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World History 1

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	Over the course of the long <OpenstaxTerm>Eastern Zhou</OpenstaxTerm> era (771–256 BCE), the means and methods of warfare changed, with dramatic consequences for ancient China. Initially war was regulated by chivalrous codes of conduct, complete with rituals of divination conducted before and after battle. Battles were fought according to a set of established rules by armies of a few thousand soldiers fighting for small Chinese states. The seasons and the rhythms of agricultural life limited the scope of campaigns. Victorious armies followed the precedent set by the early Zhou conquerors, sparing aristocratic leaders in order to maintain lines of kinship and preserve an heir who would perform rites of ancestor worship.
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	With the advent of the <OpenstaxTerm>Warring States</OpenstaxTerm> era (475–256 BCE), these rules were cast aside, and values such as honor and mercy went out of fashion. New military technologies provided the catalyst for these changes. The invention of the crossbow made the advantages once owned by cavalry and chariots nearly obsolete. The result was ballooning conscript armies of hundreds of thousands, making military service nearly universal for men. Protected by leather armor and iron helmets, soldiers skilled in the art of mounted archery trickled into Chinese states from the steppes. Discipline, drilling, logistics, organization, and strategy became paramount to success. Treatises on deceptive military maneuvers and the art of siege craft proliferated among the various states of the Zhou.
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	Not all the changes wrought by war in the late Zhou period were unwelcome. For example, common farmers gained the right to include their family names on registration rolls and pressure sovereigns for improvements to their lands such as new irrigation channels. Iron technology was developed for weapons, but was also used for new agricultural tools. Together, increasing agricultural productivity and advancements in iron technology were part of a late Zhou surge in economic growth. Mobilization for war stimulated a cross-regional trade in furs, copper, salt, and horses. And with that long-distance trade came increased coinage. The destruction of states through war also created social volatility, reducing the status of formerly great aristocratic families while giving rise to new forms of gentry and a more powerful merchant class. The only way back up the social ladder was through merit, and many lower-level aristocrats proved themselves as eager bureaucrats in the service of new sovereigns.
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	One of the many warring states in this period, the state of <OpenstaxTerm>Qin</OpenstaxTerm>, capitalized on these economic and social changes by adopting Legalist reforms to justify an agenda of power and expansionism. The arrival of <OpenstaxTerm>Lord Shang</OpenstaxTerm>, a migrant born in a rival territory in approximately 390 BCE, who soon took the position of prime minister, was the turning point, when Legalism came to dominate the thinking of Qin’s elite. Before this, the Qin state had been a marginal area within the lands of the Zhou, a frontier state on the western border charged with defending the borderlands and raising horses. The Qin state leveraged this location by trading with peoples from central Asia. At the same time, their vulnerability on the periphery kept them in a state of constant alert and readiness for war, creating a more militaristic culture and an experienced army that proved invaluable when set against their Chinese neighbors in the east.
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	To offset their initial disadvantages, the Qin leaders wisely embraced immigrant talent such as Lord Shang and solicited help from advisors, militarists, and diplomats from rival domains. They adopted new techniques of governance, appointing officials and delegates to centralize rule rather than relying on hereditary nobles. Theirs became a society with new opportunities for social advancement based on talent and merit. Under Shang’s advisement, the Qin scorned tradition and introduced new legal codes, unified weights and measures, and applied a system of incentives for able administrators that helped create an army and bureaucracy based more on merit than on birth. Over time, these changes produced an obedient populace, full coffers, and higher agricultural productivity.
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	The Qin state’s rising strength soon overwhelmed its rivals, propelling to victory its king <OpenstaxTerm>Ying Zheng</OpenstaxTerm>, who anointed himself China’s first emperor and was known as <OpenstaxTerm>Qin Shi Huang</OpenstaxTerm>, or Shihuangdi, literally “first emperor” (<a href="#fig-00004">Figure 5.7</a>). The Qin war machine defeated the states of Han, Wei, Zhao, Chu, Yan, and Qi in less than a decade. Under Shihuangdi’s rule, the tenets of <OpenstaxTerm>Legalism</OpenstaxTerm> fostered unity as the emperor standardized the writing system, coins, and the law throughout northern China. Defeated aristocratic families were forced to uproot themselves and move to the new capital near Xi’an. To consolidate political control and reverse the fragmentation of the Zhou era, officials appointed by the emperor were dispatched to govern on his behalf, which cast aside the older feudal system of governance. Officials who performed poorly were removed and severely punished. Those who did well wrote regular detailed reports closely read by the emperor himself.
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<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00004" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/698af27d26d2dc92c3530c7e043e8117332986ff" alt="An image of a painting is shown on a pale yellow background. A large man is shown with pale skin, large, round, brown eyes, thick angled eyebrows and beard and moustache. He has a large flat nose, red lips, and a round ball of skin protrudes between his eyebrows. He wears a colorful hat in black, blue, brown, and white with a round fuzzy ball above his head at the right, attached by a zig-zag line to the hat. His shirt is yellow with a blue and white collar, and red, green, white, and blue flowery designs show all over." mediaType="image/jpg" width="501" height="732" />
<OpenstaxFigureText width="501">
	<strong>Figure 5.7</strong> This image of China’s first emperor was painted by an anonymous eighteenth-century Chinese artist for an album of emperors’ portraits. Shihuangdi’s reign was typified by expansionist campaigns and enormous construction projects such as his tomb. (credit: “A portrait painting of Qin Shi Huangdi, first emperor of the Qin dynasty” by Richard R. Wertz/18th century album of portraits of 86 emperors of China, with Chinese historical notes, British Library/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
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	Qin militarism also turned outward, enlarging the bounds of Chinese territory as far as the Ordos Desert in the northwest. In the south, Shihuangdi’s armies ranged into modern-day Vietnam, laying a Chinese claim to the people and territory in this area for the first time in history. These expansions and the need for defense generated new infrastructure, such as fortified towns and thousands of miles of new roads to transport the Qin’s armies to the borders. Northern nomadic and tribal civilizations known to Chinese as the <OpenstaxTerm>Hu</OpenstaxTerm> (or Donghu) and <OpenstaxTerm>Yuezhi</OpenstaxTerm> were seen as formidable threats. To guard against these “barbarians,” hundreds of thousands of laborers, convicts, and farmers were sent to connect a series of defensive structures of rammed earth built earlier by states in northern China. Once completed, the <OpenstaxTerm>Qin’s Great Wall</OpenstaxTerm> illustrated how fortifying the north and guarding against the steppes became the focal point of statecraft in ancient China. Successive empires in China followed a similar wall-building pattern. The walls commonly referred to as the <OpenstaxTerm>Great Wall of China</OpenstaxTerm> today are in fact <OpenstaxTerm>Ming</OpenstaxTerm> dynasty walls built between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries CE.
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	Shihuangdi was also ruthless in defending himself from criticism at home. Informed by his chancellor in 213 BCE that literate Chinese were using commentary on classical texts and literary works to critique his rule, the emperor ordered the destruction of thousands of texts, hoping to leave in print only technical treatises on topics such as agriculture or medicine. An oft-cited story of Shihuangdi’s brutality credits him with calling for the execution of hundreds of Confucian and Daoist intellectuals by burying them alive. Recent scholars have scrutinized these tales, questioning how much about his reign was distorted and exaggerated by the scholars of his successors, the Han dynasty, to strengthen their own legitimacy. In studying the ancient past, we must likewise always question the veracity of historical sources and not just reproduce a history “written by the winners.”
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	Another monumental feat of Shihuangdi’s reign was the creation of the <OpenstaxTerm>Terracotta Army</OpenstaxTerm>, thousands of life-sized clay soldiers fully armed with bronze weaponry and horses. From the time he was a young boy, the emperor had survived a series of assassination attempts, leaving him paranoid and yearning for immortality. Trusted servants were sent in search of paradise and magical elixirs, while hundreds of thousands of others were charged with the years-long process of constructing an enormous secret tomb to protect him in the afterlife. Almost immediately upon ascending the throne in 221 BCE, Shihuangdi began planning for this imperial tomb to be filled with clay replicas of his imperial palace, army, and servants. The massive underground pits, which cover an area of approximately thirty-eight square miles, were discovered with their innumerable contents near Xi’an in the 1970s (<a href="#fig-00005">Figure 5.8</a>). Labor for projects such as the Great Wall and the Terracotta Army came from commoners as a form of tax or as a requirement under the Qin’s law codes. Penalties for violating the criminal code were severe—forced labor, banishment, slavery, or death.
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<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00005" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/e79ca279fbb5b6a8491eadcf72e4fab3c62c8639" alt="(a) A photograph shows at least twelve stone walls from front to back, with some showing in opposite directions in the back, inside of a building. The tops of the walls are wavy and some of the corners are worn and uneven. In between the walls are clay statues of men with hats and clothing standing in rows, filling the spaces. Windows can be seen along the top of the walls and people are seen walking along the side walls of the building on walkways. (b) The image shows twelve gray and pale orange clay statues of soldiers standing in rows on a gray floor. Each statue shows an individual face with eyes, nose, and mouth and some thin moustaches. All wear some type of hat with a round object at their right. All wear shirts that close over to the right. Two statues in the back wear armor with a checkerboard design. Some have arms along their sides while one has his arms bent at the elbow in front of his body." mediaType="image/jpg" width="1300" height="314" />
<OpenstaxFigureText width="1300">
	<strong>Figure 5.8</strong> (a) Discovered in the 1970s, the buried treasures of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, include thousands of life-size clay soldiers, known today as the Terracotta Army. (b) Small details of their dress and facial features distinguish the individual soldiers. (credit a: modification of work “Terracotta Soldier Panorama” by Walter-Wilhelm/Flickr, CC BY 2.0; credit b: modification of work “Terracotta warriors exhibit” by “scott1346”/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
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	<OpenstaxNoteTitle> Link to Learning </OpenstaxNoteTitle> 
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		Shihuangdi’s mausoleum has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Use the tabs at the UNESCO website to view pictures and to access the videos of the <a href="https://openstax.org/l/77Terracotta">Terracotta Army</a> to learn more.
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	The <OpenstaxTerm>Qin Empire</OpenstaxTerm> quickly collapsed in the wake of the emperor’s death in 210 BCE. Conspiracy within the royal court by one of the emperor’s sons led to the deaths of his rightful heir, a loyal general, and a talented chancellor. Beyond the court, the Legalist philosophy and practices that had helped the Qin accrue strength now made them brittle. Imperial power exercised in the form of direct rule and harsh laws inspired revolts by generals and great families calling for a restoration of the aristocratic feudal society of the Zhou.
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	The armies of the Qin’s second emperor failed against <OpenstaxTerm>Liu Bang</OpenstaxTerm>, a commoner who rose to become Emperor Gaozu of the newly formed <OpenstaxTerm>Han</OpenstaxTerm> dynasty. The Han’s early emperors distanced themselves from Shihuangdi’s legacy by reducing taxes and burdens on the common people. But the Qin’s imperial blueprint—uniform laws, consistent weights and measurements, a centralized bureaucracy, and early focus on expansionism to ward off “barbarians” in the north—provided the scaffolding for the Han’s greatness.
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5.1.4 The Warring States Era and Qin Unification

1 Understanding the Past

1.1 Developing a Global Perspective

1.1.1 World History as Preparation for Life after College

1.1.2 World History and Global Citizenship

1.1.3 Features of This Textbook

1.2 Primary Sources

1.2.1 Learning to Evaluate Documents and Images

1.2.2 Documentary Sources: Competing Narratives

1.2.3 Textual Sources: The Importance of Language

1.2.4 Hidden in History

1.3 Causation and Interpretation in History

1.3.1 Levels of Causation

1.3.2 Interpretation in History

2 Early Humans

2.1 Early Human Evolution and Migration

2.1.1 Human Evolution

2.1.2 Why Did Humans Move and Where Did They Go?

2.1.3 Early Human Technologies

2.2 People in the Paleolithic Age

2.2.1 Ice, Ice, and More Ice

2.2.2 Life in the Paleolithic Age

2.2.3 Diverse Paleolithic Peoples

2.3 The Neolithic Revolution

2.3.1 The Development of Agriculture

2.3.2 How Farming Changed the Human Experience

2.3.3 Neolithic Peoples

3 Early Civilizations and Urban Societies

3.1 Early Civilizations

3.1.1 Attributes of Early Civilizations

3.1.2 The First Urban Societies

3.2 Ancient Mesopotamia

3.2.1 The Rise and Eclipse of Sumer

3.2.2 The Rise of the World’s First Empire

3.2.3 Later Empires in Mesopotamia

3.2.4 Society and Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia

3.3 Ancient Egypt

3.3.1 The Origins of Ancient Egypt

3.3.2 The Age of Pyramid Building

3.3.3 A Second Age of Egyptian Greatness

3.4 The Indus Valley Civilization

3.4.1 The Origins of the Indus Valley Civilization

3.4.2 Trade, Writing, and Religion

3.4.3 The Era of Decline

4 The Near East

4.1 From Old Babylon to the Medes

4.1.1 Power Politics in the Near East

4.1.2 Foreign Affairs and Trade

4.1.3 Daily Life and the Family in the Near East

4.2 Egypt’s New Kingdom

4.2.1 The Hyksos in Egypt

4.2.2 The Pharaohs of the New Kingdom

4.2.3 Egypt’s Foreign Policy

4.3 The Persian Empire

4.3.1 The Rise of Persia

4.3.2 Darius I and the Reorganization of the Empire

4.3.3 Persian Culture and Daily Life

4.4 The Hebrews

4.4.1 The History of the Hebrews

4.4.2 The Culture of the Hebrews

5 Asia in Ancient Times

5.1 Ancient China

5.1.1 Prehistoric China

5.1.2 Early Dynastic China

5.1.3 The Zhou Dynasty

5.2 The Steppes

5.2.1 The Nomadic Culture of the Steppes

5.2.2 Tribes, Confederations, and Settled Neighbors

5.3 Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia

5.3.1 Ancient Korea

5.3.2 Ancient Japan

5.4 Vedic India to the Fall of the Maurya Empire

5.4.1 Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro

5.4.2 The Aryans and Brahmanism

5.4.3 Buddhism

5.4.4 The Mauryan Empire

5.4.5 The Gupta Dynasty

6 Mediterranean Peoples

6.1 Early Mediterranean Peoples

6.1.1 The Late Bronze Age World

6.1.2 Phoenicians, Greeks, and Etruscans

6.2 Ancient Greece

6.2.1 Archaic Greece

6.2.2 Sparta and Athens

6.2.3 Classical Greece

6.3 The Hellenistic Era

6.3.1 The Kingdom of Macedon

6.3.2 Hellenistic Culture

6.4 The Roman Republic

6.4.1 The Foundation and Function of the Roman Republic

6.4.2 The Expansion of the Roman Republic

6.5 The Age of Augustus

6.5.1 The First Triumvirate

6.5.2 From Republic to Principate

7 Experiencing the Roman Empire

7.1 The Daily Life of a Roman Family

7.1.1 The Structure of Roman Families

7.1.2 A Day in the Life of a Roman Family

7.1.3 What Family Meant in Rome

7.2 Slavery in the Roman Empire