A Concise History of China-Pangu to Puyi - Part 3

Laszlo Montgomery (0:00)

Welcome back, my friends, to the Chinese Imperial History Series that never ends. This is Laszlo Montgomery, thanking y'all for coming back. Okay, let's get down on it without further delay. Over the past four hours and two episodes, we've traced the China history timeline from mythical times in the third millennium BC all the way up to the fourth century BC. This is the Warring States period in China.

We looked at mythical times and the Shang dynasty that gave rise to the 790-year Zhou dynasty. In 770 BC, the Zhou rulers were forced out of their capital in Haojing and fled east to Luoyang, still called Chengzhou. And during this Eastern Zhou period, during the two phases of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the remaining independent fiefdoms and mini-kingdoms threw their lot in with nearby stronger kingdoms. We looked at the rise of the Qin and how they evolved. We left off last time in 316 BC with the conquest of Shu and Ba, the two ancient kingdoms in and around Chengdu and Chongqing. If any of you had never heard of Xiangyang, then for sure you'd never heard of Fàn Jū. These two, more than anyone else, made the Qin dynasty. Xiangyang, with his two waves of reforms, put the Qin house in order and put them on a war footing. Fàn Jū was someone of high repute as a politician and strategist. And like Xiangyang, he also originally hailed from Wei state. That's the one spelled W-E-Y, fourth tone, to differentiate it from the better known Wei, spelled W-E-I.

Fàn Jū is remembered for his famous and winning strategy of yuán jiāo jīng gōng, make allies of those far away, and use them to defeat those who are nearby. This essentially called for an end to the way things had been handled thus far in Qín. Alliances had often been made for whatever short-term expediency arose. Resources were wasted fighting battles for lands far away that couldn't be held anyway. Fàn Jū said you had to expand from the inside out. The states of Huái, Hán and Zhào were too close for comfort. They had to go. And as a precursor to taking them down, the Qín had to create allies of those states who bordered Huái, Hán and Zhào on the other side. Never mind that one day their end would have to come too. But for now, they were needed as allies. The Qín King Zhao Xiang reigned 306 to 251 BC. These three kings after Du Xiaoxiao, and we remember Du Xiaoxiao for bringing Shang Yang into the government where his reforms ignited Qín's rise. There was also Du Xiaoxiao featured in the great serial drama 大秦帝国, The Great Qin Empire, season one. After taking a couple of beatings at the hands of the other warring states and most of all from neighboring Zhao state, Fan Zhu made the decision to travel from Wei to Qin and he was able to get an audience with King Zhao Xiang. When he got his chance to stand before this very, very long reigning and consequential king, he was able to convince him that the methods he was currently employing to attain supremacy were all wrong. Fan Zhu explained his whole yuanjiao jinggong strategy and for this, Fan Zhu in 266 BC was made the chancellor.

Fan Zhu's great achievement was to help facilitate the creation of the autocratic monarch. From the earliest times, no one single ruler could project power or enforce his will upon anyone beyond a certain distance.

In the decade since Xiangyang died, the reforms, despite the occasional pushback, took hold and the state was much more manageable now. Further to that, pioneer peasants from the eastern states had migrated to Qín to try their luck. This allowed more land to be cultivated, which led to more grain being produced and more taxes paid. The army kept getting bigger. Not only was this good for the economy, but now a centralized army could be fed by a single king. The need to depend on nobles to fight one's battles became obsolete. Now full-time professionals who knew military strategy could be brought into the king's employ and would serve only him. So the armies became much bigger and more professional. And because the organized state was booming economically, the financial wherewithal to field these massive six-figure armies became possible. Then add to the mix all the great technological advances in weaponry that enhanced a soldier's effectiveness on the field of battle. Fàn Jū taught his king, if you were able to utilize such shock-and-awe tactics and overcome your enemy, you had to finish the job down to the last combatant. No one could be left alive to come back and fight you another day. And so, in the mid-third century BC., the period began where you'd have these epic battles and tens and tens of thousands, sometimes more than a hundred thousand, would die in the course of a single battle. Only Qin had reformed like they did throughout their society and in the military. And everything now was focused on one single king who had the final say with regard to taxes and the army, as well as handing out rewards and punishments. Everything was concentrated in one single person. In the other states, they were still stuck in the Zhou Dynasty with enfeefed nobles and reliance on too many others with their own hidden agendas. Qin Shihuáng gets way more credit than he deserves. He didn't just appear out of nowhere and carve out this new nation. Improvements to the Qin state had been going on for more than a hundred years before Yíng Zhèng was born. But as we'll see, the first Qin emperor was a perfect capstone to all these reforms. He really took the whole idea of a tyrannical autocratic monarch to its ultimate level.