The Warring States period (481/403 BCE - 221 BCE) describes the three centuries when various rival Chinese states battled viciously for territorial advantage and dominance. Ultimately the Qin state was victorious and established the first unified Chinese state. Besides incessant warfare, and probably because of it, the period saw significant developments in society, commerce, agriculture, philosophy, and the arts, setting the foundations for the subsequent flourishing of Imperial China.
In the 5th century BCE the Eastern Zhou (Chou) Dynasty (771-256 BCE) was crumbling. No longer dominant in military terms, the Zhou were forced to rely on armies of other allied states, who on occasion took the opportunity to forward their own territorial claims. For this reason, the Zhou king was compelled to sometimes make the military leader of another state the military leader of the Zhou alliance. These commanders were given the honorary title of ba or Hegemon, although they and the leaders of other states in the alliance had to swear loyalty to the Zhou feudal system.
By the early 4th century BCE nearly 100 small states had been consolidated by conquest into seven major states: the Chu, Han, Qi, Qin, Wei, Yan, and Zhao. Sandwiched between these were several smaller states but the big seven had by now become so large and consolidated that it became difficult for one to absorb another. Further encouraging this segregation of territory was the trend of building long defensive walls along frontiers, some of which were several hundred kilometres long. Made of stone and earth, long sections still survive today including the Qi wall at Mulinngguan in Shandong province which is 4 metres high and 10 metres across in places.
In each state, the ruler declared himself king and independent of the Zhou empire. Each now looked to expand their territory at their neighbour's expense, often attacking rivals over succession disputes caused by the common policy of intermarriage between different royal families. Eventually, this rivalry led to ever-shifting alliances and the incessant conflicts that gave the period its name. Between 535 and 286 BCE there were 358 wars between states.
A New Type of Warfare
Cavalry of mounted archers on sturdy Mongolian steeds, large infantry armies based on universal conscription, and the diffusion of new iron weapons such as swords and crossbows (which led to new armour), made warfare during the Warring States Period much more deadly than in previous eras.
Chivalry may or may not have gone out of the window but one thing that did certainly change was the scale of battles with armies frequently fielding over 200,000 infantry compared to the more usual 10,000 in earlier times. The Qin, Qi, and Chu states each possessed a total infantry force of close to one million men and a cavalry force of 10,000. Battles were no longer over and done with after a couple of days either but dragged on for months or even years with casualties in the tens of thousands.
Success in war became the sole goal of the state and everyone in it, as the historian L. Feng here summarises:
During the Warring States period, warfare was the most important aspect of social life, the principle of the state, and the compass that directed government policies. It is no exaggeration that by the late Warring States period (3rd century BCE), war had escalated to the level that the entire state was organised for the very purpose of war, and this was true for all states (197).
The Rise of Qin
Rather ironically given future events, the Qin was one one of the few states which remained loyal to the Zhou. For example, the Qin ruler, Duke Xin, was rewarded for protecting Zhou interests with the title of Hegemon in 364 BCE. His successor Xiao, was given the same honour in 343 BCE. Xiao is known for taking on the services of the gifted advisor Shang Yang, poached from the Wei state, who then reorganised the Qin state and made it even more powerful. Populations were better censored and regions divided into more easily administered provinces and counties so that the collection of taxes (in the form of both goods and labour) was made more efficient. Such was the strength of the Qin now that the Zhou king awarded a royal status and insignia to the ruler Huiwen in 326 BCE.
The Qin state had the advantages of a protective mountain range on its eastern border and was one of the peripheral states so that it had more freedom to expand into territory not held by a rival Chinese state. Now that they had both a strong and organised government based on the principles of Legalism, with its emphasis on laws and procedures (expounded by the ministers Lu Buwei and his protege Li Si), an expanded bureaucracy with local officials and magistrates to help run the provinces, and the economic wherewithal to field large, well-equipped armies, the Qin could begin to plan a more ambitious campaign of major conquest.
The victory over the Shu state in 316 BCE allowed the Qin to absorb their fertile agricultural lands further enriching the state. In 278 BCE Ying, the capital of the Chu state, fell under Qin control. A great victory was won against the Zhao in 260 BCE after a three-year battle stretched across a 160 km (100 miles) front. When the Zhou king died and no successor was appointed in 256 BCE, Qin took over the remains of that state too. The Qin seemed unstoppable. With final and decisive victories over Han in 230 BCE, Zhao in 228 BCE, Wei in 225 BCE, the capitulation of Chu in 223 BCE - one of the Qin's strongest rivals -, and the defeat of Yan and Qi in 221 BCE, the Qin state was able to at last form a unified empire across most of China. The Qin king, Zheng, awarded himself the title of Shi Huangdi or 'First Emperor'.
Cultural Developments
The period may have been dominated by wars but there were some cultural side effects to all this military activity. The technological necessity to produce weaponry as good as or better than one's opponents led to better tools and craft skills, especially metalworking and the use of iron. Artists, in turn, were able to produce more skilled artworks, notably mastering such difficult and time-consuming materials as jade and lacquer.
Cities grew in size as populations sought the greater safety of their defensive walls and towers. Multi-storey city gates were erected to impress visitors with the wealth and might of the city. The rulers' palaces became more extravagant, marketplaces expanded, areas dedicated to specific industries where such goods as pottery and weapons could be mass-produced sprang up, and town planning developed with blocks set out in a regular grid pattern and roads crisscrossing the city.
As alliances were formed and new areas conquered, so too, trade developed and with it a rich middle class of merchants and state administrators. Society moved away (at least a little) from the strict class system where one's position was defined by that of one's parents. The lower aristocratic class (shi) began to usurp the power of the old landed nobility. By necessity, money was introduced in the form of bronze coins with a distinctive central hole or in the form of tools, and so became known as 'knife-money' and 'spade money'. There was now the possibility to acquire wealth and status for those with the necessary talent and opportunity.
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she warring on my states before i unify
she warrin on my state til i qin :copium:
I'm going to a house show on Friday - my first house show in....at least 10 years. Turns out the venue is within 5 blocks of me, AND BEFORE THAT I AM HELPING PACK FOOD FOR THOSE IN NEED IN LOGAN SQURARE CHECK THE CHICAGO COMM FOR DETAILS! COME HELP!
I want the nerds who keep making Balkanized China fantasy maps to sit down and realize how many time China has been balkanized in its history and how every time that balkanization has failed to prevent a strong unified China from emerging.
People only care about massacres and atrocities that happen to the group they identify themselves with.
Chinese legalism? Like, is there a Han Fei corner of twitter?
it's mostly han chauvinists and a e s t h e t i c enjoyers circlejerking about traditional chinese cultural items and death penalty for minor offenses but they have some pretty interesting sociological takes on occasion
Hooray! I'd like to take this moment to thank myself for all I did to stop it, and I think you all should thank me too.
I definitely antagonized a lot of Poles in the posting mines today.
Wait a second, if the Millennium Falcon is a freighter pimped-up with cannons...
Does that make it a technical? :technical:
Also, because of Andor, it's become cool again to talk about Star Wars, right?
At least until the next show comes out...
I haven't seen anything Star Wars since The Last Jedi so I'm :blob-no-thoughts: on it's stupid discourse.
andor is one of the best things on tv rn, but on the whole you made the right call. :blob-no-thoughts: is usually the right attitude towards pop culture you aren't super interested in
I heard it's good but I really could care less about new sw stuff, especially anything disney related. I'm fine just re-watching the original trilogy once in a while and the occasional retro game.
:fidel-salute-big: Ignorance is a quality to strive for.
maybe the next show will also be good. won't be as good as andor i'm sure, but i could see it being not embarrassing
Looked up Disney's 5 year plan. I haven't finished any of the games but the Old Republic stuff could have potential, the further removed things are from the main trilogies, the more creative freedom you'd have and the less chances you'd have of having Blorb Fritzgibbon cameos and shit, so that could be good...
I don't have much high hopes for anything else though... Cynicism always pay off.Disney’s 5 year plan
I don´t know how to feel about this phrase
I mean it. We already have a planned economy, and it's almost entirely centralised, it's just being planned by capitalists with the goal of maximising profit rather than for social benefit.
I know disney does it, its just very weird to hear it out loud
yea probably. andor season 2 is definitely worth looking forward to and that's only 2 years out iirc. not impossible disney fucks with it, but they didn't with season 1 so there's room for hope. outside that... maybe mando 3 will move away from the broader universe? probably not
My professor told us about a book and then said DONT READ IT ITS TOO LONG AND NOT CONCISE AT ALL THIS MAN NEEDED AN EDITOR SO BADLY
Then she fucking assigned that book as required reading for the final essay? What the fuck is wrong with her?
So when you had potentially three months to read a longass book she said don't read it, but now when you've got barely a month you have to read the whole thing and write a whole thing on it? Lol lmao, yes that is clown shit.
My mom is going to listen to chapo :michael-laugh: I'll let you all know what she thought when she's finished an ep
My mom listened to an episode of Chapo with me while we were driving home from our vacation and I had to explain the idea about CIA's involvement in the JFK assassination to her when it got brought up lmao
does your mom even know anything about american politics? i mean you'd think she would, to support her kid, but i still feel like i should ask
If you'd like to go along with me here, in the fantasy that I'm not actually Barack Obama - my mother doesn't know a whole lot, and was looking for English language podcasts about American politics (mainly on subjects like gerrymandering and the like). So she's going to check out various podcasts from NPR and the like, and jokingly I recommended :chapo-boys:. She gives every podcast a single ep to see if she likes it.
Apologies to my comrades. I'm moving out of this god-forsaken state (Texas) for a contract job. Wish me luck!
god I love people who are like "they have the right to do it so how is it unethical" like you know this mf slept through 6th grade social studies, free gotcha for me
“they have the right to do it so how is it unethical”
:walter-breakdown: “they have the right to do it so how is it unethical” mfers when I kick them in the ribs (I have a piece of paper from the government saying I can so it's cool)
Napoleon III to be clear, the farce to his uncle's tragedy that Marx was writing about
also following from this Québécois are clearly Latinos
So I was denied cash assistance from the state and so far it's been 10 days and I've yet to get a call back on my food stamps application. I knew this wasn't going to work, it's impossible to get past the means-testing in my state unless you're homeless and even then I imagine it's still hard.
Can you lathe a type of guy? A Ukraine supporter who gets into Lenin because they heard Putin say that Lenin invented Ukraine