Qin Shi Huang

A portrait painting of Qin Shi Huangdi, first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, from an 18th-century album of Chinese emperors' portraits.

In 246 BC, when King Zhuangxiang died after a short reign of just three years, he was succeeded on the throne by his 13-year-old son.[38] At the time, Zhao Zheng was still young, so Lü Buwei acted as the regent prime minister of the State of Qin, which was still waging war against the other six states.[22] Nine years later, in 235 BC, Zhao Zheng assumed full power after Lü Buwei was banished for his involvement in a scandal with Queen Dowager Zhao.[39][40]

Zhao Chengjiao, the Lord Chang'an (长安君),[41] was Zhao Zheng's legitimate half-brother, by the same father but from a different mother. After Zhao Zheng inherited the throne, Chengjiao rebelled at Tunliu and surrendered to the state of Zhao. Chengjiao's remaining retainers and families were executed by Zhao Zheng.[42]

As King Zheng grew older, Lü Buwei became fearful that the boy king would discover his liaison with his mother Lady Zhao. He decided to distance himself and look for a replacement for the queen dowager. He found a man named Lao Ai.[43] According to The Record of Grand Historian, Lao Ai was disguised as a eunuch by plucking his beard. Later Lao Ai and queen Zhao Ji got along so well they secretly had two sons together.[43] Lao Ai then became ennobled as Marquis Lào Ǎi, and was showered with riches. Lao Ai's plot was supposed to replace King Zheng with one of the hidden sons. But during a dinner party drunken Lào Ǎi was heard bragging about being the young king's step father.[43] In 238 BC the king was travelling to the former capital, Yong (雍). Lao Ai seized the queen mother's seal and mobilized an army in an attempt to start a coup and rebel.[43] When King Zheng discovered this fact, he ordered Lü Buwei to let Lord Changping and Lord Changwen attack Lao Ai. Although the royal army killed hundreds of rebels at the capital, Lao Ai succeeded in fleeing from this battle.[44]

A price of 1 million copper coins was placed on Lao Ai's head if he was taken alive or half a million if dead.[43] Lao Ai's supporters were captured and beheaded; then Lao Ai was tied up and torn to five pieces by horse carriages, while his entire family was executed to the third degree.[43] The two hidden sons were also killed, while mother Zhao Ji was placed under house arrest until her death many years later. Lü Buwei drank a cup of poison wine and committed suicide in 235 BC.[22][43] Ying Zheng then assumed full power as the King of the Qin state. Replacing Lü Buwei, Li Si became the new chancellor.

Jing Ke's assassination attempt on Qin Shi Huang; Jing Ke (left) is held by one of Qin Shi Huang's physicians (left, background). The dagger used in the assassination attempt is seen stuck in the pillar. Qin Shi Huang (right) is seen holding an imperial jade disc. One of his soldier (far right) rushes to save his emperor. Stone rubbing; 3rd century, Eastern Han

King Zheng and his troops continued to take over various states. The state of Yan was small, weak and frequently harassed by soldiers. It was no match for the Qin state.[8] Crown Prince Dan of Yan plotted an assassination attempt against King Zheng, recruiting Jing Ke and Qin Wuyang for the mission in 227 BC.[32][8]

The assassins were supposed to present gifts to King Zheng: a map of Dukang and the severed head of Fan Wuji.[8] Qin Wuyang stepped forward first to present the map case, but was overcome by fear of the king. Jing Ke then advanced with both gifts, while explaining that his partner was trembling because "has never set eyes on the Son of Heaven". On seeing the dagger unrolled from the map, the king leapt to his feet and struggled to draw his sword, since none of his courtiers was allowed to carry arms in his presence. Jing Ke stabbed at the king but missed, and King Zheng slashed Jing Ke's thigh. In desperation, Jing Ke threw the dagger but missed again, and surrendered after suffering eight wounds. The Yan state was conquered by Qin five years later.

Gao Jianli was a close friend of Jing Ke, and wanted to avenge his death.[45] As a famous lute player, he was summoned to play for King Zheng. Someone in the palace recognized him and guessed his plans.[46] Reluctant to kill such a skilled musician, the emperor ordered his eyes put out, then proceeded with the performance. The king praised Gao Jianli's playing and even allowed him closer. The lute had been weighted with a slab of lead, and Gao Jianli swung it at the king but missed. The second assassination attempt had failed.

Qin's unification of seven warring states

In 230 BC, King Zheng unleashed the final campaigns of the Warring States period, setting out to conquer the remaining independent kingdoms one by one.

The first to fall was Hán (韓; sometimes called Hann to distinguish it from the Hàn 漢 of Han dynasty), in 230 BC. Then Qin took advantage of natural disasters in 229 BC to invade and conquer Zhào, where King Zheng had been born.[47][48] He now took deadly revenge on those in Zhào who had mistreated him as a child hostage there.

Qin armies conquered Zhao in 228 BC, the northern country of Yan in 226 BC, the small state of Wei in 225 BC, and then Chu, the largest state and greatest challenge, in 223 BC.[49]

In 222 BC, the last remnants of Yan and the royal family were captured in Liaodong in the northeast. The only independent kingdom was Qi in the far east, in what is now the Shandong peninsula. The young king of Qi desperately sent 200,000 men to defend his western borders, but in 221 BC, the Qin armies invaded from the north, captured the king, and annexed Qi.

By 221 BC, all Chinese lands were unified under one powerful ruler, and in the course of conquest, Qin had standardized trade, communication, currency and language. In that same year, King Zheng proclaimed himself with the new title "First Emperor" (始皇帝, Shǐ Huángdì), to symbolize how far he had supassed the achievements of the old Zhou Dynasty rulers.[50] The Emperor ordered the Heshibi to be made into the Imperial Seal, the Heirloom Seal of the Realm. It was inscribed by Sun Shou with the device of Prime Minister Li Si: "Having received the Mandate from Heaven, may he lead a long and prosperous life" (受命於天, 既壽永昌). The Seal became a sigil passed from emperor to emperor.

In the South, military expansion continued in campaigns against the Yue tribes, with various regions annexed to what is now Guangdong province, as well as some that are today part of Vietnam.[48]

Map of the Qin dynasty and its administrative divisions

In an attempt to avoid a recurrence of the political chaos of the Warring States period, Qin Shi Huang and his prime minister Li Si worked to completely abolish the feudal system of loose alliances and federations.[51][48] They organized the empire into administrative units and subunits: first 36 (later 40) commanderies (郡, Jùn), then counties (縣, Xiàn), townships (鄉, Xiāng) and hundred-family units (里, Li, roughly corresponding to modern-day subdistricts and communities).[52] People assigned to these units would no longer be identified by their native region or former feudal state, for example "Chu person" (楚人, Chu rén).[52][lower-alpha 8] Appointments were to be based on merit instead of hereditary rights.[52]

Qin Shi Huang and Li Si unified China economically by standardizing the Chinese weights and measures. Wagon axles were prescribed a standard length to facilitate road transport.[51] The emperor also developed an extensive network of roads and canals for trade and communication.[51] The currencies of the different states were standardized to the Ban liang coin (半兩, Bàn Liǎng).[52] Perhaps most importantly, the Chinese script was unified. Under Li Si, the seal script of the state of Qin became the official standard, and the Qin script itself was simplified through removal of variant forms. This did away with all the regional scripts to form a universal written language for all of China, despite the diversity of spoken dialects.[52]

Part of a series on
Chinese legalism
Relevant articles Traditional Chinese law Chinese law Fengjian Rectification of names Wu wei School of Diplomacy Discourses on Salt and Iron Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius
Texts Guanzi Canon of Laws The Book of Lord Shang Shenzi (both books) Han Feizi
Derivatives Wuzi Wei Liaozi Xunzi Annals of Lü Buwei Tang Code Huang-Lao Huangdi Sijing Huainanzi
Early figures Guan Zhong Zichan Deng Xi Li Kui Wu Qi
Founding figures Shen Buhai Duke Xiao of Qin Shang Yang Shen Dao Zhang Yi Xun Kuang Han Fei Li Si Qin Shi Huang
Han figures Jia Yi Liu An Emperor Wen of Han Emperor Wu of Han Chao Cuo Gongsun Hong Zhang Tang Huan Tan Wang Fu Zhuge Liang
Later figures Emperor Wen of Sui Du You Wang Anshi Li Shanchang Zhang Juzheng Xu Guangqi

While the previous Warring States era was one of constant warfare, it was also considered the golden age of free speculation.[53] Qin Shi Huang eliminated the Hundred Schools of Thought, which included Confucianism and other philosophies.[53][54] With all other philosophies banned, legalism became the mandatory ideology of the Qin dynasty.[52]

Beginning 213 BC, at the instigation of Li Si and to avoid scholars' comparisons of his reign with the past, Qin Shi Huang ordered most existing books to be burned, with the exception of those on astrology, agriculture, medicine, divination, and the history of the State of Qin.[55] This would also serve to further the ongoing reformation of the writing system by removing examples of obsolete scripts.[56] Owning the Book of Songs or the Classic of History was to be punished especially severely. According to the later Records of the Grand Historian, the following year Qin Shi Huang had some 460 scholars buried alive for possessing the forbidden books.[22][55] The emperor's oldest son Fusu criticised him for this act.[57]

Recent research suggests that the "burying of the Confucian scholars alive" is a Confucian martyrs' legend. In fact, the emperor ordered the execution (坑 kēng) of a group of alchemists who had deceived him. In the subsequent Han dynasty, the Confucian scholars, who had served the Qin loyally, used this incident to distance themselves from the failed regime. Kong Anguo (孔安國 c. 165 – c. 74 BC), a descendant of Confucius, described the alchemists (方士 fāngshì) as Confucianists (儒 rú) and entwined the martyrs' legend with his story of discovering the lost Confucian books behind a demolished wall in his ancestral house.[58] The emperor's own library retained copies of the forbidden books, but most of these were destroyed when Xiang Yu burned the palaces of Xianyang in 206 BC.[59]

Qin Shi Huang also followed the theory of the five elements: fire, water, earth, wood, and metal. (五德終始說) It was believed that the royal house of the previous dynasty Zhou had ruled by the power of fire, associated with the colour red. The new Qin dynasty must be ruled by the next element on the list, which is water, Zhao Zheng's birth element. Water was represented by the colour black, and black became the preferred colour for Qin garments, flags, and pennants.[22] Other associations include north as the cardinal direction, the winter season and the number six.[60] Tallies and official hats were 15 centimetres (5.9 inches) long, carriages two metres (6.6 feet) wide, one pace (步; Bù) was 1.4 metres (4.6 ft).[22]

Bronze swords (jian), Qin dynasty

In 230 BC, the state of Qin had defeated the state of Han. In 218 BC, a former Han aristocrat named Zhang Liang swore revenge on Qin Shih Huang. He sold his valuables and hired a strongman assassin, building a heavy metal cone weighing 120 jin (roughly 160 lb or 97 kg).[43] The two men hid among the bushes along the emperor's route over a mountain. At a signal, the muscular assassin hurled the cone at the first carriage and shattered it. However, the emperor was travelling with two identical carriages to baffle attackers, and he was actually in the second carriage. Thus the attempt failed,[61] though both men were able to escape the subsequent manhunt.[43]

Numerous state walls had been built during the previous four centuries, many of them closing gaps between river defences and impassable cliffs.[62][63] To impose centralized rule and prevent the resurgence of feudal lords, the Emperor ordered the destruction of walls between the former states, which were now internal walls dividing the empire.

However, to defend against the northern Xiongnu nomadic tribes, who had beaten back repeated campaigns against them, he ordered new walls to connect the fortifications along the empire's northern frontier. Hundreds of thousands of workers were mobilized, and an unknown number died, to build this precursor to the current Great Wall of China.[64][65][66] Transporting building materials was difficult, so builders always tried to use local materials: rock over mountain ranges, rammed earth over the plains. "Build and move on" was a guiding principle, implying that the Wall was not a permanently fixed border.[67] There are no surviving records specifying the length and course of the Qin walls, which have largely eroded away over the centuries.

A South China proverb says: "In the North there is the Great wall, in the South there is the Lingqu canal" (北有長城、南有靈渠; Běiyǒu chángchéng, nányǒu língqú).[68] In 214 BC the Emperor began the project of a major canal allowing water transport between north and south China, originally for military supplies.[69] The canal, 34 kilometres in length, links two of China's major waterways, the Xiang River flowing into the Yangtze and the Li Jiang flowing into the Pearl River.[69] The canal aided Qin's expansion to the south-west.[69] It is considered one of the three great feats of ancient Chinese engineering, along with the Great Wall and the Sichuan Dujiangyan Irrigation System.[69]

As he grew old, Qin Shi Huang desperately sought the fabled elixir of life which supposedly confers immortality. In his obsessive quest, he fell prey to many fraudulent elixirs.[70] He visited Zhifu Island three times in his search.[71]

In one case he sent Xu Fu, a Zhifu islander, with ships carrying hundreds of young men and women in search of the mystical Penglai mountain.[61] They sought Anqi Sheng, a thousand-year-old magician who had supposedly invited Qin Shi Huang during a chance meeting during his travels.[72] The expedition never returned, perhaps for fear of the consquences of failure. Legends claim that they reached Japan and colonized it.[70]

It is also possible that the Emperor's book burning, which exempted alchemical works, could be seen as an attempt to focus the minds of the best scholars on the Emperor's quest. Some of those buried alive were alchemists, and this could have been a means of testing their death-defying abilities.[73]

The emperor built a system of tunnels and passageways to each of his over 200 palaces, because traveling unseen would supposedly keep him safe from evil spirits.

Imperial tours of Qin Shi Huang

In 211 BC a large meteor is said to have fallen in Dongjun in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, and someone inscribed the seditious words "The First Emperor will die and his land will be divided" (始皇死而地分).[74] The Emperor sent an imperial secretary to investigate this prophecy. No one would confess to the deed, so all living nearby were put to death, and the stone was pulverized.[30]

During his fifth tour of Eastern China, the Emperor became seriously ill in Pingyuanjin (Pingyuan County, Shandong), and died on July–August 210 BC at the palace in Shaqiu prefecture (沙丘平台, Shāqiū Píngtái), about two months travel from the capital Xianyang.[75][76]

The cause of Qin Shi Huang's death is unknown, though he was worn down by his many years of rule.[77] It was later alleged that he was poisoned by an elixir containing mercury, given him by his court alchemists and physicians.[78]

Upon witnessing the Emperor's death, Prime Minister Li Si feared the news could trigger a general uprising, which could take root during the two months travel for the imperial entourage to return to the capital Xianyang.[8] Li Si decided to hide the death: the only members of the entourage to be informed were a younger son, Ying Huhai, the eunuch Zhao Gao, and five or six favourite eunuchs.[8] Li Si ordered carts of rotten fish to be carried before and behind the wagon of the Emperor, to cover the foul smell from his body decomposing in the summer heat.[8] Pretending he was alive behind the wagon's shade, they changed his clothes daily, brought food, and pretended to carry message to and from him.[8]

After they reached Xianyang, the death of the Emperor was announced.[8] Qin Shi Huang had not liked to talk about his death and had never written a will.[79] Although his eldest son Fusu would normally succeed as emperor, Li Si and the chief eunuch Zhao Gao conspired to kill Fusu, who was in league with their enemy general Meng Tian.[79] Meng Tian's brother, a senior minister, had once punished Zhao Gao.[80] Li Si and Zhao Gao forged a letter from Qin Shi Huang commanding Fusu and General Meng to commit suicide.[79] The plan worked, and the younger son Hu Hai started his brief reign as the Second Emperor, later known as Qin Er Shi or "Second Generation Qin".[8]

Lifelike terracotta soldier statues from the Terracotta Army, discovered near modern Xi'an, which was meant to guard the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor

The Chinese historian Sima Qian, writing a century after the First Emperor's death, wrote that it took 700,000 men to construct the emperor's mausoleum. British historian John Man points out that this figure is larger than the population of any city in the world at that time and he calculates that the foundations could have been built by 16,000 men in two years.[85] While Sima Qian never mentioned the terracotta army, the statues were discovered by a group of farmers digging wells on 29 March 1974.[86] The soldiers were created with a series of mix-and-match clay molds and then further individualized by the artists' hand. Han Purple was also used on some of the warriors.[87] There are around 6,000 Terracotta Warriors and their purpose was to protect the Emperor in the afterlife from evil spirits. Also among the army are chariots and 40,000 real bronze weapons.[88]

One of the first projects which the young king accomplished while he was alive was the construction of his own tomb. In 215 BC Qin Shi Huang ordered General Meng Tian to begin its construction with the assistance of 300,000 men.[22] Other sources suggest that he ordered 720,000 unpaid laborers to build his tomb according to his specifications.[38] Again, given John Man's observation regarding populations at the time (see paragraph above), these historical estimates are debatable. The main tomb (located at 34°22′53″N 109°15′13″E) containing the emperor has yet to be opened and there is evidence suggesting that it remains relatively intact.[89] Sima Qian's description of the tomb includes replicas of palaces and scenic towers, "rare utensils and wonderful objects", 100 rivers made with mercury, representations of "the heavenly bodies", and crossbows rigged to shoot anyone who tried to break in.[90] The tomb was built at the foot of Mount Li, 30 kilometers away from Xi'an. Modern archaeologists have located the tomb, and have inserted probes deep into it. The probes revealed abnormally high quantities of mercury, some 100 times the naturally occurring rate, suggesting that some parts of the legend are credible.[78] Secrets were maintained, as most of the workmen who built the tomb were killed.[78][91]

A posthumous depiction of Qin Shi Huang, painted during the late Qing dynasty

Traditional Chinese historiography almost always portrayed the First Emperor of the Chinese unified states as a brutal tyrant who had an obsessive fear of assassination. Ideological antipathy towards the Legalist State of Qin was established as early as 266 BC, when Confucian philosopher Xunzi disparaged it. Later Confucian historians condemned the emperor, alleging that he burned the classics and buried Confucian scholars alive. [92] They eventually compiled a list of the Ten Crimes of Qin to highlight his tyrannical actions.[93]

The famous Han poet and statesman Jia Yi concluded his essay The Faults of Qin (過秦論, Guò Qín Lùn) with what was to become the standard Confucian judgment of the reasons for Qin's collapse. Jia Yi's essay, admired as a masterpiece of rhetoric and reasoning, was copied into two great Han histories and has had a far-reaching influence on Chinese political thought as a classic illustration of Confucian theory.[94] He attributed Qin's disintegration to its internal failures.[95] Jia Yi wrote that:

Qin, from a tiny base, had become a great power, ruling the land and receiving homage from all quarters for a hundred odd years. Yet after they unified the land and secured themselves within the pass, a single common rustic could nevertheless challenge this empire... Why? Because the ruler lacked humaneness and rightness; because preserving power differs fundamentally from seizing power.[96]

In more modern times, historical assessment of the First Emperor different from traditional Chinese historiography began to emerge. The reassessment was spurred on by the weakness of China in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century. At that time some began to regard Confucian traditions as an impediment to China's entry into the modern world, opening the way for changing perspectives.

At a time when foreign nations encroached upon Chinese territory, leading Kuomintang historian Xiao Yishan emphasized the role of Qin Shi Huang in repulsing the northern barbarians, particularly in the construction of the Great Wall.

Another historian, Ma Feibai (馬非百), published in 1941 a full-length revisionist biography of the First Emperor entitled Qín Shǐ Huángdì Zhuàn (秦始皇帝傳), calling him "one of the great heroes of Chinese history". Ma compared him with the contemporary leader Chiang Kai-shek and saw many parallels in the careers and policies of the two men, both of whom he admired. Chiang's Northern Expedition of the late 1920s, which directly preceded the new Nationalist government at Nanjing was compared to the unification brought about by Qin Shi Huang.

With the coming of the Communist Revolution and the establishment of a new, revolutionary regime in 1949, another re-evaluation of the First Emperor emerged as a Marxist critique. This new interpretation of Qin Shi Huang was generally a combination of traditional and modern views, but essentially critical. This is exemplified in the Complete History of China, which was compiled in September 1955 as an official survey of Chinese history. The work described the First Emperor's major steps toward unification and standardisation as corresponding to the interests of the ruling group and the merchant class, not of the nation or the people, and the subsequent fall of his dynasty as a manifestation of the class struggle. The perennial debate about the fall of the Qin Dynasty was also explained in Marxist terms, the peasant rebellions being a revolt against oppression—a revolt which undermined the dynasty, but which was bound to fail because of a compromise with "landlord class elements".

Statue of Emperor Qin Shi Huang in Handan

Since 1972, however, a radically different official view of Qin Shi Huang in accordance with Maoist thought has been given prominence throughout China. Hong Shidi's biography Qin Shi Huang initiated the re-evaluation. The work was published by the state press as a mass popular history, and it sold 1.85 million copies within two years. In the new era, Qin Shi Huang was seen as a far-sighted ruler who destroyed the forces of division and established the first unified, centralized state in Chinese history by rejecting the past. Personal attributes, such as his quest for immortality, so emphasized in traditional historiography, were scarcely mentioned. The new evaluations described approvingly how, in his time (an era of great political and social change), he had no compunctions against using violent methods to crush counter-revolutionaries, such as the "industrial and commercial slave owner" chancellor Lü Buwei. However, he was criticized for not being as thorough as he should have been, and as a result, after his death, hidden subversives under the leadership of the chief eunuch Zhao Gao were able to seize power and use it to restore the old feudal order.

To round out this re-evaluation, Luo Siding put forward a new interpretation of the precipitous collapse of the Qin Dynasty in an article entitled "On the Class Struggle During the Period Between Qin and Han" in a 1974 issue of Red Flag, to replace the old explanation. The new theory claimed that the cause of the fall of Qin lay in the lack of thoroughness of Qin Shi Huang's "dictatorship over the reactionaries, even to the extent of permitting them to worm their way into organs of political authority and usurp important posts."

Mao Zedong was reviled for his persecution of intellectuals. On being compared to the First Emperor, Mao boasted:

He buried 460 scholars alive; we have buried forty-six thousand scholars alive... You [intellectuals] revile us for being Qin Shi Huangs. You are wrong. We have surpassed Qin Shi Huang a hundredfold. When you berate us for imitating his despotism, we are happy to agree! Your mistake was that you did not say so enough.[97]

Tom Ambrose characterises Qin Shi Huang as the founder of "the first police state in history".[98]

• "The Wall and the Books" ("La muralla y los libros"), an acclaimed essay on Qin Shi Huang published by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) in the 1952 collection Other Inquisitions (Otras Inquisiciones).[99]
• The Emperor's Shadow (1996) – The film focuses on Qin Shi Huang's relationship with the musician Gao Jianli, a friend of the assassin Jing Ke.[100]
• The Emperor and the Assassin (1999) – The film covers much of Ying Zheng's career, recalling his early experiences as a hostage and foreshadowing his dominance over China.[101][102]
• Hero (2002) – The film stars Jet Li, a nameless assassin who plans an assassination attempt on the King of Qin (Chen Daoming). The film is a fictional re-imagining of the assassination attempt by Jing Ke on Qin Shi Huang.[103]
• Rise of the Great Wall (1986) – a 63-episode Hong Kong TV series chronicling the events from the emperor's birth until his death.[104] Tony Liu played Qin Shi Huang.
• A Step into the Past (2001) – a Hong Kong TVB production based on a science fiction novel by Huang Yi.[105]
• Qin Shi Huang (2002) – a mainland Chinese TV semi-fictionalized series with Zhang Fengyi.[106]
• Kingdom (2006) – a Japanese manga that provides a fictionalized account of the unification of China by Ying Zheng with Li Xin and all the people that contributed to the conquest of the six Warring States.
• Fate/Grand Order (2015), an online, free-to-play role-playing mobile game of the Fate franchise developed by Delightworks and published by Aniplex features Qin Shi Huang as a Ruler class servant.[107]
• First Emperor: The Man Who Made China (2006) – a drama-documentary special about Qin Shi Huang. James Pax played the emperor. It was shown on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in 2006.[108]
• China's First Emperor (2008) – a special three-hour documentary by The History Channel. Xu Pengkai played Qin Shi Huang.[109]
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) - the third of The Mummy trilogy. It happened that after General Ming Guo was killed for touching Zi Yuan, she put a curse on the Emperor and his army.

• Sima Qian (c. 91 BC). Records of the Grand Historian
  • Sima Qian (2007). Records of the Grand Historian: Qin dynasty. Translated by Raymond Dawson. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-922634-4.
  • Sima Qian (2006). William, Nienhauser (ed.). The Grand Scribe's Records V.1: The Hereditary Houses of Pre-Han China. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253340252.
  • Sima Qian (1994). William, Nienhauser (ed.). The Grand Scribe's Records I: The Basic Annals of Pre-Han China. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253340214.
  • Sima Qian (1993). Records of the Grand Historian: Qin Dynasty. Translated by Burton Watson (3rd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231081696.

Books

• Barbieri-Low, Anthony J.; Yates, Robin D.S. (2015). Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China. Sinica Leidensia. Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-30053-8.
• Bodde, Derk (1986). "The State and Empire of Ch'in". In Twitchett, Dennis; Loewe, Michael (eds.). The Cambridge History of China, Volume 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC–AD 220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-24327-8.
• Clements, Jonathan (2006). The First Emperor of China. Cheltenham: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7509-3960-7.
• Cotterell, Arthur (1981). The First Emperor of China: The Greatest Archeological Find of Our Time. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. ISBN 978-0-03-059889-0.
• Guisso, R.W.L.; Pagani, Catherine; Miller, David (1989). The First Emperor of China. New York: Birch Lane Press. ISBN 978-1-55972-016-8.
• Lewis, Mark Edward (2007). The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02477-9.
• Loewe, Michael (2000). A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods (221 BC - AD 24). Leiden: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-10364-1.
• Loewe, Michael (2004). The Men Who Governed Han China: Companion to a Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods. Leiden: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-13845-2.
• Paludan, Ann (1998). Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial China. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-05090-3.
• Portal, Jane (2007). The First Emperor, China's Terracotta Army. London: British Museum Press. ISBN 978-1-932543-26-1.
• Vervoorn, Aat Emile (1990). "Chronology of Dynasties and Reign Periods". Men of the Cliffs and Caves: The Development of the Chinese Eremitic Tradition to the End of the Han Dynasty. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. pp. 311–316. ISBN 978-962-201-415-2.
• Wilkinson, Endymion (2018). Chinese History: A New Manual (5th ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center. ISBN 978-0-9988883-0-9.

Articles

• Dull, Jack L. (July 1983). "Anti-Qin Rebels: No Peasant Leaders Here". Modern China. 9 (3): 285–318. doi:10.1177/009770048300900302. JSTOR 188992. S2CID 143585546.
• Müller, Claudius Cornelius (29 May 2021). "Qin Shi Huang | Biography, Accomplishments, Family, United China, Tomb, & Facts". Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
• Sanft, Charles (2008). "Progress and Publicity in Early China: Qin Shihuang, Ritual, and Common Knowledge". Journal of Ritual Studies. 22 (1): 21–37. JSTOR 44368779.
• Sørensen, Ærenlund (2010). "How the First Emperor Unified the Minds of Contemporary Historians: The Inadequate Source Criticism in Modern Historical Works about the Chinese Bronze Age". Monumenta Serica. 58: 1–30. doi:10.1179/mon.2010.58.1.001. JSTOR 41417876. S2CID 152767331.