The Unification of China

What is on the map

• 25 Statecraft and law
• 30 Wars and sieges
• 9 Thought and invention
• 6 Walls and waterworks

Chronology

1. 1 January 402 BCThe Zhou king recognises the three families that carved up Jin: Zhao, Wei and Han are states now, and there is no longer anyone above themevent▸
2. 1 January 399 BCLi Kui writes a code of law for Wei — the first in China to be published rather than kept by the nobles. Every reformer after him copies itevent▸
3. 1 January 385 BCThe Tian family finishes taking Qi from inside: same state, same capital, another house on the throneevent▸
4. 1 January 380 BCWu Qi is killed by the Chu nobles whose privileges he had cut. Chu goes back to being run by its clans, and never reforms againevent▸
5. 1 January 375 BCThe last duke of Jin is deposed and the scrap of land left to him divided. The state that had dominated the north for two centuries is deletedevent▸
6. 1 January 369 BCQi opens the Jixia Academy at Linzi and pays philosophers to argue in public. Mencius, Xunzi and most of the Hundred Schools pass through itevent▸
7. 1 January 360 BCDuke Xiao of Qin publishes an offer of land and rank to anyone, from any state, who can make Qin strong. A minor official of Wei named Gongsun Yang answers itevent▸
8. 1 January 355 BCShang Yang's first reform in Qin: land to whoever farms it, rank to whoever fights, households registered in fives and responsible for each other. Qin stops being the backward westevent▸
9. 1 January 352 BCGuiling: Sun Bin does not march to the besieged city but at Wei's own capital, and beats the Wei army on the road home. It becomes a maximevent▸
10. 1 January 349 BCSecond reform: the capital moves to Xianyang, land is squared off into fields with paths between, weights and measures made uniform. Qin is now an administration, not a courtevent▸
11. 1 January 340 BCMaling: Sun Bin thins his own cooking fires to look like a retreating army, and ambushes Pang Juan in a defile at dusk. Wei is finished as the first powerevent▸
12. 1 January 337 BCShang Yang is torn apart by chariots under the laws he wrote. The laws stay: that is the whole point of themevent▸
13. 1 January 333 BCThe rulers of Qi and Wei acknowledge each other as king. The Zhou king is still alive in Luoyang and nobody consults himevent▸
14. 1 January 327 BCQin takes the Hexi from Wei and stands on the east bank of the Yellow River. From here it can come down into the plain whenever it likesevent▸
15. 1 January 324 BCThe duke of Qin calls himself king. Within twenty years all seven have done it, which is how you can tell the old order is overevent▸
16. 1 January 319 BCMencius tells King Hui of Wei that a ruler who wants men to die for him must first see that they eat: benevolence is not sentiment but statecraft. Nobody in power takes him up on itevent▸
17. 1 January 317 BCThe vertical and horizontal alliances: Su Qin binds six states against Qin, Zhang Yi unpicks them one at a time with promises. Diplomacy becomes a tradeevent▸
18. 1 January 315 BCQin takes Shu and Ba through the Jianmen gorges. It gains the Chengdu basin — grain, salt, iron and a second front against Chu — and roughly doublesevent▸
19. 1 January 311 BCDanyang: Chu loses eighty thousand men and the Hanzhong corridor. Qin now holds both ends of the road into the Yangtzeevent▸
20. 1 January 306 BCKing Wuling of Zhao makes his court wear trousers and ride: infantry in robes cannot chase steppe cavalry. His nobles resist for a year, then Zhao becomes the only state that can fight the Xiongnuevent▸
21. 1 January 305 BCChu swallows Yue and comes out on the eastern sea. It is now the biggest state by far, and the least governedevent▸
22. 1 January 298 BCKing Huai of Chu goes to Qin to negotiate and is simply kept. He dies a prisoner three years later, and Chu never trusts a Qin invitation againevent▸
23. 1 January 295 BCZhao finishes off Zhongshan, the last state inside its own borders, after twenty years of chipping at itevent▸
24. 1 January 292 BCYique: Bai Qi destroys the joint army of Han and Wei — the sources say two hundred and forty thousand dead. The road east is open and nobody can close itevent▸
25. 1 January 289 BCZhuangzi, offered a ministry, answers that he would rather be a live turtle in the mud than a sacred tortoise on an altar, and goes back to fishingevent▸
26. 1 January 287 BCQin and Qi each take the title of emperor, then both drop it within two months. The word is waiting for someone who can hold itevent▸
27. 1 January 285 BCSong is partitioned between Qi, Chu and Wei. With it goes the last buffer: from now on the big states share bordersevent▸
28. 1 January 283 BCYue Yi leads five states into Qi and sacks Linzi, the richest city in China. Qi is reduced to two towns and its bronzes go to Yanevent▸
29. 1 January 278 BCTian Dan ties blades to a thousand oxen, sets their tails alight and drives them into the Yan camp at night. Qi is restored in a season, and never matters againevent▸
30. 1 January 277 BCBai Qi takes Ying, the capital of Chu, and burns the royal tombs. The court flees east to Chen; Chu keeps its size and loses its centreevent▸
31. 5 May 277 BCQu Yuan, exiled and hearing that Ying has fallen, walks into the Miluo with a stone in his arms. He is the first Chinese poet whose name we knowevent▸
32. 1 January 265 BCFan Ju sells Qin a method: swallow what is next to you and befriend what is far away, so that no two enemies are ever fighting you at onceevent▸
33. 1 January 259 BCChangping: after three years across the Shangdang ridges Bai Qi cuts the Zhao army from its supplies and starves it for forty-six days. Zhao's field army — the sources say four hundred thousand — is buried after surrenderingevent▸
34. 1 January 256 BCHandan holds. Wei and Chu come late but they come, and Qin is thrown back from a capital for the only time in the whole warevent▸
35. 1 January 255 BCLi Bing splits the Min river with a stone snout at Dujiangyan: half to the flood channel, half to irrigate the Chengdu plain. It has been working for twenty-two centuries and still isevent▸
36. 1 January 255 BCQin extinguishes Western Zhou and takes the nine cauldrons. The dynasty that had reigned for eight hundred years ends without a battleevent▸
37. 1 January 254 BCXunzi, magistrate at Lanling, argues that men are bad by nature and made good by learning and ritual. Two of his students, Han Fei and Li Si, will build Qin on the first half of that sentenceevent▸
38. 1 January 248 BCThe last Zhou remnant is absorbed. For the first time in Chinese history nobody at all holds the mandate of heavenevent▸
39. 1 January 245 BCThe Zheng Guo canal: Han sends an engineer to bog Qin down in a useless waterwork, and he builds one that irrigates forty thousand hectares of Guanzhong. Qin keeps the canal and the engineerevent▸
40. 1 January 245 BCYing Zheng becomes king of Qin at thirteen, with Lü Buwei — a merchant — running the state for himevent▸
41. 1 January 237 BCYing Zheng, now twenty-two, breaks the Lao Ai revolt and forces Lü Buwei out. From here he governs aloneevent▸
42. 1 January 232 BCHan Fei, the sharpest legalist writer of the age, dies in a Qin prison — poison sent by Li Si, his old classmate, who had recommended him. The king keeps the booksevent▸
43. 1 January 229 BCHan falls in a single season: the weakest of the seven and the closest to Xianyang. Its land becomes Yingchuan commanderyevent▸
44. 1 January 228 BCZhao's king executes Li Mu, the one general Qin could not beat, on the word of a bribed courtier. Handan falls within the yearevent▸
45. 1 January 227 BCHandan taken and the king of Zhao captured. His brother escapes north and keeps the name alive as Dai for six more yearsevent▸
46. 1 January 226 BCJing Ke comes to court as an envoy of Yan with a map rolled around a poisoned dagger and a severed head as his credential. He misses; Ying Zheng runs round a pillar and livesevent▸
47. 1 January 224 BCWang Ben turns the Yellow River onto Daliang and holds it there for three months. The city dissolves, a hundred thousand die, and Wei surrendersevent▸
48. 1 January 223 BCWang Jian takes six hundred thousand men into Chu and then does nothing for a year, until the Chu army gives up waiting and moves. Xiang Yan is killedevent▸
49. 1 January 222 BCShouchun falls and King Fuchu is taken. Chu — the biggest of the seven, half the map two centuries earlier — is a commanderyevent▸
50. 1 January 221 BCYan is run down to the Liaodong peninsula and its last king captured. Dai goes the same week: six states down, one to goevent▸
51. 1 January 220 BCQi surrenders without a battle. Its king had been advised by a chancellor on the Qin payroll for years; he is exiled to a forest and left to starveevent▸
52. 1 February 220 BCYing Zheng takes a title nobody had used: First Emperor. The nobility is not restored, the empire is cut into thirty-six commanderies, and governors are appointed and recalled from the capitalevent▸
53. 1 March 220 BCOne script, one set of weights and measures, one axle width so carts fit the same ruts. The walls between the old states are pulled down and their aristocracies moved to Xianyangevent▸
54. 1 January 219 BCImperial roads out of Xianyang, built to a fixed width with trees along them, and the old state fortifications quarried for the materialevent▸
55. 1 January 214 BCMeng Tian is sent north with three hundred thousand men to link the old state walls into one line against the Xiongnu, and to hold the Ordos loop behind itevent▸
56. 1 January 213 BCThe Lingqu canal joins the Xiang to the Li across a watershed — the first contour canal anywhere — so that grain can float from the Yangtze to the armies in the far southevent▸
57. 1 January 212 BCOn Li Si's proposal the histories of the other states, the odes and the documents are called in and burned. Only manuals — medicine, farming, divination — and the Qin records are sparedevent▸
58. 1 January 211 BCSeven hundred thousand conscripts on the tomb at Mount Li: an army of terracotta, each face different, and rivers of mercury. It will be found by a man digging a well in 1974event▸
59. 10 September 209 BCThe First Emperor dies at Shaqiu on tour, looking for the drug of immortality. His death is hidden for two months while Li Si and the eunuch Zhao Gao forge a successionevent▸
60. 1 July 208 BCNine hundred conscripts marching to the frontier are stopped by floods, and know the penalty for arriving late. Chen Sheng asks whether kings and nobles are born to it, and they turn roundevent▸
61. 1 January 207 BCChen Sheng is dead within the year, killed by his own driver, but the rising does not stop: every old royal house has someone claiming its throne againevent▸
62. 1 January 206 BCJulu: Xiang Yu crosses the river, sinks his boats and breaks his cooking pots so there is nothing to go back to, and destroys the main Qin field armyevent▸
63. 1 October 206 BCLiu Bang comes through the Wu Pass and takes Xianyang almost unopposed. Ziying, king of Qin for forty-six days, surrenders on the roadevent▸
64. 1 January 205 BCThe feast at Hong Gate: Xiang Yu has Liu Bang at his table and lets him leave to relieve himself. It is the most consequential unfinished murder in Chinese historyevent▸
65. 1 February 205 BCXiang Yu burns Xianyang — the palaces are said to have smoked for three months — and cuts the empire into eighteen kingdoms, keeping the title of hegemon and the east for himselfevent▸
66. 1 April 204 BCPengcheng: Liu Bang takes Xiang Yu's capital while he is away and is thrown out of it the same day by thirty thousand cavalry. He escapes with a few dozen ridersevent▸
67. 1 January 203 BCHan Xin puts his army with its back to a river at Jingxing so it cannot run, and destroys a Zhao force many times its size. The north changes sidesevent▸
68. 1 September 202 BCThe two sides divide the empire along the Honggou canal and swear peace. Liu Bang breaks it within weeks, on advice, because Xiang Yu is short of grainevent▸
69. 1 January 201 BCGaixia: surrounded, Xiang Yu hears his own Chu songs sung in the enemy camp and understands that his country has gone over. He breaks out with twenty-eight men and dies at the Wu riverevent▸
70. 28 February 201 BCLiu Bang, a village constable who could not read, is proclaimed emperor. He keeps Qin's commanderies, its laws and its roads, drops the terror, and the arrangement lasts four hundred yearsevent▸

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