The Qin Dynasty
Above shows the Qin Empire after Shihuang's unification of China.
In 221 BC, the king of Qin proclaimed himself Qin Shihuang, or First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. The name China is derived from this dynasty. With the assistance of a shrewd legalist minister, the First Emperor welded the loose configuration of quasi-feudal states into an administratively centralized and culturally unified empire. The hereditary aristocracies were abolished and their territories divided into provinces governed by bureaucrats appointed by the emperor. The Qin capital, near the present-day city of Xian, became the first seat of imperial China. A standardized system of written characters was adopted, and its use was made compulsory throughout the empire. To promote internal trade and economic integration the Qin standardized weights and measures, coinage, and axle widths. Private landholding was adopted, and laws and taxation were enforced equally and impersonally. The quest for cultural uniformity led the Qin to outlaw the many contending schools of philosophy that had flourished during the late Chou. Only legalism was given official sanction, and in 213 BC the books of all other schools were burned, except for copies held by the Qin imperial library. The First Emperor also attempted to push the perimeter of Chinese civilization far beyond the outer boundaries of the Chou dynasty. In the south his armies marched to the delta of the Red River, in what is now Vietnam. In the southwest the realm was extended to include most of the present-day provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan. In the northwest his conquests reached as far as Lanzhou in present-day Gansu Province; and in the northeast, a portion of what today is Korea acknowledged the superiority of the Qin. The center of Chinese civilization, however, remained in the Huang He valley. Aside from the unification and expansion of China, the best-known achievement of the Qin was the completion of the Great Wall. The foreign conquests of the Qin and the wall building and other public works were accomplished at an enormous cost of wealth and human life. The ever increasing burden of taxation, military service, and forced labor bred a deep-seated resentment against the Q'in rule among the common people of the new empire. In addition, the literate classes were alienated by government policies of thought control, particularly the burning of books. The successor of Qin Shihuang came under the domination of a wily palace eunuch. A power struggle ensued, crippling the central administration, and the indignant population rose in rebellion.
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