Qin Unification of China

221 BCE — East Asia, Qin China

Today: China (first capital at Xianyang, near modern Xi'an)

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 knowing: The 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.

Pattern: State 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.

Entry 60 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.