Qin

秦

QIN

 

The State of Qin came into existence in the Ninth Century BC, when  Fēi Zǐ-hóu was made Marquis of Qín by the Emperor of Zhou, for his work managing the Emperor’s horses. Over the next few generations, the family rose in prominence, becoming Dukes in 821 BC.

Qin was the furthest west part of Zhou and the state was tasked with defending Zhou from nomadic incursions. This mission ensured that Qin always remained a martial state, was the furthest from the Emperor of Zhou’s authority and had plenty of space to expand at the expense of the western nomads. Qin was quite successful at this, especially Qín Mù-gōng (660 – 621), who defeated the King of the Western Rong Confederacy, and was acclaimed Hegemon of all the nomads.

This success gave Qin the power to interfere in the affairs of the other feudal states which had grown up as the Zhou Dynasty declined and splintered. Qin was quite successful, expanding its rule to the Yellow River, but Qin’s close relations with the Western nomads led the other states to view the Qin as half-barbarian and unworthy of respect. The State of Jin, Qin’s neighbour to the east took the brunt of Qin’s forays into the feudal states, and in the late 600’s was practically a Qin vassal. Eventually it revived however, and pushed Qin back. Cut off from the rest of the states, Qin stagnated for almost two centuries.

This period of stagnation finally came to an end with the collapse of Jin into three states in 453. Qin was now able to expand with impunity and it immediately began absorbing minor states and nibbling away at the territories of Jin’s successor states. In the 360’s Qin received a further boost to its power when the Legalist Chancellor Shāng-jūn reformed the legal system of Qin into a harsh punitive regime which would encourage his people to fight to the death for their state and punish them severely for anything less than absolute obedience.

Qin was by now clearly the strongest state in China, but like all others it was still nominally subject to the feeble Emperors of Zhou. Qín Huìwén-wáng rejected this status in 324, declaring himself an independent King, and in 256 the last Zhou Emperor and his pitiful army surrendered to Qín Zhāoxiāng-wáng and became his vassal.

China was now split between Qin in the west and centre, Yan in the North, Qi in the east and Chu in the southeast. Qin was clearly dominant, yet a series of brief reigns followed and it was unable to capitalise on its position until the 220s when Qin conquered all the other states with shocking speed. Thus all China was united under the Qin king, who restyled himself, Qín Shǐhuángdì, “First Heavenly Sovereign of Qin.” Rather than parcelling out the land of the state to feudal lords as previous dynasties had, the new Qin Dynasty organised China into a series of military provinces, initiated construction of the Great Wall to divide China off from the ‘barbarian’ lands of the nomads,  standardising weights, measures, currency, characters and law across its whole empire. These acts ensured that China was unified institutionally as well as politically. Unfortunately, the new Emperor grew increasingly paranoid and erratic. He committed many acts of hubris and expended enormous resources in the search for elixirs of immortality and exiled his heir to the far north. When he did die, it was his youngest son, Húhài, who was placed on the throne. He was firmly under the control of the eunuch Zhao Gao, who preceded to massacre everyone in government who did not support him and most of the royal family. Huhai was deposed and Zhao Gao murdered after three years, but by then the provinces had revolted and China disintegrated into warlordism. A mere fourteen years after Qin had united the ‘world,’ her capital was occupied by Liu Bang, a bandit leader of peasant extraction who would go on to found the Han Dynasty.

Qin Dynasty in 220 BC (Dashed portion indicates vassal territory)

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