LESSON 7.10 Inquiry: How should we judge the legacy of Qin Shihuang?
LEARNING INTENTION By the end of this lesson you should be able to:
• assess an important person’s role and achievements • distinguish different viewpoints in secondary sources.
Background Historians have different views about the Qin dynasty’s legacy. Reading the next sources will help you compare these ideas. You can also look online or in the library for more information. Note: you will notice Qin Shihuang referred to as Qin Shi Huang, Qin Shi-Huang or Shi Huangdi in these
sources. These variations are all correct. A selection of secondary sources
SOURCE1 From Felicity Jiang, ‘The Qin Dynasy — First Imperial Dynasty in China’, China Highlights website
The Qin Dynasty lasted for only 15 years ... But during their short reign, they destroyed more than half the population and much of the culture, literature and scholarship of the Zhou era. It is thought that the population dropped from about 40 million at the beginning of their reign to about 18 million by the end of their reign. In carrying out their plans, they caused enormous misery and destruction, but they built a lot of infrastructure such as roads, canals and the Great Wall that beneýted later empires . . . By standardizing even the writing and ideas and customs and religion, they laid the foundation for later empires.
SOURCE2 From Joshua J Mark , ‘ Qin Dynasty’ entry, World History Encyclopedia website
Although the Qin Dynasty is often referred to positively as the ýrst political entity to unite China . . . the reigns of Shi Huangdi and his inept son and grandson were a dark time for the people of China, who were impoverished, brutalised, and kidnapped from their homes to serve the ego of the emperor. It is a chilling detail that the Qin dynasty is the shortest, only 15 years, in the history of China owing to its brutality and blatant rejection of the central value of the Mandate of Heaven that a ruler care for the people above any personal considerations.
SOURCE3 From Claudius Cornelius Muller, ‘Qin Shi-Huang emperor of China’ entry, Encyclopaedia Britannica website
Most of the information about Qin Shi Huang’s life derives from the successor Han dynasty, which prized Confucian scholarship and thus had an interest in disparaging the Qin period . . . With few exceptions, the traditional historiography of imperial China has regarded him as a villain . . . Modern historians, however, generally stress the endurance of the bureaucratic and administrative structure institutionalised by Qin Shi Huang, which . . . remained the basis of all subsequent dynasties in China.
TOPIC7 Ancient China 219
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