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Entry 60 of 240War

Qin Unification of China

221 BCE/East Asia/Qin China
Today China (first capital at Xianyang, near modern Xi'an)Span Qin dynasty · 221–206 BCE

After centuries of warfare, the state of Qin conquered all its rivals and forged China's first unified empire — then welded it together, standardizing the script, coinage, weights, and even axle-widths, and linking older walls into the first Great Wall. Its rule was brutally efficient and short-lived, collapsing within years of the first emperor's death, but the unified China it created has re-formed itself again and again for over two thousand years. Qin built not merely an empire but the very idea of China as a single state.

◆ Worth knowingThe first Qin emperor was buried with an army of over 8,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers, each with a unique face, to guard him in death — unknown to the world until farmers digging a well found them in 1974.
◆ The mechanismState formation & institutional founding

A durable new order — a state, an institution, a system of rule — is deliberately built and consolidated, outlasting the people who founded it.

Also: Military-technological disruption

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