Qin dynasty how long

Second Century B. Second—First Century B. Related Essays Han Dynasty B. Map Qin Dynasty ca. He attempted to fight and create his own territory but was defeated and executed in B. The state of Qin began to expand into the regions surrounding it. When the states of Shu and Ba went to war in B. Qin responded by conquering each of them and, over the next 40 years, relocating thousands of families there, and continuing their expansionist efforts into other regions.

Ying Zheng is considered the first emperor of China. In B. Advised by the sorcerer Lu Sheng, Qin Shi Huang traveled in secrecy through a system of tunnels and lived in secret locations to facilitate communing with immortals.

Qin Shi Huang worked quickly to unify his conquered people across a vast territory that was home to several different cultures and languages. One of the most important outcomes of the Qin conquest was the standardization of non-alphabetic written script across all of China, replacing the previous regional scripts. This script was simplified to allow faster writing, useful for record keeping.

The new script enabled parts of the empire that did not speak the same language to communicate together, and led to the founding of an imperial academy to oversee all texts. As part of the university effort, older philosophical texts were confiscated and restricted though not destroyed, as accounts during the Han Dynasty would later claim. The Qin also standardized weights and measures, casting bronze models for measurements and sending them to local governments, who would then impose them on merchants to simplify trade and commerce across the empire.

In conjunction with this, bronze coins were created to standardize money across the regions. With these Qin advances, for the first time in its history, the various warring states in China were unified. The name China, in fact, is derived from the word Qin which was written as Ch'in in earlier Western texts.

The Qin empire is known for its engineering marvels, including a complex system of over 4, miles of road and one superhighway, the Straight Road, which ran for about miles along the Ziwu Mountain range and is the pathway on which materials for the Great Wall of China were transported.

Overseen by the Qin road builder Meng Tian, , workers were brought to work on the construction of the Great Wall, and on the service roads required to transport supplies. Qin Shi Huang was noted for audacious marvels of art and architecture meant to celebrate the glory of his new dynasty. Weapons from Qin conquests were collected and melted down, to be used for the casting of giant statues in the capital city Xianyang.

For his most brash creation, Qin Shi Huang sent , workers to create an underground complex at the foot of the Lishan Mountains to serve as his tomb. Qin Shi Huang was paranoid about his death, and because of this he was able to survive numerous assassination attempts. He became increasingly obsessed with immortality and employed many alchemists and sorcerers. Privacy Policy.

Skip to main content. Early Chinese Dynasties. Search for:. The Qin Dynasty. The Qin Dynasty was one of the shortest in all of Chinese history, lasting only about 15 years, but was also one of the most important.

It was marked by a strong sense of unification and crucial technological and cultural innovation. Shi Huangdi standardized writing throughout the empire, built expansive infrastructure, such as highways and canals, standardized currency and measurement, conducted a census, and established a postal system.

A national conscription was devised: every male between the ages of seventeen and sixty years was obliged to serve one year in the army. Qin aggrandizement was aided by frequent military expeditions pushing forward the frontiers in the north and south. To fend off barbarian intrusion mainly against the Xiongnu in the north , the fortification walls built by the various warring states were connected to make a wall; this was an early precursor of the 5, kilometer long Great Wall of China built later during the Ming Dynasty.

A number of public works projects, including canals and bridges, were also undertaken to consolidate and strengthen imperial rule. A lavish tomb for the emperor, complete with a Terracotta Army, was built near the capital Xianyang, a city half an hour from modern Xian.

These activities required enormous levies of manpower and resources, not to mention repressive measures. Endless labor in the later years of the First Emperor's reign started to provoke widespread discontent. In BC, the First Emperor died on a journey through the empire. There is evidence suggests that the emperor was looking for an elixir of immortality.