The Qin Dynasty: Rise and Decline

China exists. China has existed for over 2000 years. It's a country that goes through a cycle. It unifies, breaks apart, and unifies again. In this video we will look at how China was unified for the very first time. We will look at the early history of China, the first unification of China, and how that unified China broke apart again, in The Rise and Fall of the Qin Dynasty. Chapter 1. Early History What we think of as China today started out in the Yellow River Valley, and over time it spread south to the Yangtze River. This region has one of the most fertile farmlands in the world and about 10,000 years ago the first people settled down and built farms. The people of the Yellow River Valley had access to rice. Rice is one of the best food sources for a human being. Rice is easy to store, it doesn't spoil easily, and to make rice edible all you need to do is boil it in water. This combination of fertile soil and easy crops allowed these people to grow more food than they could eat, eventually leading to a population increase. This meant that cottages turned into villages, villages turned into towns, towns turned into cities, and cities turned into kingdoms. And these kingdoms would fight for control over the people of the Yellow River Valley. But they would rarely go outside this valley. The reason for that is that this valley is surrounded by a desert to the north, a sea to the east, and mountains to the south and west. Because of this the people living in the valley began developing their own ethnicity, a Chinese ethnicity. Today we call this group of people the Han Chinese. They make up over 90% of modern day China and about 17.5% of the entire world population. But in ancient times the Chinese people were not unified under a single government. There were hundreds of city-states, kingdoms and small empires vying for power. And after millennia of warfare, one of them eventually became the dominant force. They were a state called the Shang Dynasty. The Shang Dynasty lasted from around 1600 BCE to 1045 BCE. In case you don't know, a dynasty is a ruling family. So if your father was a king and you became a king, then you are part of one dynasty. All your descendants who are king after you are also part of the same dynasty. In China, the name of a dynasty was also the name of a state. So the Shang dynasty ruled over the Shang state. For example, in the Netherlands the royal family is called Orange Nassau. So the Netherlands would be called the state of Orange Nassau or the Orange Nassau state. Look at this map of the Shang dynasty. They were the dominant force but many Chinese states existed outside of their borders. In 1045 BCE the Shang were replaced by the Zhou dynasty. The Shang and the Zhou dynasty slowly expanded their territory in three general steps. The first step was to force a state to become a vassal either through war or diplomacy. The second step was to force this new vassal to adopt the Chinese culture. And over the course of centuries the people living next to the Han Chinese were slowly forced to assimilate and become Chinese as well. And the third step is to integrate that state into the Shang or Zhao empires and their histories were then destroyed by burning their books and cultural artifacts. This is a process called Sinicization. And we know of hundreds of ethnic groups that were conquered in this manner, yet the only evidence that remains of them is in ancient official documents talking about their conquest. China is still doing this after 6000 years even today. If you've ever wondered why all of China's neighbors distrust China, it's because they are afraid they will be next, that they will be assimilated, and that the resistance is futile. This video won't go into the details about the Shang or Zhao, because they never actually unified China. If you do want to learn more about them then I'm willing to turn this video into a series where we cover the entire history of China all the way from the Shang to modern day communist China. And at the end we can put them all together into one giant video. In order to know that people are actually interested in more China stuff let's say once this video gets around 20 000 likes I'll start working on a part two. So like the video and you get more China. Chapter 2. The fall of the Zhao dynasty. The Zhou Dynasty slowly increased their territory. They went from ruling this territory in 1045 BCE to this in 771 BCE. They conquered so much territory that it became a problem. Because an army would have to walk a long way in a time period when roads were still primitive. Meaning it could take weeks for an army to deal with a problem. Those armies relied on chariots. Each chariot would have two or four horses pulling it. But they only worked on open terrain. This was great for flatland like the Yellow River Valley, but they were useless in rugged hills and mountains at the edges of Zhao territory. As a result, the Zhao army found it difficult to defend the outer regions, and so they allowed for local lords to rule the outer territories. They would become the rulers of a piece of land and had to organize an army to defend against any outside threats. These local lords could respond to invasions much faster because their army was organized locally. Over time, the Zhao relied more and more on these lords whenever they faced a major problem. And that nobility wanted something in return, such as even more land. Eventually, that nobility became so powerful that they started rebellions of their own. Which meant the Zhao relied even more on other lords to defeat this rebellion and was forced to hand over even more land to the lords who supported them. Over the course of centuries, the Zhao became weaker while their vassals became stronger. By 450 BCE the Zhou had fractured into dozens of vassals and the Zhou lost their position as the dominant Chinese state. From that moment onward the Zhou could not even stop wars from happening within their own borders. And so the vassals began acting independently and start fighting with each other over territory. In total there were 140 states vying for power. And over time each of these states began to officially declare independence and set up their own dynasties. With each independence making the Zhou weaker and every time they got weaker, more states declared independence. Until eventually the Zhou themselves were conquered in 249 BCE. Chapter 3. The Warring States Period As the Zhou began to break apart, new states were created. These new states went to war with each other. And thus this period was called the Warring States Period. Because historians are very original. And in this period wars could be started over anything. This meant that states were constantly being taken over. And if you wanted to remain independent, you needed to have a strong army to defend yourself. If a state did not have a strong army, they were destroyed. This caused a natural selection process whereby the states who could create the best armies would survive. This forced them to constantly improve the military. And to have a better army, you need more people, more weapons, and better commanders. But in order to have these three things, you needed to have a government that could build irrigation canals, import enough metals, and train good generals. But this was difficult during the Warring States period. Because at the time, China was a feudal society. Meaning that every state had a king controlling the land around the capital. The rest of the land was handed over to the nobility. Those nobles had their own government, their own military, their own tax policy. So if the king wanted to build an irrigation canal in a region, the other lords might get jealous and demand they too get a canal. Or maybe they can't agree where to build it, so they don't construct any canal at all. Or maybe there is a war and one of your lords has a very large army. And if that lord turns out to be an idiot on the battlefield, then a large portion of your troops are useless because your general is useless. And there are... Countless more examples of why having a system of lords is really really bad for your country. But what is the solution to this problem? Well the solution is to get rid of feudalism and create a centralized government. That centralized government will be able to select generals who are good at their job, build infrastructure without having to appease local rulers, and be able to combine all the resources of a nation towards the defense of the homeland. But getting rid of feudalism is is incredibly difficult because those lords all have their own armies. If the king decides to remove all the nobility, then they start a rebellion and the combined armies of the nobles is usually larger than the army of the king. And so centralization was generally only done when the nobility agreed to it. For example, if a state is conquered, the nobility is killed or exiled. So nobles might hand over some power in order to defend their state from invasion, because it's better to lose some power than... all power. And so, through a process of natural selection, the states that were the most centralized generally were the strongest because they had the ability to control the world. to build new irrigation canals and rice farms. They had better armies because they could select good generals instead of waiting for them to be born into nobility. They had more blacksmiths and other furnaces to make better weapons. And this last part is particularly important. Chapter 4. The Iron Age Revolution When the Warring States period began, China was a Bronze Age civilization. In order to make bronze you need to combine copper and tin and heat it up to 913 degrees centigrade, 1186 kelvin or 1675 fahrenheit. But because that technology wasn't very good the copper and tin had impurities. This meant that there were other metals stuck in the copper and tin. And if you wanted to make the best weapons, armor and tools you needed to remove all these impurities. One of the most common impurities is iron. But if you want to remove iron from copper and tin, you need a furnace that reaches temperatures of 1250 centigrade, 1523 kelvin or 2282 fahrenheit. Because that is the temperature at which iron can be smelted. With hotter furnaces came fewer impurities. With fewer impurities you had better bronze. And with so much bronze to make, there was quite a lot of iron left over. And if you're a blacksmith who ran out of bronze, you might decide to experiment with this useless iron you have lying around. Now, iron isn't better than bronze. In fact, in almost every way, bronze is better than iron. Except in one category. Iron is incredibly common. It's so common, in fact, that iron is the most abundant metal in the universe. One in every 1,000 atom is an iron atom. And the blacksmiths realized they could make cheaper and lower quality weapons, tools and armor made out of iron. They wouldn't be as valuable as bronze, but a low quality sword is better than no sword at all. And so states began investing in iron production to supplement their bronze production. But as the states needed larger and larger armies over time, they switched from an expensive bronze army to a much cheaper iron army. Before the warring states period, an army might be up to 50,000 soldiers strong. By the end of the warring states period, an army could be up to 1 million soldiers strong. That's more than most countries today. But that iron can also be turned into tools. Bronze tools were relatively rare. Most farmers couldn't afford bronze, so they used tools made out of wood, clay or stone. But with the introduction of iron smelting, it became possible to produce enough tools for everyone. China went from hard labor done by hand to large-scale tool-assisted labor. Iron Hose Iron axes, iron plows, iron everything. Instead of pulling wheat out with your hands, you could now use a hoe to cut the wheat. This is a lot faster. It allowed farmers to create larger farms. These larger farms produced more food. And with more food came more people. So many people came that there were now more people than they needed to grow food. Those extra people had to find new ways of earning money. And they did so by becoming craftspeople and merchants. For example, With more food, you need more pots to store that food. And over time, China created workshops where pots were mass produced, while the merchants started trading the extra products that were being made. To make that trade easier, Chinese states used those extra people and iron tools to build roads and transportation canals. Those canals could then be attached to farms to turn them into irrigation canals as well. Or that canal could be used to drain the water from marshes to create new farmland. For those states who managed to survive, the Warring States period was an economic and technological revolution that could only have been achieved through an efficient government. Because only an efficient government could somehow get enough people together with the right tools to build these massive projects. After hundreds of years of constant warfare, only seven large states remained in 338 BCE. The Chu, the Han, the Qi, the Wei, the Yan, The Zhou and the Qin. For clarification, the Zhou were a different dynasty than the Zhou. And these 7 states had reached the point where each of them was too powerful to be conquered, but too weak to conquer another state. Because if, for example, the Wei invaded the Han, then one of Wei's neighbors will attack them in the back while their army is abroad. There was still war and conflict, but the chance of actually winning a war and gaining territory was a lot smaller. And so instead of focusing on invading the other states, they instead focused on defense. They began building castles, border walls that were hundreds of kilometers long, and roads to move their armies to the front lines. As a result, the chances of successfully winning a war became even smaller. But when your country isn't being burned to the ground every couple of years in a war, you can make long-term investments. Such as building even more irrigation canals, even more farms, even more industry. All the technological developments that China had made during the Warring States period could now be implemented on a much larger scale, creating an economic revolution in the 3rd century BCE. And the most developed region of them all was the state of Qin. So it would be the Qin who would eventually unite all of China. Chapter 5. The Rise of the Qin The Qin state was one of the last vassals the Zhao added to their sphere of influence in the 9th or 8th century BCE. Being a Zhao vassal meant that they were forced to adopt the Han Chinese culture. But throughout most of Qin's history, no matter how hard they tried, they were always seen as semi-Bibarians by the other Chinese states. The Qin were merely seen as a buffer state to protect against invasions from the west. Being located in the Guangzhong mountains, It meant the Qin could defend its territory through narrow mountain passages, meaning the Qin were relatively safe. When the Zhao declined in power, the Qin were forced to rely more and more on themselves rather than their Zhao overlords. In order to survive, the Qin expanded their territory slightly to put more distance between them and their enemies. But between 413 and 409 BCE, the Qin was invaded by the neighboring state of Wei. The Wei were able to break through the Qin defenses and show them that their mountains weren't as defensible as they once thought. The Qin ruler was so afraid they would be conquered completely that they were willing to invite anyone who could help them make Qin great again. One of the people he hired was a man called Sheng Yang. He helped to implement a new type of philosophy into the Qin state called legalism. This was a system which believed that people would not naturally obey their rulers and that therefore the ruler should implement harsh punishments for anyone breaking the law. They created a large bureaucracy with multiple levels of government. The people in this hierarchy were forced to report on the people one level below them. If an official did a bad job they were punished severely and replaced. Anyone from the king's advisors to the lowest office clerk was subject to this system of law. Anyone who did not have a good performance review was sentenced to death. was punished. And sheng argued that even the nobility should be forced to follow this system. That a lord should be removed from power if their performance review was bad. And that this would not only force them to actually get to work, but would also remove corruption from the system. And the king would hold all the power and could make policies based on what is best for the country, rather than what is best for the personal ambitions of those lords. And as you can imagine, the king of Qin thought that having all the power for himself was a great idea. And as a result from around 400 BCE to 300 BCE the state of Qin began to slowly centralize power. The Qin started out rather small and as a result a small percentage of their territory was controlled by local lords. Because the king of Qin also ruled part of this territory. At the same time this small size meant the Qin didn't have a lot of soldiers to defend itself. So in order for those lords to not have their lands taken in a war, they handed over power to the king. This allowed the Qin to expand their territory. And that new land was usually not handed over to the nobility, but to an administrator, selected by the king. And if the nobles wanted a member of their family to rule that new land, then they had to make sure they got a good education and a good performance review. So they would be promoted to a regional administrator. As a result, the king became more powerful, while the nobility became less powerful. But if you want to review someone's work, you need to have the data to actually review. For this, Shen created 13 statistics that an administrator needed to know, such as counting livestock, healthy men and women, how much grain was in the granaries, etc. To make statistics easier, the Qin forced everyone to use the same system of weights, measurements and writing. At the time China used many different versions of the Chinese alphabet and the Qin rulers made sure that everyone inside their own territory used one version. They standardized coinage, meaning that every coin from the Qin state would have to be the exact same size and shape to make trade easier. This simplified administration tremendously. But in order to know all these statistics, the state needed to control these parts of the economy. So from then on, it was the state that would store food in state granaries. When there was a famine, this food would be handed out back to the people, reducing the death toll of natural disasters. They built irrigation systems to turn the Wei Valley and Min River Basin into fertile farming regions. The state gave tax breaks to people who had more babies while punishing people who remained unmarried. In order to make sure people obeyed the law, they created a system where 10 households would be linked together. Each household had to make sure the other 9 households were obeying the law. If a crime went unreported, they would all be cut in half. The death penalty, slavery, and exile were possible for even minor crimes. And when nobles committed serious crimes, even they could be punished. While this system was cruel, it was also efficient. And in general, the people who lived in the Qin state were better off than before Qin had conquered them. These policies were so successful that a century later, around 300 BCE, the king of Qin was able to remove the nobility entirely. From that moment forward all political power was put in the hands of the central government. From now on land was no longer ruled by a lord who inherited the land, but by an administrator selected by the king because of their skill. A general was no longer a general because he owned a lot of land, but because he had shown that he was good at commanding armies. The nobles were still the most educated people in China, so most government officials were descendants of the nobility. However, the king would select the most competent among them. So a person who is really good at their job but is minor nobility can work his way up to rule large territory. With his salary he is able to pay for his children's education who then also become administrators. As a result the state of Qin was ruled by people who were good at their jobs. And when you have competent people in charge making reasonable decisions then the prosperity of your region will increase. And because Qin had centralized first they became the most competent government with the most prosperous region. and all this prosperity would be used to unite China under the Qin dynasty. Chapter 6. China will be united. The unification of China was started by a man called Ying Chen. He became the king of the Qin state in the year 246 BCE at the age of 13. He was groomed by his regent and assumed full power over Qin nine years later in 235 BCE. He consolidated his power by crushing a rebellion and then set his sights on defeating the other six states. And let's look at those other states. In the north were the Xiao with 450.000 soldiers and Yan with 310.000 soldiers. In the middle were the state of Wei with 400.000 soldiers, the state of Qi with 410.000 soldiers and the weakest, the state of Han with just 300.000 soldiers. All the way in the south was the state of Chu. with the largest army of 1 million soldiers. And lastly on the west was the state of Qin with 800,000 soldiers. And seeing as the weakest state was the Han dynasty and the Han were right next to Qin, this would be the first target of Yin-Cheng's unification war. In 230 BCE, a Qin army was sent in and conquered the capital city within a year. The king of Han surrendered shortly after and in that same year 230 BCE, the Han was conquered. One down, five to go. Next was Zhao. The Qin and Zhao had actually been regularly going to war with each other for several decades. But for now, there was peace. The king of Zhao was surrounded by enemies both within and without. And so he became a paranoid man. Yin Cheng used this against the Zhao king and convinced him that one of his generals was starting a rebellion. The Zhao king then killed the general and left his army without anyone to lead it. And in 228 BCE, the Zhao were conquered. Two down, four to go. The next state was the state of Wei. After the Han they were now the weakest state. But they were rather close to the Chu. And if Qin invaded Wei, Chu would invade Qin. But the best defense is a strong offense. So in 225 BCE the Qin conquered more than 10 Chu cities on the northern border as a buffer to keep out the Chu armies while the Qin were invading Wei. The Qin then moved to the capital of Wei. But a siege takes a long time, so What they did instead was build a canal to direct water from the Yellow River to flood the capital. Over 100,000 people died and the King of Wei surrendered in 225 BCE. Three down, three to go. Next was Chu. The Qin army wasn't used to the warmer temperatures and different geography. As a result, they were first defeated by the Chu. Qin then spent a year secretly training an army to fight specifically in Chu territory. A year later they overran the Chu. killing 240,000 of their soldiers. And so in 223 BCE the Chu were conquered. Four down, two to go. The Chu was truly the only state that could possibly have defeated the Qin. So the crown prince of Yan hired an assassin to kill King Yin Cheng. The king survived and decided to invade the Yan dynasty next. They sent two armies which easily defeated the Yan forces and conquered their capital. The king and crown prince fled to the Liaodong peninsula. Dead, the king ordered the execution of his own son and sent his head to King Yangcheng as an apology for the assassination attempt. The Qin forces attacked anyway, captured the king and conquered the state of Yan in 222 BCE. Five down, one to go. The last state was Qi. The Qin state bribed the chancellor of Qi to persuade his government to do nothing while the Qin invaded everybody else. Well... By now they were the only ones left. The Qi's stood no chance against the combined armies of the other six states. So the Qin sent in two armies who met very little resistance. When those armies arrived at the capital the king was taken completely by surprise. And on the advice of the councillor the Qin had been bribing, the king of Qi surrendered without a fight. And in 221 BCE China had been united. Qin did not stop going to war however, turning his great army southward to conquer the Yue tribes in 241 BCE and parts of the Xiongnu empire to the north. Chapter 7. Consolidating Power Yin Cheng was no longer the ruler of one kingdom, but the ruler of seven kingdoms. One king, seven kingdoms. And a person who rules over multiple kingdoms shouldn't just be a king, they are... an emperor. And being the first emperor he named himself Qin Shi Huang. Which means first sovereign emperor of Qin. Because Qin ruled all of the Chinese state and he was the sovereign ruler of it all. And today the word Qin has transformed a little bit. The q has been replaced with ch and we've added an a at the end. As a result Qin has become China which is why we call the country China today. But this new Chinese empire had a problem. Out of the seven states only one of them had a centralized government. The other six states had nobility. That nobility ruled a large portion of China and the personal ambitions of these lords were a threat to the emperor. So one of the first things Qi Shuang did was to abolish feudalism across all of China. All of a sudden across the empire the nobility was removed from power and replaced with government officials selected by the emperor. To understand just how crazy this is, imagine if today the ruler of your country decided to simply replace the entire system of government all at once. Over a hundred and twenty thousand nobles lost their wealth and influence with a single decision. Qin Shi Huang was able to do this because his army had already defeated all the other armies and as a result the nobles didn't have enough power to fight back. He had to remove them immediately. Or else those nobles would rebuild their power and threaten his rule years later. And so the lands were confiscated and handed over to the peasants who worked on them. To make sure those nobles wouldn't start a rebellion, the empire collected all their weapons and melted them down. They used the metal to build 12 colossal human statues each weighing about 29 tons. All the remaining metal was turned into bells and hung around the empire. From now on, only members of the imperial army and regional security forces were allowed to wield weapons. The emperor built 300 palaces in the capital city and he selected some of the most powerful noble families and offered them one of these palaces. These noble families would become the new administrators of the Chinese empire. So instead of inheriting land they would now be selected to rule that land by the emperor. And just like the administrators in the state of Qin, These nobles would also get a performance reveal. And if they wanted to keep living in one of those palaces they would need to keep scoring a good grade or else they would simply be replaced with someone more competent. And the job of these administrators was to implement the policies of the Qin state across all of China. Thereby creating a central government for the entire empire. This meant that China was divided up into 36 administrative regions. Each of these regions had a civil governor, assigned to ruling the land and the people, a military governor to handle the defense, and an overseer whose job was to check up on the other two, report back to the emperor, and mediate any disputes between the other two governors. These three officials would be moved around the empire every couple of years. That way, no administrator could build up enough influence to challenge the emperor. Power goes with permanence, impermanence goes with impotence, and rotation is castration. Qin Shi Huang would spend most of his reign copying the Qin system of the government across the rest of China. This meant a unified writing system. Before unification, most words had over 20 different ways of writing it. The Emperor forced them to have a single way of writing, a simplified Chinese script. Making it much easier to communicate over long distances. They unified the currency, so instead of every state producing their own coins, there were now just a couple of types of coins used across the entire empire. They replaced all measurement systems with just one measurement system. All calendars were replaced with just one calendar. And all tax policies were replaced with one tax policy that was the same everywhere. As part of this tax policy, a person would have to spend one month every two years working for the state. Such as building infrastructure, the Great Wall of China and digging canals. And anyone caught breaking the law could be sentenced to forced labour for much longer than one month. This meant the Chinese government always had a group of people able to work on any project they wanted. And these projects were also built in a standardized way. For example, the empire created a template for an imperial highway. So all highways were the same, making it easy to build more of them. After all, if you know how to make one part of the highway, You know how to make the rest of the highway too. Without constant wars it became possible to build infrastructure between the former states as well. Resulting in the construction of new roads, waterways and irrigation systems. Two important ones was a canal connecting the Luo River and Jing River creating a lot of fertile farmland. And secondly a transportation canal linking the Po River and the Yangtze River together. This allowed troops to quickly move from east to west. And lastly, the Chinese states had built a lot of walls on the northern border to protect against invasions from Siberia. But several states each had their own wall. With a unified China, they would also have a unified wall. And they connected the various pieces together into a single Chinese wall. The Great Wall of China. About 4 to 5 meters thick and 8 meters tall. Made up of masonry, rocks and packed earth. And in order to make sure that people inside the empire wouldn't rebel against the emperor, he decided to make a version of history that he thought was the best for the empire. Any book which contradicted his version of history was burned. The only exception to this rule were books about science and agriculture. And as a result, the libraries from all over the empire were scoured through to determine which book was useful and which one was not. Anything that was deemed not useful was burned. A reason we know so little about Chinese history, even though they were writing things down for thousands of years, is because they destroyed their own history. This book burning wasn't anything new. Whenever one state conquered another, they often burned those books. In fact, today there are hundreds of peoples whose only evidence they ever existed is in the form of an official Chinese document mentioning their conquest of diplomatic relationships, but nothing of their own civilization. remains today. The reasoning behind this is that if you only know the current system, you are less likely to want a different system. By keeping the population ignorant, they were less likely to rebel. Overall, disunified China was a lot nicer to live in than the Warring States period. The chances of dying in a war were much lower, people generally had more food and people gained a lot of personal freedoms. Because of a rigid system of laws that applied to everyone, the Warring States period was a lot more difficult to live in than the Warring States administrators weren't allowed to abuse their power. And many of these policies were so successful they lasted centuries or even millennia, helping China to become one of the most powerful nations in the world through most of its history. And it seems that Qin Shuang sort of understood this. Based on his writing and policies, it seems he did not look at how his policies affected his own reign, but hundreds or even thousands of years into the future. For example, his system of a unified system of weights and measurements was supposed to make trade easier for millennia. And this policy was so successful that future Chinese states adopted this same policy of a unified system. And his centralization of power was meant to bring prosperity to China, not just in his own time, but for centuries to come. And it is thanks to these policies that China managed to be the wealthiest region in the world for most of its history. China was not surpassed until other countries went through their own centralization process. Chapter 8. The Fall of the Qin Dynasty Qin Shi Huang was obsessed with immortality. He not only wanted to live as long as possible himself, but he also wanted his legacy to last 10,000 years. However, in his quest to become immortal, he drank mercury. He thought mercury gave people a long life. In reality, mercury is poison and the king most likely died of mercury poisoning. And after his death, his empire crumbled apart in just three years. The Qin dynasty wasn't very popular. It was held together by Qin Shi Huang's reputation and everybody else's fear of him. But with his death, all that hatred towards the Qin dynasty could finally come to the surface and rebellions appeared all over the empire. There were six main reasons for these rebellions. The first reason is the tyranny of the government. The fact you could be killed or enslaved just because you didn't know your neighbor was doing something illegal was very unpopular. You were constantly spying on your neighbors and your neighbors were spying on you. And being caught for even minor crimes could result in being sentenced to forced labor. The second reason was servitude. People were forced to spend one month every two years working on public projects. And these projects were dangerous. People often died. building them. Imagine if someone in your family, one of your friends or one of your neighbours went away building the Great Wall of China and did not come back. You didn't even have a body for a funeral. And you know this same fate might happen to you as well. A rebellion isn't just about a lord or a general, it's also about the people who follow them. And if the people are happy, they won't follow them into rebellion. The third reason was a lack of cultural integration. Every region still had their own culture and Qin Shi Huang did not think that having the same culture was very important. He believed that burning books and punishing people into submission was good enough. As a result there were a lot of rebellions wanting one of the old states to become independent again. The fourth reason was a single tax policy. So a farmer living in a fertile region was forced to pay just as much taxes as a person in an arid region. But a person in an arid region produces a lot less food. As a result, these regions became poorer while the fertile regions became richer. And people who are poor have nothing to lose in a rebellion. If you or your family start going hungry, see how long you remain a law-abiding citizen. The fifth reason was infighting. Qin Shi Huang grew up ruling a state that was completely centralized. He held all the power. And the people who worked for the government generally worked within this system and did not consider another system. After all, they owed their wealth and power to the current system, so they did not want to change the system. But the Chinese empire under the Qin dynasty ruled over 7 states. And 6 of those 7 states used to have a nobility. When Qin Shi Huang conquered China he removed some 120,000 nobles from power. But he allowed some of the most powerful to become administrators within this new China. He did this because he needed a lot of administrators to rule the other six states he just conquered. And the nobles were still the most educated people in China. But this also meant that the emperor had to give a lot of power to the people who lost a lot of power because of the emperor. They started factions in courts against the interest of the state. They made assassination attempts on the emperor. And when Qin Shi Huang died, they fought over which of his children should become the next emperor. And the last reason was that the government was uncompromising. Anything that could even theoretically be interpreted as disloyalty could get you killed. For example, there were two generals who had to go to a meeting. Being late for this meeting... meant you got the death penalty. Well, these two generals would have been on time, except there was a rainstorm. This rainstorm made them late, and being late would get them killed. So with nothing to lose, they started a rebellion. By fighting this rebellion, the government lost a lot of troops and resources. This in turn caused even more rebellions. In the end, two of those rebellions became incredibly successful. They marched their armies to the capital, and the people in the palace were afraid that they would be killed if they didn't surrender. So a eunuch started a palace coup, killed the second emperor and surrendered to the first of these two rebellions. Thus ending Qin's Chinese empire after just 14 years, lasting from 221 BCE to 207 BCE. But there was a second rebellion, and that second rebellion had more troops than the first rebellion. And with the emperor gone, these two rebellions started fighting with each other over who would rule China next. And in the end, a new dynasty emerged. The Han Dynasty. And if you want to find out more about the Han Dynasty then give this video a like. If it gets more than 20,000 likes I will make a sequel covering the Han Dynasty. Or if you just enjoyed this video then please leave a like as well. It really helps to show this video to more people. And leave a comment discussing this topic or let me know other subjects you'd like me to cover. We're always looking for new video topics. So let me know. And of course subscribe if you want to see more of these history videos. We upload almost every month now. This was Avery from History Scope, thank you for watching.

We will look at the early history of China, the first unification of China, and how that unified China broke apart again, in The Rise and Fall of the Qin Dynasty. Chapter 1. Early History What we think of as China today started out in the Yellow River Valley, and over time it spread south to the Yangtze River. This region has one of the most fertile farmlands in the world and about 10,000 years ago the first people settled down and built farms. The people of the Yellow River Valley had access to rice. Rice is one of the best food sources for a human being.

Rice is easy to store, it doesn't spoil easily, and to make rice edible all you need to do is boil it in water. This combination of fertile soil and easy crops allowed these people to grow more food than they could eat, eventually leading to a population increase. This meant that cottages turned into villages, villages turned into towns, towns turned into cities, and cities turned into kingdoms.

And these kingdoms would fight for control over the people of the Yellow River Valley. But they would rarely go outside this valley. The reason for that is that this valley is surrounded by a desert to the north, a sea to the east, and mountains to the south and west. Because of this the people living in the valley began developing their own ethnicity, a Chinese ethnicity. Today we call this group of people the Han Chinese.

They make up over 90% of modern day China and about 17.5% of the entire world population. But in ancient times the Chinese people were not unified under a single government. There were hundreds of city-states, kingdoms and small empires vying for power. And after millennia of warfare, one of them eventually became the dominant force.

They were a state called the Shang Dynasty. The Shang Dynasty lasted from around 1600 BCE to 1045 BCE. In case you don't know, a dynasty is a ruling family. So if your father was a king and you became a king, then you are part of one dynasty.

All your descendants who are king after you are also part of the same dynasty. In China, the name of a dynasty was also the name of a state. So the Shang dynasty ruled over the Shang state. For example, in the Netherlands the royal family is called Orange Nassau.

So the Netherlands would be called the state of Orange Nassau or the Orange Nassau state. Look at this map of the Shang dynasty. They were the dominant force but many Chinese states existed outside of their borders. In 1045 BCE the Shang were replaced by the Zhou dynasty.

The Shang and the Zhou dynasty slowly expanded their territory in three general steps. The first step was to force a state to become a vassal either through war or diplomacy. The second step was to force this new vassal to adopt the Chinese culture. And over the course of centuries the people living next to the Han Chinese were slowly forced to assimilate and become Chinese as well. And the third step is to integrate that state into the Shang or Zhao empires and their histories were then destroyed by burning their books and cultural artifacts.

This is a process called Sinicization. And we know of hundreds of ethnic groups that were conquered in this manner, yet the only evidence that remains of them is in ancient official documents talking about their conquest. China is still doing this after 6000 years even today. If you've ever wondered why all of China's neighbors distrust China, it's because they are afraid they will be next, that they will be assimilated, and that the resistance is futile.

This video won't go into the details about the Shang or Zhao, because they never actually unified China. If you do want to learn more about them then I'm willing to turn this video into a series where we cover the entire history of China all the way from the Shang to modern day communist China. And at the end we can put them all together into one giant video.

In order to know that people are actually interested in more China stuff let's say once this video gets around 20 000 likes I'll start working on a part two. So like the video and you get more China. Chapter 2. The fall of the Zhao dynasty.

The Zhou Dynasty slowly increased their territory. They went from ruling this territory in 1045 BCE to this in 771 BCE. They conquered so much territory that it became a problem.

Because an army would have to walk a long way in a time period when roads were still primitive. Meaning it could take weeks for an army to deal with a problem. Those armies relied on chariots.

Each chariot would have two or four horses pulling it. But they only worked on open terrain. This was great for flatland like the Yellow River Valley, but they were useless in rugged hills and mountains at the edges of Zhao territory. As a result, the Zhao army found it difficult to defend the outer regions, and so they allowed for local lords to rule the outer territories. They would become the rulers of a piece of land and had to organize an army to defend against any outside threats.

These local lords could respond to invasions much faster because their army was organized locally. Over time, the Zhao relied more and more on these lords whenever they faced a major problem. And that nobility wanted something in return, such as even more land.

Eventually, that nobility became so powerful that they started rebellions of their own. Which meant the Zhao relied even more on other lords to defeat this rebellion and was forced to hand over even more land to the lords who supported them. Over the course of centuries, the Zhao became weaker while their vassals became stronger. By 450 BCE the Zhou had fractured into dozens of vassals and the Zhou lost their position as the dominant Chinese state. From that moment onward the Zhou could not even stop wars from happening within their own borders.

And so the vassals began acting independently and start fighting with each other over territory. In total there were 140 states vying for power. And over time each of these states began to officially declare independence and set up their own dynasties. With each independence making the Zhou weaker and every time they got weaker, more states declared independence. Until eventually the Zhou themselves were conquered in 249 BCE.

Chapter 3. The Warring States Period As the Zhou began to break apart, new states were created. These new states went to war with each other. And thus this period was called the Warring States Period. Because historians are very original. And in this period wars could be started over anything.

This meant that states were constantly being taken over. And if you wanted to remain independent, you needed to have a strong army to defend yourself. If a state did not have a strong army, they were destroyed.

This caused a natural selection process whereby the states who could create the best armies would survive. This forced them to constantly improve the military. And to have a better army, you need more people, more weapons, and better commanders. But in order to have these three things, you needed to have a government that could build irrigation canals, import enough metals, and train good generals.

But this was difficult during the Warring States period. Because at the time, China was a feudal society. Meaning that every state had a king controlling the land around the capital. The rest of the land was handed over to the nobility. Those nobles had their own government, their own military, their own tax policy.

So if the king wanted to build an irrigation canal in a region, the other lords might get jealous and demand they too get a canal. Or maybe they can't agree where to build it, so they don't construct any canal at all. Or maybe there is a war and one of your lords has a very large army. And if that lord turns out to be an idiot on the battlefield, then a large portion of your troops are useless because your general is useless. And there are...

Countless more examples of why having a system of lords is really really bad for your country. But what is the solution to this problem? Well the solution is to get rid of feudalism and create a centralized government.

That centralized government will be able to select generals who are good at their job, build infrastructure without having to appease local rulers, and be able to combine all the resources of a nation towards the defense of the homeland. But getting rid of feudalism is is incredibly difficult because those lords all have their own armies. If the king decides to remove all the nobility, then they start a rebellion and the combined armies of the nobles is usually larger than the army of the king. And so centralization was generally only done when the nobility agreed to it. For example, if a state is conquered, the nobility is killed or exiled.

So nobles might hand over some power in order to defend their state from invasion, because it's better to lose some power than... all power. And so, through a process of natural selection, the states that were the most centralized generally were the strongest because they had the ability to control the world. to build new irrigation canals and rice farms.

They had better armies because they could select good generals instead of waiting for them to be born into nobility. They had more blacksmiths and other furnaces to make better weapons. And this last part is particularly important.

Chapter 4. The Iron Age Revolution When the Warring States period began, China was a Bronze Age civilization. In order to make bronze you need to combine copper and tin and heat it up to 913 degrees centigrade, 1186 kelvin or 1675 fahrenheit. But because that technology wasn't very good the copper and tin had impurities.

This meant that there were other metals stuck in the copper and tin. And if you wanted to make the best weapons, armor and tools you needed to remove all these impurities. One of the most common impurities is iron.

But if you want to remove iron from copper and tin, you need a furnace that reaches temperatures of 1250 centigrade, 1523 kelvin or 2282 fahrenheit. Because that is the temperature at which iron can be smelted. With hotter furnaces came fewer impurities. With fewer impurities you had better bronze. And with so much bronze to make, there was quite a lot of iron left over.

And if you're a blacksmith who ran out of bronze, you might decide to experiment with this useless iron you have lying around. Now, iron isn't better than bronze. In fact, in almost every way, bronze is better than iron.

Except in one category. Iron is incredibly common. It's so common, in fact, that iron is the most abundant metal in the universe. One in every 1,000 atom is an iron atom. And the blacksmiths realized they could make cheaper and lower quality weapons, tools and armor made out of iron.

They wouldn't be as valuable as bronze, but a low quality sword is better than no sword at all. And so states began investing in iron production to supplement their bronze production. But as the states needed larger and larger armies over time, they switched from an expensive bronze army to a much cheaper iron army. Before the warring states period, an army might be up to 50,000 soldiers strong. By the end of the warring states period, an army could be up to 1 million soldiers strong.

That's more than most countries today. But that iron can also be turned into tools. Bronze tools were relatively rare.

Most farmers couldn't afford bronze, so they used tools made out of wood, clay or stone. But with the introduction of iron smelting, it became possible to produce enough tools for everyone. China went from hard labor done by hand to large-scale tool-assisted labor. Iron Hose Iron axes, iron plows, iron everything. Instead of pulling wheat out with your hands, you could now use a hoe to cut the wheat.

This is a lot faster. It allowed farmers to create larger farms. These larger farms produced more food.

And with more food came more people. So many people came that there were now more people than they needed to grow food. Those extra people had to find new ways of earning money. And they did so by becoming craftspeople and merchants.

For example, With more food, you need more pots to store that food. And over time, China created workshops where pots were mass produced, while the merchants started trading the extra products that were being made. To make that trade easier, Chinese states used those extra people and iron tools to build roads and transportation canals. Those canals could then be attached to farms to turn them into irrigation canals as well. Or that canal could be used to drain the water from marshes to create new farmland.

For those states who managed to survive, the Warring States period was an economic and technological revolution that could only have been achieved through an efficient government. Because only an efficient government could somehow get enough people together with the right tools to build these massive projects. After hundreds of years of constant warfare, only seven large states remained in 338 BCE.

The Chu, the Han, the Qi, the Wei, the Yan, The Zhou and the Qin. For clarification, the Zhou were a different dynasty than the Zhou. And these 7 states had reached the point where each of them was too powerful to be conquered, but too weak to conquer another state. Because if, for example, the Wei invaded the Han, then one of Wei's neighbors will attack them in the back while their army is abroad. There was still war and conflict, but the chance of actually winning a war and gaining territory was a lot smaller.

And so instead of focusing on invading the other states, they instead focused on defense. They began building castles, border walls that were hundreds of kilometers long, and roads to move their armies to the front lines. As a result, the chances of successfully winning a war became even smaller. But when your country isn't being burned to the ground every couple of years in a war, you can make long-term investments. Such as building even more irrigation canals, even more farms, even more industry.

All the technological developments that China had made during the Warring States period could now be implemented on a much larger scale, creating an economic revolution in the 3rd century BCE. And the most developed region of them all was the state of Qin. So it would be the Qin who would eventually unite all of China.

Chapter 5. The Rise of the Qin The Qin state was one of the last vassals the Zhao added to their sphere of influence in the 9th or 8th century BCE. Being a Zhao vassal meant that they were forced to adopt the Han Chinese culture. But throughout most of Qin's history, no matter how hard they tried, they were always seen as semi-Bibarians by the other Chinese states.

The Qin were merely seen as a buffer state to protect against invasions from the west. Being located in the Guangzhong mountains, It meant the Qin could defend its territory through narrow mountain passages, meaning the Qin were relatively safe. When the Zhao declined in power, the Qin were forced to rely more and more on themselves rather than their Zhao overlords.

In order to survive, the Qin expanded their territory slightly to put more distance between them and their enemies. But between 413 and 409 BCE, the Qin was invaded by the neighboring state of Wei. The Wei were able to break through the Qin defenses and show them that their mountains weren't as defensible as they once thought.

The Qin ruler was so afraid they would be conquered completely that they were willing to invite anyone who could help them make Qin great again. One of the people he hired was a man called Sheng Yang. He helped to implement a new type of philosophy into the Qin state called legalism. This was a system which believed that people would not naturally obey their rulers and that therefore the ruler should implement harsh punishments for anyone breaking the law.

They created a large bureaucracy with multiple levels of government. The people in this hierarchy were forced to report on the people one level below them. If an official did a bad job they were punished severely and replaced.

Anyone from the king's advisors to the lowest office clerk was subject to this system of law. Anyone who did not have a good performance review was sentenced to death. was punished.

And sheng argued that even the nobility should be forced to follow this system. That a lord should be removed from power if their performance review was bad. And that this would not only force them to actually get to work, but would also remove corruption from the system.

And the king would hold all the power and could make policies based on what is best for the country, rather than what is best for the personal ambitions of those lords. And as you can imagine, the king of Qin thought that having all the power for himself was a great idea. And as a result from around 400 BCE to 300 BCE the state of Qin began to slowly centralize power.

The Qin started out rather small and as a result a small percentage of their territory was controlled by local lords. Because the king of Qin also ruled part of this territory. At the same time this small size meant the Qin didn't have a lot of soldiers to defend itself.

So in order for those lords to not have their lands taken in a war, they handed over power to the king. This allowed the Qin to expand their territory. And that new land was usually not handed over to the nobility, but to an administrator, selected by the king. And if the nobles wanted a member of their family to rule that new land, then they had to make sure they got a good education and a good performance review.

So they would be promoted to a regional administrator. As a result, the king became more powerful, while the nobility became less powerful. But if you want to review someone's work, you need to have the data to actually review.

For this, Shen created 13 statistics that an administrator needed to know, such as counting livestock, healthy men and women, how much grain was in the granaries, etc. To make statistics easier, the Qin forced everyone to use the same system of weights, measurements and writing. At the time China used many different versions of the Chinese alphabet and the Qin rulers made sure that everyone inside their own territory used one version. They standardized coinage, meaning that every coin from the Qin state would have to be the exact same size and shape to make trade easier. This simplified administration tremendously.

But in order to know all these statistics, the state needed to control these parts of the economy. So from then on, it was the state that would store food in state granaries. When there was a famine, this food would be handed out back to the people, reducing the death toll of natural disasters.

They built irrigation systems to turn the Wei Valley and Min River Basin into fertile farming regions. The state gave tax breaks to people who had more babies while punishing people who remained unmarried. In order to make sure people obeyed the law, they created a system where 10 households would be linked together.

Each household had to make sure the other 9 households were obeying the law. If a crime went unreported, they would all be cut in half. The death penalty, slavery, and exile were possible for even minor crimes. And when nobles committed serious crimes, even they could be punished. While this system was cruel, it was also efficient.

And in general, the people who lived in the Qin state were better off than before Qin had conquered them. These policies were so successful that a century later, around 300 BCE, the king of Qin was able to remove the nobility entirely. From that moment forward all political power was put in the hands of the central government. From now on land was no longer ruled by a lord who inherited the land, but by an administrator selected by the king because of their skill.

A general was no longer a general because he owned a lot of land, but because he had shown that he was good at commanding armies. The nobles were still the most educated people in China, so most government officials were descendants of the nobility. However, the king would select the most competent among them. So a person who is really good at their job but is minor nobility can work his way up to rule large territory. With his salary he is able to pay for his children's education who then also become administrators.

As a result the state of Qin was ruled by people who were good at their jobs. And when you have competent people in charge making reasonable decisions then the prosperity of your region will increase. And because Qin had centralized first they became the most competent government with the most prosperous region.

and all this prosperity would be used to unite China under the Qin dynasty. Chapter 6. China will be united. The unification of China was started by a man called Ying Chen.

He became the king of the Qin state in the year 246 BCE at the age of 13. He was groomed by his regent and assumed full power over Qin nine years later in 235 BCE. He consolidated his power by crushing a rebellion and then set his sights on defeating the other six states. And let's look at those other states.

In the north were the Xiao with 450.000 soldiers and Yan with 310.000 soldiers. In the middle were the state of Wei with 400.000 soldiers, the state of Qi with 410.000 soldiers and the weakest, the state of Han with just 300.000 soldiers. All the way in the south was the state of Chu. with the largest army of 1 million soldiers. And lastly on the west was the state of Qin with 800,000 soldiers.

And seeing as the weakest state was the Han dynasty and the Han were right next to Qin, this would be the first target of Yin-Cheng's unification war. In 230 BCE, a Qin army was sent in and conquered the capital city within a year. The king of Han surrendered shortly after and in that same year 230 BCE, the Han was conquered. One down, five to go. Next was Zhao.

The Qin and Zhao had actually been regularly going to war with each other for several decades. But for now, there was peace. The king of Zhao was surrounded by enemies both within and without.

And so he became a paranoid man. Yin Cheng used this against the Zhao king and convinced him that one of his generals was starting a rebellion. The Zhao king then killed the general and left his army without anyone to lead it. And in 228 BCE, the Zhao were conquered. Two down, four to go.

The next state was the state of Wei. After the Han they were now the weakest state. But they were rather close to the Chu. And if Qin invaded Wei, Chu would invade Qin.

But the best defense is a strong offense. So in 225 BCE the Qin conquered more than 10 Chu cities on the northern border as a buffer to keep out the Chu armies while the Qin were invading Wei. The Qin then moved to the capital of Wei.

But a siege takes a long time, so What they did instead was build a canal to direct water from the Yellow River to flood the capital. Over 100,000 people died and the King of Wei surrendered in 225 BCE. Three down, three to go. Next was Chu.

The Qin army wasn't used to the warmer temperatures and different geography. As a result, they were first defeated by the Chu. Qin then spent a year secretly training an army to fight specifically in Chu territory.

A year later they overran the Chu. killing 240,000 of their soldiers. And so in 223 BCE the Chu were conquered. Four down, two to go.

The Chu was truly the only state that could possibly have defeated the Qin. So the crown prince of Yan hired an assassin to kill King Yin Cheng. The king survived and decided to invade the Yan dynasty next. They sent two armies which easily defeated the Yan forces and conquered their capital. The king and crown prince fled to the Liaodong peninsula.

Dead, the king ordered the execution of his own son and sent his head to King Yangcheng as an apology for the assassination attempt. The Qin forces attacked anyway, captured the king and conquered the state of Yan in 222 BCE. Five down, one to go.

The last state was Qi. The Qin state bribed the chancellor of Qi to persuade his government to do nothing while the Qin invaded everybody else. Well... By now they were the only ones left. The Qi's stood no chance against the combined armies of the other six states.

So the Qin sent in two armies who met very little resistance. When those armies arrived at the capital the king was taken completely by surprise. And on the advice of the councillor the Qin had been bribing, the king of Qi surrendered without a fight. And in 221 BCE China had been united. Qin did not stop going to war however, turning his great army southward to conquer the Yue tribes in 241 BCE and parts of the Xiongnu empire to the north.

Chapter 7. Consolidating Power Yin Cheng was no longer the ruler of one kingdom, but the ruler of seven kingdoms. One king, seven kingdoms. And a person who rules over multiple kingdoms shouldn't just be a king, they are...

an emperor. And being the first emperor he named himself Qin Shi Huang. Which means first sovereign emperor of Qin. Because Qin ruled all of the Chinese state and he was the sovereign ruler of it all.

And today the word Qin has transformed a little bit. The q has been replaced with ch and we've added an a at the end. As a result Qin has become China which is why we call the country China today.

But this new Chinese empire had a problem. Out of the seven states only one of them had a centralized government. The other six states had nobility.

That nobility ruled a large portion of China and the personal ambitions of these lords were a threat to the emperor. So one of the first things Qi Shuang did was to abolish feudalism across all of China. All of a sudden across the empire the nobility was removed from power and replaced with government officials selected by the emperor.

To understand just how crazy this is, imagine if today the ruler of your country decided to simply replace the entire system of government all at once. Over a hundred and twenty thousand nobles lost their wealth and influence with a single decision. Qin Shi Huang was able to do this because his army had already defeated all the other armies and as a result the nobles didn't have enough power to fight back.

He had to remove them immediately. Or else those nobles would rebuild their power and threaten his rule years later. And so the lands were confiscated and handed over to the peasants who worked on them.

To make sure those nobles wouldn't start a rebellion, the empire collected all their weapons and melted them down. They used the metal to build 12 colossal human statues each weighing about 29 tons. All the remaining metal was turned into bells and hung around the empire.

From now on, only members of the imperial army and regional security forces were allowed to wield weapons. The emperor built 300 palaces in the capital city and he selected some of the most powerful noble families and offered them one of these palaces. These noble families would become the new administrators of the Chinese empire.

So instead of inheriting land they would now be selected to rule that land by the emperor. And just like the administrators in the state of Qin, These nobles would also get a performance reveal. And if they wanted to keep living in one of those palaces they would need to keep scoring a good grade or else they would simply be replaced with someone more competent. And the job of these administrators was to implement the policies of the Qin state across all of China.

Thereby creating a central government for the entire empire. This meant that China was divided up into 36 administrative regions. Each of these regions had a civil governor, assigned to ruling the land and the people, a military governor to handle the defense, and an overseer whose job was to check up on the other two, report back to the emperor, and mediate any disputes between the other two governors.

These three officials would be moved around the empire every couple of years. That way, no administrator could build up enough influence to challenge the emperor. Power goes with permanence, impermanence goes with impotence, and rotation is castration. Qin Shi Huang would spend most of his reign copying the Qin system of the government across the rest of China.

This meant a unified writing system. Before unification, most words had over 20 different ways of writing it. The Emperor forced them to have a single way of writing, a simplified Chinese script. Making it much easier to communicate over long distances. They unified the currency, so instead of every state producing their own coins, there were now just a couple of types of coins used across the entire empire.

They replaced all measurement systems with just one measurement system. All calendars were replaced with just one calendar. And all tax policies were replaced with one tax policy that was the same everywhere.

As part of this tax policy, a person would have to spend one month every two years working for the state. Such as building infrastructure, the Great Wall of China and digging canals. And anyone caught breaking the law could be sentenced to forced labour for much longer than one month.

This meant the Chinese government always had a group of people able to work on any project they wanted. And these projects were also built in a standardized way. For example, the empire created a template for an imperial highway.

So all highways were the same, making it easy to build more of them. After all, if you know how to make one part of the highway, You know how to make the rest of the highway too. Without constant wars it became possible to build infrastructure between the former states as well.

Resulting in the construction of new roads, waterways and irrigation systems. Two important ones was a canal connecting the Luo River and Jing River creating a lot of fertile farmland. And secondly a transportation canal linking the Po River and the Yangtze River together.

This allowed troops to quickly move from east to west. And lastly, the Chinese states had built a lot of walls on the northern border to protect against invasions from Siberia. But several states each had their own wall. With a unified China, they would also have a unified wall. And they connected the various pieces together into a single Chinese wall.

The Great Wall of China. About 4 to 5 meters thick and 8 meters tall. Made up of masonry, rocks and packed earth. And in order to make sure that people inside the empire wouldn't rebel against the emperor, he decided to make a version of history that he thought was the best for the empire.

Any book which contradicted his version of history was burned. The only exception to this rule were books about science and agriculture. And as a result, the libraries from all over the empire were scoured through to determine which book was useful and which one was not. Anything that was deemed not useful was burned.

A reason we know so little about Chinese history, even though they were writing things down for thousands of years, is because they destroyed their own history. This book burning wasn't anything new. Whenever one state conquered another, they often burned those books. In fact, today there are hundreds of peoples whose only evidence they ever existed is in the form of an official Chinese document mentioning their conquest of diplomatic relationships, but nothing of their own civilization.

remains today. The reasoning behind this is that if you only know the current system, you are less likely to want a different system. By keeping the population ignorant, they were less likely to rebel. Overall, disunified China was a lot nicer to live in than the Warring States period.

The chances of dying in a war were much lower, people generally had more food and people gained a lot of personal freedoms. Because of a rigid system of laws that applied to everyone, the Warring States period was a lot more difficult to live in than the Warring States administrators weren't allowed to abuse their power. And many of these policies were so successful they lasted centuries or even millennia, helping China to become one of the most powerful nations in the world through most of its history. And it seems that Qin Shuang sort of understood this.

Based on his writing and policies, it seems he did not look at how his policies affected his own reign, but hundreds or even thousands of years into the future. For example, his system of a unified system of weights and measurements was supposed to make trade easier for millennia. And this policy was so successful that future Chinese states adopted this same policy of a unified system.

And his centralization of power was meant to bring prosperity to China, not just in his own time, but for centuries to come. And it is thanks to these policies that China managed to be the wealthiest region in the world for most of its history. China was not surpassed until other countries went through their own centralization process.

Chapter 8. The Fall of the Qin Dynasty Qin Shi Huang was obsessed with immortality. He not only wanted to live as long as possible himself, but he also wanted his legacy to last 10,000 years. However, in his quest to become immortal, he drank mercury.

He thought mercury gave people a long life. In reality, mercury is poison and the king most likely died of mercury poisoning. And after his death, his empire crumbled apart in just three years. The Qin dynasty wasn't very popular.

It was held together by Qin Shi Huang's reputation and everybody else's fear of him. But with his death, all that hatred towards the Qin dynasty could finally come to the surface and rebellions appeared all over the empire. There were six main reasons for these rebellions. The first reason is the tyranny of the government. The fact you could be killed or enslaved just because you didn't know your neighbor was doing something illegal was very unpopular.

You were constantly spying on your neighbors and your neighbors were spying on you. And being caught for even minor crimes could result in being sentenced to forced labor. The second reason was servitude. People were forced to spend one month every two years working on public projects. And these projects were dangerous.

People often died. building them. Imagine if someone in your family, one of your friends or one of your neighbours went away building the Great Wall of China and did not come back.

You didn't even have a body for a funeral. And you know this same fate might happen to you as well. A rebellion isn't just about a lord or a general, it's also about the people who follow them.

And if the people are happy, they won't follow them into rebellion. The third reason was a lack of cultural integration. Every region still had their own culture and Qin Shi Huang did not think that having the same culture was very important.

He believed that burning books and punishing people into submission was good enough. As a result there were a lot of rebellions wanting one of the old states to become independent again. The fourth reason was a single tax policy.

So a farmer living in a fertile region was forced to pay just as much taxes as a person in an arid region. But a person in an arid region produces a lot less food. As a result, these regions became poorer while the fertile regions became richer. And people who are poor have nothing to lose in a rebellion. If you or your family start going hungry, see how long you remain a law-abiding citizen.

The fifth reason was infighting. Qin Shi Huang grew up ruling a state that was completely centralized. He held all the power.

And the people who worked for the government generally worked within this system and did not consider another system. After all, they owed their wealth and power to the current system, so they did not want to change the system. But the Chinese empire under the Qin dynasty ruled over 7 states. And 6 of those 7 states used to have a nobility.

When Qin Shi Huang conquered China he removed some 120,000 nobles from power. But he allowed some of the most powerful to become administrators within this new China. He did this because he needed a lot of administrators to rule the other six states he just conquered.

And the nobles were still the most educated people in China. But this also meant that the emperor had to give a lot of power to the people who lost a lot of power because of the emperor. They started factions in courts against the interest of the state. They made assassination attempts on the emperor. And when Qin Shi Huang died, they fought over which of his children should become the next emperor.

And the last reason was that the government was uncompromising. Anything that could even theoretically be interpreted as disloyalty could get you killed. For example, there were two generals who had to go to a meeting. Being late for this meeting... meant you got the death penalty.

Well, these two generals would have been on time, except there was a rainstorm. This rainstorm made them late, and being late would get them killed. So with nothing to lose, they started a rebellion.

By fighting this rebellion, the government lost a lot of troops and resources. This in turn caused even more rebellions. In the end, two of those rebellions became incredibly successful.

They marched their armies to the capital, and the people in the palace were afraid that they would be killed if they didn't surrender. So a eunuch started a palace coup, killed the second emperor and surrendered to the first of these two rebellions. Thus ending Qin's Chinese empire after just 14 years, lasting from 221 BCE to 207 BCE. But there was a second rebellion, and that second rebellion had more troops than the first rebellion.

And with the emperor gone, these two rebellions started fighting with each other over who would rule China next. And in the end, a new dynasty emerged. The Han Dynasty. And if you want to find out more about the Han Dynasty then give this video a like. If it gets more than 20,000 likes I will make a sequel covering the Han Dynasty.

Or if you just enjoyed this video then please leave a like as well. It really helps to show this video to more people. And leave a comment discussing this topic or let me know other subjects you'd like me to cover. We're always looking for new video topics. So let me know.

And of course subscribe if you want to see more of these history videos. We upload almost every month now. This was Avery from History Scope, thank you for watching.

Transcript for:The Qin Dynasty: Rise and Decline

Transcript for:
The Qin Dynasty: Rise and Decline