Introduction
The
tenuous authority of the Zhou ended in the 3rd century BC, when the state
of Qin, for the first time, unified China after Qin's conquoring its six
duchies. The First Exalted Emperor Qin Shihuang ruled only from 221 to
207 BC, and isremembered above all for his tyranny and cruelty. At the
same time, the Qin Dynasty developed administrative institutions that
were to remain features of the Chinese state for the following 2000 years.
The state of Qin grew in power during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. In
246 BC the state conquered present-day Sichuan and proceeded todo likewise
with the remaining kingdoms that stood in its way. Much of what came to
constitute China Proper was unified for the first time in 221 B.C. In
that year the western frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the
Warring States, subjugated the last of its rival states. (Qin in Wade-Giles
romanization is Ch'in, from which the English China probably derived.)
Once the king of Qin consolidated his power, he took the title Shi Huangdi
( First Emperor), a formulation previously reserved for deities and the
mythological sage-emperors, and imposed Qin's centralized, nonhereditary
bureaucratic system on his new empire. In subjugating the six other major
states of Eastern Zhou, the Qin kings had relied heavily on Legalist scholar-advisers.
Centralization, achieved by ruthless methods, was focused on standardizing
legal codes and bureaucratic procedures, the forms of writing and coinage,
and the pattern of thought and scholarship. To silence criticism of imperial
rule, the kings banished or put to death many dissenting Confucian scholars
and confiscated and burned their books . Qin aggrandizement was aided
by frequent military expeditions pushing forward the frontiers in the
north and south. To fend off barbarian intrusion, the fortification walls
built by the various warring states were connected to make a 5,000-kilometer-long
great wall. What is commonly referred to as the Great Wall is actually
four great walls rebuilt or extended during the Western Han, Sui, Jin,
and Ming periods, rather than a single, continuous wall. At its extremities,
the Great Wall reaches from northeastern Heilongjiang Province to northwestern
Gansu. A number of public works projects were also undertaken to consolidate
and strengthen imperial rule. These activities required enormous levies
of manpower and resources, not to mention repressive measures. Revolts
broke out as soon as the first Qin emperor died in 210 B.C. His dynasty
was extinguished less than twenty years after its triumph. The imperial
system initiated during the Qin dynasty, however, set a pattern that was
developed over the next two millennia.