Wei fell in , followed by the powerful Chu in With the defeat of the other six warring states, Qin Shi Huang had unified northern China. His army would continue to expand the Qin Empire's southern boundaries throughout his lifetime, driving as far south as what is now Vietnam. As Emperor, Qin Shi Huang reorganized the bureaucracy, abolishing the existing nobility and replacing them with his appointed officials. He also built a network of roads, with the capital of Xianyang at the hub.
In addition, the Emperor simplified the written Chinese script , standardized weights and measures, and minted new copper coins. Despite its military might, the newly unified Qin Empire faced a recurring threat from the north: raids by the nomadic Xiongnu the ancestors of Attila's Huns. In order to fend off the Xiongnu , Qin Shi Huang ordered the construction of an enormous defensive wall. The work was carried out by hundreds of thousands of enslaved people and criminals between and BCE; untold thousands of them died at the task.
This northern fortification formed the first section of what would become the Great Wall of China. In , the Emperor also ordered the construction of a canal, the Lingqu, which linked the Yangtze and Pearl River systems. The Warring States Period was dangerous, but the lack of central authority allowed intellectuals to flourish. Confucianism and a number of other philosophies blossomed prior to China's unification.
However, Qin Shi Huang viewed these schools of thought as threats to his authority, so he ordered all books not related to his reign burned in BCE. The Emperor also had approximately scholars buried alive in for daring to disagree with him, and more stoned to death.
As he entered middle age, the First Emperor grew more and more afraid of death. He became obsessed with finding the elixir of life, which would allow him to live forever. The court doctors and alchemists concocted a number of potions, many of them containing "quicksilver" mercury , which probably had the ironic effect of hastening the Emperor's death rather than preventing it. Just in case the elixirs did not work, in BCE the Emperor also ordered the construction of a gargantuan tomb for himself.
Plans for the tomb included flowing rivers of mercury, cross-bow booby traps to thwart would-be plunderers, and replicas of the Emperor's earthly palaces. To guard Qin Shi Huang in the afterworld, and perhaps allow him to conquer heaven as he had the earth, the Emperor had a terracotta army of at least 8, clay soldiers placed in the tomb. Each soldier was an individual, with unique facial features although the bodies and limbs were mass-produced from molds.
To make matters worse, someone etched the words "The First Emperor will die and his land will be divided" onto the stone. Some saw this as a sign that the Emperor had lost the Mandate of Heaven. Since nobody would confess to the crime, the Emperor had everyone in the vicinity executed. The meteor itself was burned and then pounded into powder. The cause of death most likely was mercury poisoning, due to his immortality treatments. Qin Shi Huang's Empire did not outlast him long.
His second son and Prime Minister tricked the heir, Fusu, into committing suicide. The second son, Huhai, seized power. However, widespread unrest led by the remnants of the warring states' nobility threw the empire into disarray. Animals Climate change is shrinking many Amazonian birds.
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Qin Shi Huang worked quickly to unify his conquered people across a vast territory that was home to several different cultures and languages. One of the most important outcomes of the Qin conquest was the standardization of non-alphabetic written script across all of China, replacing the previous regional scripts.
This script was simplified to allow faster writing, useful for record keeping. The new script enabled parts of the empire that did not speak the same language to communicate together, and led to the founding of an imperial academy to oversee all texts. As part of the university effort, older philosophical texts were confiscated and restricted though not destroyed, as accounts during the Han Dynasty would later claim. The Qin also standardized weights and measures, casting bronze models for measurements and sending them to local governments, who would then impose them on merchants to simplify trade and commerce across the empire.
In conjunction with this, bronze coins were created to standardize money across the regions. With these Qin advances, for the first time in its history, the various warring states in China were unified.
The name China, in fact, is derived from the word Qin which was written as Ch'in in earlier Western texts. The Qin empire is known for its engineering marvels, including a complex system of over 4, miles of road and one superhighway, the Straight Road, which ran for about miles along the Ziwu Mountain range and is the pathway on which materials for the Great Wall of China were transported. Overseen by the Qin road builder Meng Tian, , workers were brought to work on the construction of the Great Wall, and on the service roads required to transport supplies.
Qin Shi Huang was noted for audacious marvels of art and architecture meant to celebrate the glory of his new dynasty. Weapons from Qin conquests were collected and melted down, to be used for the casting of giant statues in the capital city Xianyang.
For his most brash creation, Qin Shi Huang sent , workers to create an underground complex at the foot of the Lishan Mountains to serve as his tomb. It now stands as one of the seven wonders of the world. Designed as an underground city from which Qin Shi Huang would rule in the afterlife, the complex includes temples, huge chambers and halls, administrative buildings, bronze sculptures, animal burial grounds, a replica of the imperial armory, terracotta statues of acrobats and government officials, a fish pond and a river.
Just short of a mile away, outside the eastern gate of the underground city, Qin Shi Huang developed an army of life-size statues—almost 8, terracotta warriors and terracotta horses, plus chariots, stables and other artifacts. This vast complex of terracotta statuary, weapons and other treasures—including the tomb of Qin Shi Huang himself—is now famous as the Terracotta Army. Qin Shi Huang died in B. Officials traveling with him wanted to keep it secret, so to disguise the stench of his corpse, filled up 10 carts with fish to travel with his body.
In two years time, most of the empire had revolted against the new emperor, creating a constant atmosphere of rebellion and retaliation. Warlord Xiang Yu in quick succession defeated the Qin army in battle, executed the emperor, destroyed the capital and split up the empire into 18 states.
Liu Bang, who was given the Han River Valley to rule, quickly rose up against other local kings and then waged a three-year revolt against Xiang Yu. Mark Edward Lewis. The Dynasties of China. Bamber Gascoigne. Li Feng.
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