wealthy families were moved by force to Xianyang.

This system of commanderies and districts was taken over by the Han, who inherited most of the state the Qin had built.

The most famous episode of the reign comes from the Shiji. In 213 BCE a court scholar proposed a return to the fiefs of old. Li Si, by then chancellor, replied that scholars were using the past to criticise the present and asked for books to be burned: the chronicles of states other than Qin and, in private hands, the Classic of Poetry, the Classic of Documents and the writings of the Hundred Schools, which only official scholars could keep. Books on medicine, divination and farming were spared. The next year, after two magicians charged with finding him immortality had fled, the emperor had the scholars of the capital investigated: according to the Shiji, more than 460 of them were put to death at Xianyang. His eldest son, Fusu (扶苏), protested and was sent to the northern frontier.

Modern historians question this account, which first appears more than a century later, under the Han: Sima Qian had reasons to blacken the First Emperor. It is accepted that the emperor did gather and destroy many writings he judged subversive, while keeping copies in the imperial libraries; many books were probably lost later, when the palaces burned at the fall of the Qin. As for the scholars, some researchers argue that the word Sima Qian used, keng (坑, written 阬 in the Shiji), meant "to kill", not "to bury alive", and that the victims were not Confucians in the strict sense, since that school had not yet taken shape. The phrase "burning the books and burying the scholars" (焚书坑儒) itself is only attested from the early 4th century CE.

Against the Xiongnu, nomads from the north, the emperor sent General Meng Tian (蒙恬), with 300,000 men according to the Shiji. The emperor also ordered the walls that divided the former states torn down, and the northern walls of Qin, Zhao and Yan linked into one line running from Gansu to Liaodong. These walls were of rammed earth in the plains and stone in the mountains. Very little of them remains: the best-known sections of the Great Wall, in brick, date from the Ming (1368–1644). The Shiji already speaks of the "long wall" (长城), and the longer name, "the ten-thousand-li long wall" (万里长城), comes from a description by Sima Qian.

The emperor also had his tomb built at the foot of Mount Li, near modern Xi'an. Work began in 246 BCE; Sima Qian writes of 700,000 workers and of rivers of mercury. The tomb itself has never been opened, but unusually high levels of mercury have been detected in the area of the mound.

On 29 March 1974, farmers digging a well about one and a half kilometres east of the mound discovered the Terracotta Army (兵马俑). According to 2007 estimates, its three pits hold more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses, most of them still buried. The Shiji says not a word about this army. In 1987 UNESCO added the First Emperor's mausoleum, with its pits, to the World Heritage List.

When the First Emperor died in 210 BCE, the eunuch Zhao Gao (赵高) and Chancellor Li Si kept the news secret. They sent the eldest son, Fusu, a forged order to take his own life and put a younger son, Huhai (胡亥), on the throne as the Second Emperor (秦二世).

The new reign was even harsher, and revolt broke out in 209 BCE. According to the Shiji, nine hundred conscripts sent to garrison Yuyang were held up by heavy rain at Dazexiang (大泽乡): they would arrive late, and the law punished lateness with death. Their leaders, Chen Sheng (陈胜) and Wu Guang (吴广), chose to rise up. Chen Sheng asked the men: "Are kings, lords, generals and ministers born of a different breed?" (王侯将相宁有种乎). Their revolt failed within a few months, but others broke out everywhere.

At court, Zhao Gao had Li Si executed in 208, then drove the Second Emperor to suicide. The next ruler, Ziying (子婴), had Zhao Gao killed, then surrendered in 207 to the rebel leader Liu Bang (刘邦). Another leader, Xiang Yu (项羽), had Ziying executed and Xianyang burned: that was the end of the Qin, dated 207 or 206 BCE depending on the author. Liu Bang eventually defeated Xiang Yu and proclaimed himself emperor in 202, the start of the Han dynasty.

Why such a quick fall? The Confucian tradition blamed the Qin's brutality. Historians today point rather to a state built for conquest, which failed to change its policies or to take account of the traditions of the lands it had conquered.