Qin: From Western State to China’s First Empire

Qin began as a western state within the Zhou political order and became the power that brought the Warring States period to an end. Its heartland lay in the Guanzhong region, around the Wei River valley, in present-day Shaanxi, where fertile land and mountain barriers helped protect its capital and support its armies. After building its strength through reforms and territorial expansion, Qin conquered the other major states and unified them under Ying Zheng in 221 BCE. He declared himself the First Emperor, founding an empire that lasted until the collapse of Qin government in 207 BCE. The subsequent destruction of the Qin capital and the struggle that led to the Han dynasty were separate stages of the transition.

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How Qin became the leading state

Qin’s western position had long shaped its political and military priorities. In 770 BCE, its ruler helped the Zhou court move east after the fall of the Western Zhou capital and was recognized as a major vassal ruler. Qin then expanded into lands to the west, where it fought and absorbed neighboring groups, before becoming more deeply involved in conflicts with states to its east. Its location offered a defensible base, but Qin’s eventual rise depended on how its rulers organized people, land and military service.

During the fourth century BCE, Duke Xiao backed reforms associated with Shang Yang, a statesman who came to Qin from the neighboring state of Wei. The reforms weakened hereditary aristocratic privilege and tied rank and reward more closely to service, especially military achievement. They also strengthened the ruler’s officials and their ability to govern beyond the court. In the army, a system of ranks and rewards gave soldiers and commanders incentives to demonstrate their contribution. The political aim was to make the state, rather than noble families acting through inherited authority, the principal organizer of military and administrative power.

Agriculture was central to this system. Qin encouraged the expansion and cultivation of farmland, and its rulers backed irrigation and other public works that could raise agricultural output. In the mid-third century BCE, the court approved a major canal project proposed by Zheng Guo, an engineer from Han. The canal improved irrigation in the Guanzhong heartland, strengthening the food supply that supported both the population and the army. Qin also gained the territories of Ba and Shu in the Sichuan region in 316 BCE, adding productive lands and a new base for expansion to the south.

Qin’s strength was not purely military. Its rulers used diplomacy to keep rival states from acting together, including arrangements with more distant powers while concentrating pressure on nearby ones. In the final generation before unification, Qin also exploited divisions within its opponents. The effect was cumulative: territorial gains brought more resources and manpower under Qin’s control, while administrative and military systems helped it use those resources in sustained campaigns.

The wars that brought the states under Qin rule

The decisive campaigns began with renewed attacks on Zhao in 236 BCE. Zhao had been a formidable rival, but its defeat by Qin at Changping in 260 BCE had already weakened it. In the final campaigns, Zhao’s general Li Mu resisted Qin forces, but the Qin court used political intrigue to undermine him. After Li Mu was removed and killed, Qin captured Zhao’s capital, Handan, in 228 BCE. A surviving Zhao prince established a short-lived regime at Dai, which Qin conquered in 222 BCE.

Qin conquered Han in 230 BCE, making it the first of the six rival states to fall in the final sequence. After Handan’s capture, Qin turned against Yan. In 227 BCE, Jing Ke, acting for Yan’s crown prince, attempted to kill Ying Zheng during an audience at the Qin court. The attempt failed. Qin attacked Yan the following year and took its capital, Ji. Yan’s ruling family and remaining forces fled northeast; Qin completed its conquest of Yan in 222 BCE.

In 225 BCE, Qin besieged Wei’s capital, Daliang. The city’s position and defenses made a direct assault difficult, so Qin forces diverted water from nearby waterways to flood it. Wei’s ruler surrendered. The campaign against Chu, a powerful southern state, proved harder. An initial Qin force under Li Xin was defeated after Chu forces counterattacked. Ying Zheng then placed the veteran commander Wang Jian in charge of a much larger army. Qin captured Chu’s capital in 223 BCE and took its king prisoner. Further campaigns extended Qin control into southern territories associated with the former state.

Qi remained outside Qin’s control while the other states fell. Its government had not joined the resistance against Qin, and it was left without allies when Qin attacked in 221 BCE. Rather than meet Qi’s forces head-on at the western border, Qin’s army bypassed the western defences and approached through the former territory of Yan to the north, reaching the capital, Linzi. Qi’s ruler surrendered. With that conquest, the rival states were brought under one ruler, and Ying Zheng adopted the title of First Emperor.

Building an imperial government

Unification did not simply extend Qin’s previous borders. It changed how conquered territories were governed. Instead of distributing them as hereditary fiefs to members of the royal family, the court divided the empire into large administrative districts called commanderies, subdivided into counties. The central government appointed officials to administer these areas. This system gave the emperor and his officials a direct role in local government and reduced the political independence that hereditary rulers had held in the former states.

Qin also sought to make administration work across regions that had developed different customs and practices. The government promoted common standards for weights and measures, currency, writing and practical matters such as the width of chariot axles. The bronze banliang coin became the official currency across the empire, replacing the different forms of money used by individual states. The court promoted an official writing style known as small seal script, though local variations in written characters continued to appear.

Population registration helped officials identify households and manage the people subject to state obligations. Qin administrative records included names and household information; lists excavated at Shuihudi and Liye date to the late third century BCE. The system also used groups of five households whose heads were made responsible for reporting wrongdoing within the group. These measures helped the government connect local communities to the demands of taxation, military service and labor. Most people lived in rural settlements and worked in agriculture, so the state’s ability to register households mattered to both its economy and its military capacity.

Qin law was another instrument of administration. Rules and written procedures governed official duties and legal cases, while penalties could include fines, labor service, corporal punishment or death, depending on the offense. The system could impose serious consequences, but its operation was not limited to physical punishment: officials also had defined procedures for handling cases, and records show attention to matters such as intent and requests for retrial. For ordinary people, these administrative systems shaped daily life through the obligations placed on households as well as through the threat of penalties.

Expansion, construction and the cost of rule

After unification, Qin continued to campaign beyond the territories of the former Warring States. In the north, its armies fought the Xiongnu and extended control into frontier regions. The government connected and reinforced earlier defensive walls, creating works that later formed part of the Great Wall’s history. In the south, it campaigned against peoples beyond the former states and used canals to move supplies and reinforce its armies. Imperial authority therefore reached across a wide area, but frontier regions remained distinct from the former state heartlands, and control was not equally secure everywhere.

These campaigns and the government’s major building projects required large labor forces. Peasants and people sentenced to labor service worked on roads, canals, defensive structures and the First Emperor’s mausoleum. The underground complex associated with the mausoleum included a life-sized terracotta army intended to guard the emperor after death. Such projects showed how much labor the centralized state could command, but military duties, public work and the pressure of government demands also contributed to growing discontent.

The fall of Qin and the later Han settlement

Qin’s stability weakened after the First Emperor died in 210 BCE. A struggle among court advisers followed, and the eunuch Zhao Gao and minister Li Si arranged for Huhai, another of the emperor’s sons, to take the throne as Qin Er Shi. A later account says that they altered the succession order and forced the intended heir, Fusu, to die. Qin Er Shi’s reign was marked by further executions and the continuation of major projects and military demands.

Revolt broke out in 209 BCE and spread beyond its initial centers. Qin forces suppressed the first uprising, but other rebellions followed and local leaders challenged the court’s authority. Zhao Gao and Li Si turned against one another; Li Si was tried and executed, and Zhao Gao later engineered Qin Er Shi’s death. Ziying, the last ruler of Qin, killed Zhao Gao but could not restore the government’s control. He surrendered to the rebel leader Liu Bang when Liu’s forces reached Xianyang in 207 BCE. That surrender ended Qin rule.

The end of Qin government was not the immediate establishment of the Han Empire. In 206 BCE, Xiang Yu’s forces attacked and destroyed Xianyang. The former Qin territory was then divided among competing rulers, and Liu Bang and Xiang Yu fought for control in the Chu–Han Contention. Liu Bang’s victory led him to found the Han dynasty in 202 BCE. The Han inherited important Qin institutions, including centralized administration and household registration, but the Qin dynasty itself had already fallen. The change from Qin to Han was both a transfer of power and a later settlement of the conflicts unleashed by Qin’s collapse.

For the wider setting, see Qin: The State and Empire That Unified China.