The Warring States Period (c. 475–221 BC)
The Warring States period was the era in which the rival states of China fought a two-and-a-half-century struggle for supremacy, ending in the first unification of the country under the Qin. It began when the partition of the great state of Jin opened the way for seven major powers to contend, and it produced total war on a scale not seen elsewhere for centuries, with armies of hundreds of thousands and campaigns of annihilation. Competition drove reforms in administration, agriculture, and military technique, above all the Legalist program that made Qin the most efficient of the states. The same centuries produced China's greatest philosophical flowering, the Hundred Schools of Thought, whose Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, and Legalist debates shaped every dynasty that followed. The period ended in 221 BC when the king of Qin extinguished the last rival and proclaimed himself First Emperor.
Events
The Partition of Jin
In 453 BC the great state of Jin, dominant power of the Spring and Autumn era, split when the houses of Han, Wei, and Zhao destroyed the rival house of Zhi and divided the state among themselves. The Zhou king formally recognized the three successor states in 403 BC, an act of acquiescence to power that marked the end of the old feudal order. With Jin's partition, the map of China settled into seven major contending states, Qin, Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Wei, and Zhao, each competing for survival and supremacy. Warfare, once a ritualized contest of chariot nobles, became a sustained struggle of conscript armies and fortified borders. The conventional dating of the Warring States period from the mid-fifth century BC follows from this transformation.
Location: Jin (modern Shanxi, China)
Shang Yang's Reforms in Qin
Beginning in 356 BC, the statesman Shang Yang remade the state of Qin on Legalist principles, abolishing hereditary privilege in favor of ranks earned by agricultural production and military merit, standardizing measures and administration, and organizing households into mutual-responsibility groups. Land was opened to private ownership and cultivation, and the state's taxes, laws, and punishments were made uniform and public. The reforms were resisted by the Qin aristocracy, and after Duke Xiao's death Shang Yang was executed by the very laws he had written.
Location: Qin (modern Shaanxi, China)
The Hundred Schools of Thought
Across the fifth to third centuries BC, the dislocation of the Warring States era produced the greatest flowering of philosophy in Chinese history, known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, Legalism, the Yin-Yang school, and the School of Names competed for the patronage of rulers and the loyalty of educated men, sending scholars traveling between courts with programs for ordering the state and the person. Mencius argued for benevolent government, Mozi for universal love and defensive warfare, Zhuangzi for freedom from convention, and the Legalists for law and power as the only reliable instruments of order.
Location: Chinese states
The Battle of Changping
In 262-260 BC the two strongest states of the central plain, Qin and Zhao, fought a two-year campaign at Changping that became the bloodiest battle of the era. After the cautious Zhao commander Lian Po entrenched against the Qin advance, the Zhao court replaced him with the inexperienced Zhao Kuo, who attacked; the Qin general Bai Qi feigned retreat, encircled the Zhao army, and starved it into surrender. The Shiji tradition reports that the captured Zhao force of some 400,000 men was executed or buried alive.
Location: Changping (modern Shanxi, China)
The End of the Zhou Royal House
In 256 BC the last Zhou king, Nan of Zhou, died and Qin seized the remaining royal domain, extinguishing the dynasty that had held at least nominal supremacy over China for nearly eight centuries. The Zhou royal house had been a figurehead for generations, its ritual authority outlasted only by the deference of states that no longer obeyed it. Qin's annexation passed without serious opposition; the eastern remnant of the Zhou domain followed in 249 BC.
Location: Wangcheng (modern Henan, China)
Ying Zheng Ascends the Qin Throne
In 246 BC the thirteen-year-old Ying Zheng became king of Qin, inheriting the most powerful state of the era and the Legalist machinery that had made it so. Government remained in the hands of ministers and regents until 238 BC, when he assumed personal rule, survived a court coup, and drove his rival Lü Buwei from power. The philosopher Han Feizi, whose Legalist writings had long been admired by the Qin court, came to Qin in 233 BC and died in its prisons.
Location: Xianyang, Qin (modern Shaanxi, China)
The Conquest of the Six States Begins
In 230 BC Qin conquered Han, the smallest and weakest of the rival states, opening a decade-long campaign that systematically eliminated the remaining powers. Zhao fell in 228 BC, Wei in 225 BC after the Qin army diverted the Yellow River into its capital, Chu in 223 BC after a mass mobilization of some 600,000 troops, and Yan and Qi in 222 and 221 BC. The campaigns were preceded by years of diplomatic isolation engineered by Qin's minister Li Si, who broke the alliances formed against Qin one state at a time.
Location: China
The First Emperor Unifies China
In 221 BC, after the surrender of Qi, the last independent state, the king of Qin completed the unification of China and took the unprecedented title of First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. He and his minister Li Si standardized writing, weights, measures, and axle widths across the empire, abolished feudal enfeoffment in favor of centrally appointed commanderies and counties, and connected the northern walls into a single defensive line. The Legalist state that Shang Yang had built for one kingdom was applied, with its full severity, to all of China.
Location: Xianyang, Qin (modern Shaanxi, China)