Qin Shi Huang | Historical Tyrants | Chinese History

In the Chinese city of Xiang, an army stands in formation. Infantry and charioteers, baggage guards with their carts and beasts of burden, officers of the war council, cavalry, and the feared crossbowmen that made this conquering army famous. 8,000 soldiers stand at attention, [clears throat] though none of them are flesh and bone. Rather, they are made from terracotta clay, molded and assembled modularly like Lego blocks. Each has a unique face with varying hairstyles. And there are more than just soldiers, strongmen, and entertainers, exotic animals and acrobats. For these are grave goods, an enormous macroscale version of these small figures Chinese peasants are buried with a monumental display that may have taken half a million or more workers to build. For this is the tomb of a man who has conquered all under heaven and who wanted to march into the afterlife with an army. A man called both unifier and tyrant, the first emperor of China, Chin Shu Huang. Today's historical tale is brought to you by Epic History's new Nebula exclusive series, Road to World War II. But more on that after the episode. I tell you, you work the tyrant scene investigation beat long enough and you think you've seen everything. Then someone goes and buries 460 scholars alive. All right, put on your gloves before lifting the sheet, rookie. High chance of mercury contamination with this one. Start recording. Subject is Chin Xi Huang, first emperor of China and founder of theQin Dynasty. Reign 221 B. CE to 210 B. CE. Of course, if that name sounds a little familiar, rookie, that's because a lot of scholars theorize we in the English-speaking world get the name China from the Chin Dynasty, which is possible, but also, just to be clear, not certain. And for what it's worth, it's not the word people in China use. They call it Jungua, meaning middle kingdom or central state. But Emperor Chin's influence goes far beyond lending his name to other languages. In fact, it would be hard to name a single leader in the ancient world who influenced their country as much as Emperor Chin. I mean, we are seriously in Constantine or Justinian territory here. He left his stamp on everything from borders, language, administration, political philosophy, heck, the whole dang imperial system, and was personally responsible for two of China's most impressive monuments, the Great Wall and the Terracotta Army we just talked about. But these accomplishments came at a huge body count to the point that his historical legacy has frequently been recast and spun depending on the perspective of that moment in time. No one disagrees that Emperor Chin was a tyrant. The question becomes whether that tyranny was exaggerated or justified in the name of national unity. Now, we could and hopefully one day will do a whole series on Emperor Chin because his unification of China is a wild story fraught with politicking, assassination attempts, battles, and diplomatic maneuvering. But given that we are focused on his leadership style today, we're going to start our examination in 221 B. CE CE when after 9 years of conquest, the state of Chin defeated the other six kingdoms, bringing the waring states period to an end. That's when Emperor Chin created his new title, Chin Shu Huangi, which both named him the first emperor and contained elements associating him with heavenly deities of the Dowist pantheon. The idea was that he was not only the head of an empire, but that his rise was by the express consent and blessing of the gods. a concept that would be called the mandate of heaven. To manifest this as a physical object, he took a massive piece of jade captured from one of the defeated states and carved it into the first heirloom seal of the realm. With the text, having received the mandate from heaven, let the emperor live a long and prosperous life. However, to get that heavenly mandate had required a lot of blood shed both in warfare and through extreme punishments and executions to enforce Emperor Chin's policies. Because while we credit Emperor Chin as a unifier, we have to remember that he was very much a conqueror. China was not yet a unified state. The term empire was very apt considering that Chin had used its vast military forces to subjugate and rule over other kingdoms. In fact, after his victory, he supposedly collected the bronze weapons from the militaries of the defeated states and melted them down to create 12 huge statues to adorn his palace. And in fact, the wars didn't really end. Chin troops would fight

nomads and clan groups on the periphery of Chin territory his whole reign. Ultimately, northern tribes would prove so troublesome he ordered walls built connecting the forts along the empire's northern border, a sort of roving semi-permanent fortification that would later become the Great Wall. Though, it should be noted that while he ordered one big wall built, he was also leveling the old walls that denoted the various kingdoms and were now a security threat should a province rebel. We think of Emperor Chin as an initiator of public works, but his troops in earnest probably demolished more miles of wall than they built. At this point, you might be thinking this is a military story given that Chin was a state famous for its powerful army. But Emperor Chin himself was no soldier. He never fought a battle or commanded troops and generally seems to have been happy to appoint commanders and delegates to do the actual fighting. He was more of an administrator, meaning the story of his rule often centers around philosophy. The spring and autumn period and later waring states period were violent and unstable eras in Chinese history, but they were also an era of major philosophical diversity. Different political, religious and social ideas emerged, ranging from the flexibility of Daoism to the social hierarchies that would later coales into Confucianism to scientific rationalists and the concept of yin and yang. This intellectual flowering often was considered under the umbrella term the hundred schools of thought. But Emperor Chin and his chief prime minister, if early accounts are to be believed, rigidly embraced a philosophy known as legalism. Legalism is a bit of a glass half empty kind of philosophy. Many other philosophies such as Confucianism posited that human nature was inherently good and that people generally tried to behave morally. Legalism, on the other hand, believed the exact opposite. that humans in their natural state are inherently wild, disobedient, and untrustworthy. Only the strict application of the rule of law keeps them in line and prevents society from descending into anarchy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the founders of legalism was a magistrate. And in general, it feels like he and many judges and prosecutors do develop a grim and jaded sense of humanity. And the legalist belief was that punishments had to be applied in a uniform fashion across territory and had to be harsh in order to deter crime and misbehavior. Which, listen, legalism can get a bad rap for being extremely vindictive. That is true. But it also advocated for standardizing law codes, applying the law in an equal manner, and centralized lawmaking. In other words, it was removing legal powers from magistrates who might be corrupt, unfair, or biased. And there is some merit to that. Speaking of merit, legalism also emphasized creating a meritocratic society where officials were appointed through ability and qualifications rather than nepotism. Indeed, this reformation and standardization of the legal code went handinhand with an administrative reform of the conquered kingdoms into provinces. This meant setting up a system of governors, officials, and local leaders that were all loyal to the emperor rather than the previous system of feudalism that had held sway. And those posts would be filled by, again, the most qualified person. Of course, no system is fully meritocratic, and loyalty to the emperor was definitely a chief qualification, but I digress. This reform was not only administrative and legal, but also economic. Emperor Chen mandated that weights and measures be standardized across the entire empire to facilitate internal trade across the whole of Chinese territory. Similarly, he had inherited a huge territory divided by different dialects and variant writing systems which he now had to administer with his rewritten legal codes. His solution was to mandate a single form of written Chinese as the official script so laws and proclamations could be clearly read across the empire. And where did he get that script? Good question. Someone in the back. Uh, that would be from the Chin official seal script. Of course, even the axle lengths of the carts needed to be standardized so the wheel ruts would be the same from border to border and ease the flow of commerce. That is how down into the minutia that this dude was. However, there was an extreme dark side to Emperor Chin's love for legalism because it came with a rejection of all other languages, histories, and parts of the hundred schools of thought. 8 years into his reign, he supposedly issued a decree that all works other than those of medicine, divination, agriculture, and forestry be burned. Copies of the texts

from the hundred schools of thought were chief among these, especially rival philosophical works, poetry, and histories of kingdoms other than Chin. To discuss these works carried the sentence of execution, anyone who used historical works to critique the Chin Empire would have their families slaughtered, and mere possession of banned texts would be punished by tattooing and being sent as labor to the Great Wall. Now generally modern scholars do believe that these book purges happened. However, they also do site evidence that Emperor Chin did not actually subscribe to legalism exclusively. For instance, he used a significant amount of dowist iconography and the concept of the five elements in his court and had a group of Confucian scholars who worked for him. Even in the accounts of book destruction, it states that the Chin allowed official scholars to consult the band works and he ordered two copies of every book preserved in the royal archive. And look, both of the things we said above are not to whitewash his actions. Shinshi Huang's book burnings seem to have had minimal impact on philosophy texts, but may have been devastating to pre-Chin historical works. He was deeply paranoid about subversive ideas and bloody minded for stamping them out. For example, according to one story, a comet was cited in 1211 B. CE which graffiti claimed foretold the emperor's death. Unable to find the culprit, he ordered the towns around the inscription massacred to ensure the guilty party did not escape. It should be noted that by that time it was well known that the emperor was dying. For years, he had mounted costly expeditions to find the elixir of life, sponsoring alchemists and chasing rumors of ancient Dowist masters who lived immortal in mountain caves. Indeed, this quest actually may have hastened his death since many of the elixirs he took from alchemists contained highly toxic ingredients like mercury that build up in the body. To be clear, though, it was not that the alchemists didn't know these things were poisonous. The idea was to feed the emperor small amounts of the most deadly things they could find in hopes it would make him immune to death. Indeed, this slow poisoning may have led to perhaps the most famous event of his reign, where he ordered 460 scholars buried alive, with even more banished to far provinces. One early account suggests that these were alchemists who' inadvertently poisoned him with elixirs, while others claim they were confusions killed for possessing banned literature. Regardless, he would not live much longer than those scholars. Shinshu Huang died while touring his empire at the age of 49, possibly from mercury poisoning. Horrified at the thought of his own mortality, he'd never made a will, designated an heir, or even named an official empress. A man who'd survived three assassination attempts, was ultimately killed by his unyielding desire to live. Chin's prime minister and his sons kept his rotting corpse in his palin for 2 weeks as they secretly brought him back to the capital, changing his clothes daily to give the impression he still lived. He then was interred in the magnificent tomb he'd begun building the moment he unified the country. A different sort of immortality. Reportedly, there were jewels in the ceiling mimicking constellations and rivers of toxic mercury flowed around his sarcophagus. Of course, we don't know for sure since the man-made mountain of his burial mound has yet to be excavated for fear of damaging its contents. His legacy would ironically be shaped by the Han dynasty that followed him. Emperor Chin only ruled for 11 years and his son managed to hold onto power for three more before being overthrown by the Han. And it is largely from Confucian Han historians writing a century or more after his reign that we know about Chin Shu Huang's time as emperor. The fact that this paints him as a bloody-minded legalist fanatic is perhaps not surprising there. But while Emperor Chin's dynasty fell shortly after his death, the territory he'd unified, and the imperial system governing it lived on for 2,000 years. The land had not yet become China, but the first emperor had launched it on its way. Postmortem report. What's interesting here, Rookie, is how the opinions of Chinshi Huang have changed over the years. Through most of history, he's been seen as a brutal tyrant. Yet these days, it gets a bit more complicated. Modern historians, both inside China and in the West, often look at Emperor Chin in the context of other emperors and see

little difference. Violent repressions and harsh legal codes were not unique to the Chin dynasty or Chinese emperors. And while no one is going to argue that Chin Xi Huang was a great humanitarian or whatever, the conversation is more about whether his repressions were justified in the pursuit of crafting a unified state. Indeed, many in modern China look at the first emperor through the lens of the 2005 film Hero, casting his crimes and repressions as a regrettable but necessary step toward national unity. It's a conclusion that many nationalists around the world advocate whether they realize it or not. But you know to argue that is often done from the mistaken belief that you are always going to be the one shoveling dirt into the pit and not ever being the one buried in it. Of course, China's first emperor wasn't the only nationalist history has to offer, right? In fact, we've had quite a few in the 20th century. World War II, I'm looking at you. Actually, you know, real talk, I did just look at you because I just finished watching the first episode of the Nebula exclusive series Road to World War II from our fellow historical storytellers over at Epic History. In it, they take you through a complete global history of the world's most destructive conflict told across multiple episodes using animated maps and archival film focusing on how three countries, Japan, Italy, and Germany, took on the established imperial powers to create empires of their own with cataclysmic results. And I just got to say, Epic History folks, seriously, hats off to you. Phenomenal work. Now, if you're already subscribed to Nebula, you can check it out for yourself right over here. But if you are not yet familiar with our creatorowned and operated streaming service, well, let me break it all down for you. Nebula is a place where you can watch thousands of thoughtful human-made videos from over 200 of your favorite creators early and adree. For instance, right now, our 46-inute long brand new extra history complete on Cleopatra with new facts and historical context is available on Nebula a whole week before it is available on YouTube. Not to mention, Nebula is home to tons of bigger budget Nebula originals. you can't see anywhere else. Things like Mad Kings from Real Life Lore, The Dinner Plan from Patrick Williams, Amy's Deadend Dreamhouse from Maggie May Fish, and The Returning GOAT of Comedy Debate Shows Abolish Everything season 2, which I will be returning for by popular demand. — THIS IS WHAT YOUR DEMOCRACY HAS ROCKED. SO, if you want to abolish not seeing me try to abolish stuff and check out Epic History's Road to World War II, you can get access to all of that awesomeness for 50% off the regular price by clicking the link below or scanning the QR code right over here. Plus, when you do, you will be directly helping our channel make more history videos, which we cannot thank you for enough. Again, get access to Nebula by clicking or scanning here, or stay on the YouTube machine and check out our next video here, but sadly that will have ads. Hey, Zilad's architectures, Piro Vermel, Lotus Wolf, Joseph Bla, Hunter Z, Friso Van Santin, Dominic Valenciana, and Angelo Valenciano. Seriously, thank you so much for the legendary support. —