Warring States period and Qin’s wars of unification: A Visual History

The Warring States period (475-221 BC) saw the seven great states of Qin, Chu, Qi, Yan, Han, Zhao and Wei fight increasingly total wars with mass conscript infantry, crossbows, cavalry and iron weapons, while Legalist reformers built centralised bureaucracies. Qin, reformed by Shang Yang from 356 BC, gained the Sichuan basin, defeated Chu at Yanying (278) and Zhao at Changping (260), where 400,000 prisoners were reportedly buried alive. Under King Zheng and his generals Wang Jian and Meng Tian, Qin destroyed Han (230), Zhao (228), Wei (225), Chu (223), Yan (222) and Qi (221), and Zheng proclaimed himself Qin Shi Huang, First Emperor, uniting China for the first time.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Warring States period and Qin's wars of unification. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Number of significant states in China

Timeline of the Warring States period and Qin's wars of unification

1. 453 BC
   Partition of Jin
2. 356 BC
   Shang Yang's reforms in Qin
3. 342 BC
   Maling
4. 316 BC
   Qin conquers Sichuan
5. 278 BC
   Bai Qi takes Ying
6. 260 BC
   Changping
7. 230 BC
   Han conquered
8. 228 BC
   Zhao conquered
9. 223 BC
   Chu conquered
10. 221 BC
    Qi surrenders; First Emperor

The age of the Warring States

After the partition of Jin (453 BC) the great states swallowed the small ones and each king claimed the Zhou title. Wars grew from chariot skirmishes to campaigns of hundreds of thousands: at Maling (342) Qi's Sun Bin lured Wei into an ambush by reducing his cooking fires. Reformers like Wu Qi in Chu and Shang Yang in Qin abolished aristocratic privilege, rewarded soldiers by heads taken and organised households into mutual responsibility groups. Diplomats built 'vertical' alliances against Qin and 'horizontal' ones with it.

Qin's rise

Shang Yang's Legalist reforms (356-338) made Qin a war machine; General Sima Cuo took Sichuan (316), whose grain and the Dujiangyan irrigation system fed the armies. Bai Qi took the Chu capital in 278, and at Changping in 260 he trapped and starved a Zhao army of 400,000, then buried the prisoners alive, breaking Qin's last serious rival. Qin's kings ruled from Xianyang with the minister Fan Ju's policy of 'befriend the distant, attack the near'.

The ten years' conquest

King Zheng, aged 13 at his accession in 246, took power in 238, foiled a coup, and with Li Si and Wei Liao planned the endgame. Han fell in 230; Zhao's capital Handan in 228 after Qin bribed the king to sack his best general; Wei's Daliang was flooded into surrender in 225; Chu was crushed by Wang Jian's 600,000 in 223; Yan, whose prince had sent the assassin Jing Ke against Zheng in 227, fell in 222; Qi surrendered without a fight in 221. Zheng declared himself First Emperor, standardised script, weights, coinage and axle widths, and burned the histories of the defeated states.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Eastern Zhou (771 BC to 256 BC)
• Chu (state) (1,030 BC to 223 BC)
• Qin dynasty (221 BC to 206 BC)
• Zhou dynasty (Western Zhou) (1,046 BC to 256 BC)
• Western Han dynasty (202 BC to 9)
• Xiongnu Empire (209 BC to 93)

8 surprising things about the Warring States period and Qin's wars of unification

1. The Terracotta Army guards the First Emperor's tomb: some 8,000 soldiers, each with an individual face, plus horses and chariots.
2. Qin soldiers were promoted for enemy heads; one rank per head, and family members could be freed from slavery.
3. The Changping massacre of 400,000 prisoners is one of the largest recorded in ancient history; mass graves have been found.
4. Jing Ke's attempt to assassinate King Zheng, with a dagger hidden in a map, is one of China's most famous stories.
5. The Zhao general Li Mu, who beat Qin twice, was executed on false charges after Qin bribed the Zhao court; Handan fell three months later.
6. The Dujiangyan irrigation system built by Qin in Sichuan in 256 BC still waters the plain today.
7. Sunzi's Art of War and the strategy of Sun Bin both date from this age of constant war.
8. The First Emperor's standardisation of Chinese script is why written Chinese is mutually intelligible across dialects.

Sources

• Warring States Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Qin's wars of unification Wikipedia
• Warring States Period World History Encyclopedia
• Mark Edward Lewis, 'Warring States Political History', in The Cambridge History of Ancient China (1999) Cambridge University Press

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