3 The Qin and Han Dynasties
My strength uprooted mountains,
My power covered the age.
But the times do not favor me,
And Piebald cannot gallop fast enough.^1The territorial and symbolic unification of China in221 bceunder the Qin
ruler was the result of decades, if not centuries, of warfare. The Warring
States period was ended by a series of wars and campaigns that had
militarized virtually all of Chinese society, spreading martial skills through-
out the population. All of the statesfighting for power or survival required
military service from their adult male subjects, and much of a given govern-
ment’s functions were involved in mobilizing resources and men for war.
While the great thinkers were read and discussed by some educated men,
moral suasion played little role in reducing the overall level of violence. The
Qin state defeated its rivals and imposed real temporal central authority
over the Chinese ecumene for thefirst time.
Later historians gave much of the credit for Qin’s victory, and subsequent
collapse, to the policies instituted by Lord Shang ( 390 – 38 bce). Lord Shang’s
policies were part of an intellectual tradition usually translated into English
as“the Legalists.”The Legalists believed that the best way to run a state was
through the establishment and ruthless application of rules and regulations.
In the case of the Qin, those rules were designed to maximize military power
and food production. Rewards were given for taking enemy heads in battle,
and punishments were imposed for military failure. There was, of course,
more to the success of the Qin than its harsh system of laws or its ruthless
centralization of power in the hands of the ruler. All of the other states had
their own systems for mobilizing enormous armies from their populations.
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