Qin Dynasty

221–206 BCE (capital fell to rebels in 207 BCE)

Warring States context ("Warring States conditions")

• Took ~400–500 years for a multi-state system of independent states to develop; intensified interstate competition and near-constant warfare (including civil wars).
• Political chaos was disruptive (no stable centralized authority), but also dynamic:
  • States increasingly needed capable talent to survive → recruitment based on skills/education, not just birth.
  • Emergence of a broader elite class grounded in education; recurring bottom-up challenges to aristocratic monopoly on power.
• Interstate competition pushed states to increase production (more food → more population/soldiers/consumers → stronger economies and mobilization).
• Breakdown of "feudal" land relations:
  • In theory, land belonged to the king and was distributed through aristocratic chains.
  • In practice, warfare/competition drove de facto private land ownership/usership.
  • Peasants increasingly became freeholding cultivators (not serfs) and were recruited as soldiers in large numbers, often rewarded with land.
• State revolution (general idea): rethinking what governments do and what functions/state capacity are required under constant warfare and competition. Qin brought this "state revolution" toward its logical conclusion.

The Origin of Qin

• Origin story: a skilled horse breeder hired by the Zhou king to raise horses for the Zhou royal house (a key military resource). The Qin founder later received the title of Duke.
• Frontier positioning shaped Qin strategy:
  • Unlike states in the crowded central plains, Qin could expand westward by reclaiming land (in addition to fighting eastward states).
  • Military vitality was preserved through frontier conflict and learning from highly mobile northern/western horsemen (borrowing techniques/technology).

Geographical advantages and constraints

• Frontier area: frequent military struggles with tribal/northern peoples → continual combat experience; adoption of mobile warfare techniques.
• Agricultural base: rich agricultural region with room for expansion.
• Natural defenses: separated from other states by mountain ranges (defensive buffer).
• Geopolitics: geography shapes security strategy; Qin faced major states directly to the east.

The State Revolutions (Qin)

Qin carried out systematic Legalist reforms, overhauling the state apparatus more thoroughly than other contemporaries.

1) Unification and expansion

• King Zheng (Ying Zheng) became king at age 13 (246 BCE).
• Began conquering the six other major states; completed unification in 221 BCE, taking the title First Emperor.
• Unification measures:
  • Eliminated rival states so they could not re-emerge.
  • Destroyed fortifications/internal defensive works; required collection of weapons.
  • Military and political unification became a visible, dramatic demonstration of central power.
• Enduring legacy: "unification" became a major basis of political legitimacy in later Chinese political thought.
• Scale problem: governing a large empire created major communication and deployment challenges (illustrated by later-historical examples of long message transit times across China).

2) Military modernization — Bingmayong (Terracotta Army)

• Discovery timeline:
  • March 29, 1974: local peasants drilling wells found broken clay figures at ~4 m depth (Xiyang/Xiang Village area, Lintong County, Shaanxi Province).
  • With official approval, an archaeological team began systematic excavation.
  • 1976 (Apr–May): three major pits were brought to light.
• What it represents:
  • Often interpreted as imperial bodyguards/forces protecting the First Emperor’s tomb.
  • Provides unusually detailed evidence for Qin battlefield organization and military technology.
• Formation and equipment:
  • Front rows: unarmored bowmen and crossbowmen as vanguard; arranged to enable rotating volleys.
  • Main body: infantry in multiple corridors; commanders/generals positioned within.
  • Crossbow advantage: mechanical trigger enabled faster repeated shots; longer range (reported up to ~300 m), roughly double the range of many contemporaries.
  • Armor and shields: Qin soldiers reportedly did not use shields; armor did not fully cover the body → greater agility.
  • Beer-belly observation: some figures show belly contours; linked (via historical records) to drinking alcohol before battle to sustain morale.
• Mobilization and logistics:
  • Household registration system: adult males ~17–60 registered for service/drafting.
  • Logistical burden: lecture noted ratios on the order of ~7 civilians supporting 1 infantry soldier, and ~10–11 civilians per horseman.
  • Evidence suggests major army concentrations on the northern frontier (border defense) and in the south (territorial expansion).

3) Engineering feats

• Weapon workshops / industrial production: evidence of bureaucratic control over weapons production, emphasizing standardization and quality control (including modular/assembly-like manufacture).
• Great Wall system: Qin connected earlier state walls into a larger northern defense network; expanded supporting infrastructure:
  • watch towers, beacon towers, fortifications, warehouses, and living quarters for military staff and associated civilians.
• Transportation infrastructure: roads across the empire, including a "highway" connecting the capital to the northern frontier/Great Wall area; engineered straight routes (cutting through mountains/filling terrain) to enable rapid troop movement (lecture: deployment in ~12 hours from capital to frontier).
• Irrigation / waterworks: large-scale irrigation and canal/river-link projects supporting agriculture and also military logistics (transport of troops and supplies).
• Capital city and palatial construction: historical descriptions emphasize enormous scale and wealth ("miles of palaces" in the lecture framing).
• First Emperor’s mausoleum: tied to the broader system of mobilized labor and state capacity.

4) The rise of a bureaucratic state

4.1) Jun–Xian administration (Legalist approach)

• Destroyed remnants of the aristocratic/"feudal" order and replaced it with centralized bureaucratic governance.
• Empire divided into jun (provinces) and xian (counties) in a hierarchical structure.
• Officials appointed, promoted, and removed by the central government based on ability; strictly defined duties and evaluation criteria.
• Deliberate weakening of former nobility:
  • surviving aristocrats were eliminated in war or forcibly relocated to the capital to keep them under surveillance/control.
• Lecture noted an administrative map suggesting roughly ~42–46 major provinces (numbers vary by reconstruction).

4.2) Standardization and cultural unity

• Currency: round coin with square hole (lecture emphasized long-lived standardization).
• Weights and measures
• Script / writing system
• Cultural unification by suppressing competing thought:
  • "Burning the books and burying the Confucians" as a shorthand for outlawing rival intellectual traditions.
  • Scholars who criticized the state were targeted; a notable case in the lecture cited ~400 scholars buried alive (as recorded in the Grand Historian tradition).
  • Old books were banned except legal codes, official Qin records/yearbooks, and practical texts (e.g., medicine/divination); philosophy/history/poetry were confiscated and burned under severe penalties.

4.3) Law and punishment

• Legalist governance emphasized detailed legal codes and heavy punishment to enforce obedience:
  • execution
  • hard labor
  • mutilation
  • tattooing

The Fall of Qin

• The First Emperor died about a year before major rebellion.
• First rebellion (209 BCE):
  • Forced laborers sent to build frontier defenses were delayed by flooding.
  • Because failure to report on time carried the death penalty, they judged rebellion preferable to certain execution.
• Rebellion gained broad support:
  • commoners resentful of harsh laws and heavy taxes/corvée burdens,
  • scholars resentful of cultural repression,
  • former nobility resentful of lost privileges and status.
• Capital fell in 207 BCE, and the dynasty collapsed soon thereafter.

Qin Shi Huang Di and Qin Empire in historiography

• Sima Qian (ca. 145–86 BCE) / later court historians (Confucian condemnation):
  • framed Qin collapse as moral failure: rule by harsh law/punishment and terror rather than virtue;
  • severe legal harshness and heavy taxation;
  • massive resource drain from public works and palatial construction;
  • persecution of scholars and book burning;
  • failure to cultivate and employ learned scholars from earlier traditions.
  • Note: this is both historical explanation and political-moral lesson-making in official historiography.
• Mao Zedong (revolutionary rehabilitation):
  • praised Qin unification as nationalism/state-building;
  • interpreted reforms as a progressive step in a Marxist historical sequence (attacking feudalism; building centralized bureaucracy);
  • argued Qin failed because "remnant" old forces persisted and Qin did not push the revolution far enough.
  • Qin experiment and the communist revolution both represented radical breaks from old systems, but neither fully eliminated old elements.