China's Long Road To Empire 10,000 BC—221 BC

The Great Wall of China and the famous terracotta army vividly symbolize the power of ancient China—to the point that they have even been featured in movies . In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor , a 2008 release that did no honor to the 1999 classic, the army even came back to life .
The historical creator of the real terracotta army, the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, probably conscripted some 700,000 workers to create his massive mausoleum. It covers an area of about 56 square kilometers and includes the terracotta army, with its 8,000 clay soldiers, 130 chariots, and nearly 800 horses. These figures represent China's army at the time, an army more powerful than China had ever had. This army allowed Qin Shi Huang, the king of Qin, to unite the warring quarreling states of China and unify them under his rule as the first emperor.

#history #documentary #education

Some must read mlitary history books:

Intro: China between myth and history: 00:00-01:47
Chapter 1: The First Traces of War 01:47-06:33
Chapter 2: The First Armies 06:33-11:24
Chapter 3: The Mandate of Heaven 11:24-17:28
Chapter 4: Professionalization 17:28-23:19

Bibliography:
Archer, Christon I./Ferris, John R./Herwig, Holger H./Travers, Timothy H. E., World History of Warfare, Lincoln 2002.
Feng, Li, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China, Cambridge 2008.
Pelzer, Thorben, Historiography of China, in: id./Schatz, Merle, Introduction to Chinese Studies, Oldenbourg 2019, pp. 31-47.
Roy, Kauschik, A GLOBAL HISTORY OF PRE-MODERN WARFARE. Before the Rise of the West, 10,000 BCE-1500 CE, London/New York 2022.
Sanft, Charles G., Violence in Early Chinese History, in Garrett G. Fagan, et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Violence, Volume 1: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds, Cambridge 2020, pp. 418-437.
Major, John S./Cook, Constance A., Ancient China. A history, New York/London 2017.
Wang, Ching Hsien, Towards Defining a Chinese Heroism, in Journal of the American Oriental Society 95 (1975), pp. 25-35.

Primary sources:
The Book of Songs. The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry, trans. A. Waley, ed. and expanded by Joseph R. Allen, New York 1996.
The Art of War, trans. H. Giles, ed. Cheng You and Zhang Hesheng, Changsha 1993.
The Chinese Classics, vol. III, The Shoo King or the Book of Historical Documents, trans. J. Legge, Taipei 1991.

[Nextthing]

I am Dutch, 32 years old. I remember browsing the internet as teenager, including YouTube and I was dying for this kind of content. Chinese history, culture and art was (and even still) feels like a fascinating mystery and a unique perspective on the world apart from the western one. I cherish this.

[joshieisparang]

Finally, a comprehensive pre-Chinese Empire video! This topic is scarce on YouTube tbh. Maybe its because of the language barrier plus scarce resources. Keep it up man!

[jiafuliu]

Regarding the Great Wall, the vast majority of people have misunderstood its purpose. The Great Wall is not simply a standalone wall, but rather an entire defensive system. Similar to the Roman Limes along the Rhine and Danube, besides the Great Wall itself, it also encompasses numerous fortresses and strongholds. During defensive operations, the Great Wall provides early warning and constrains enemy movements, allowing the rear fortresses to swiftly launch counterattacks. Despite the high cost of the entire system, it significantly reduces the need for imperial troops along the borders, thereby greatly diminishing the empire's overall defense expenditure. Furthermore, one crucial reason for extending the Great Wall to mountain peaks is its function in economic blockade. Through the Great Wall, the empire controls all potential trade networks (nomadic tribes) and can implement economic blockades as needed, achieving the effect of 'winning without fighting.' The efficacy of the Great Wall is evident; as long as the empire maintains internal stability, hardly any nomadic tribe has managed large-scale breaches of the wall. Only when the empire falls into turmoil can nomadic tribes break through the defenses and penetrate the empire's interior.

[barbiquearea]

China is one of the most ancient civilizations on Earth. It has a very rich and fascinating history and culture.

[BeingFireRetardant]

2, 656 were executed. "These numbers are probably not meant to be taken literally."

Awfully specific math, if being casually vague was their intent, lol...

[bobbiusshadow]

The Mandate of Heaven is just a nice excuse to overthrow the current ruler.

[lupus_in_fabula]

I adore all of the videos this channel puts out, but I must say what really has this channel stand out to me aside from its adept comprehension of history is its fantastic and well drawn artwork. I feel the videos would not be the same without the detailed and enriching artwork. This video specifically because of the depiction of ancient Chinese clothing and armor, showing styles and designs I have never seen or imagined, as my own focus is mainly European. Truly enlightening.

[mikailkalashnikov]

That’s why I love this channel always talking about topics that are important but overlooked a lot

[ReviveHF]

Great depiction of the 17th century Chinese common infantry type at 0:09, because China at the time were like the Europeans undergoing transitioning from older Tercio type tactics to newer linear tactics. The proliferation of guns also rendered most low ranking Chinese troops went into battlefield without armour since firearms finally became more cost effective at this point. The Chinese matchlock musket seen in the video, were longer and has bigger buttstock similar to the European counterparts due to the changing trends of the battlefield, and it finally replaced handcannons and earlier Portuguese Arquebuses.
The funny thing is throughout 80 years of Chinese film making developments, most Chinese film producers depicted the Ming era and Manchu Soldiers fought like an Ancient armies with Medieval era weaponry due to lack of historical research and also due to huge influence of Wuxia genre(One man with Jedi capabilities mowing down dozens of enemies).

[oejlbru]

What we know so far about China’s first emperor tomb is only the tip of the iceberg. When China is finally ready to open up the tomb, the world will be in a state of shock.

[mechannel]

Liangzhu was definitely china's earliest civilization. It has hallmarks of a civilization including monumental architecture. For example, It produced the world's earliest large scale hydraulic works 5100 years ago

[troykuersten]

This was a very good overview of Chinese military history, my one quibble is a matter of pronunciation. You pronounced "Zhou" as "Shu" consistently in the piece. In Chinese, the "ou" has a sound similar to the English "oh" and the "zh" has a sound much like the English "j" but a little softer, perhaps between the English "j" and the English "sh". So "Zhou" would be pronounced similar to the English name "Joe".

[zxcvbn-ie]

The images of ancient Chinese soldiers you draw are very accurate, as good as or even better than our history textbooks.

[DucaTech]

There's more to this than a 20min video can ever cover. Sanxingdui was not even mentioned in this video.

[mindhistorychannel]

I'm completely engrossed in this ancient history documentary—so much to learn and discover!

[grandadmiralzaarin]

Thank you for covering China. It is a delight to escape European centric history for the fascinating history of the Far East

[lerneanlion]

This is not what I expected from this channel but I'm glad it happened! So will you continued into the imperial periods in the next videos? If so, I will be looking forward for the ones about the Great Tang and the Great Song.

[feje_]

Disregard all the pronunciation bs and people hating on u for literally only mentioning that some people believe xia is myth. Its a great vid!

[fatherofhistory]

Wow, this video packed 10, 000 years of history into 23 minutes! 🤯 I learned so much about the early foundations of China's rise to power. Particularly interesting was the development of bronze casting.

[perhapsme]

For many Chinese, the Xia dynasty did actually exist.

Many surnames including common ones first derived from the time of Xia according to their family history. Archaeology of physical evidences might not agree. But other sources might say that Xia indeed did exist..

Secondly, Qin Shi Huang Di wasn't the first emperor of China.

It is to do with the features of Chinese characters and their sounds.

There are 2 characters that both mean emperor's but with some difference.

Huang is the sound of one of the 2. It literally is written as the character of 'white' over the character for 'king'. White king means pure king of absolutely untainted ethical standards and morality. Well, no humans could be that saintly. So this character literally means an emperor of divinity or god emperor or a mythical god. It is NOT a human emperor.

The second character that also mean an emperor has the sound of DI. It means a human person emperor. An actual person that is the emperor.

Before the 'first' emperor there were other human emperors. Yellow emperor eg, is seen as THE ancestor of all Chinese.

Archaeology might see him as non-existent ever, but in the mind of all Chinese says otherwise.

The great grandfather of the 'first' emperor once claimed himself the human emperor of the west (the western Di).

The founding king of the Xia dynasty is seen as the Woo Di or Human emperor Woo.

Technically, hence the 'first' emperor wasn't China's first emperor or human emperor.

What the confusion is due to the combination of the 2 characters for 2 types of emperor used by him..

He called himself 'Divine' (Huang) 'Human Emperor' (Di) or Huang Di.

Qin Shi means Qin dynasty's First. Qin Shu Huang Di means Qin dynasty's First divine human emperor.

In China, no one dares to call themselves divine. This guy was a Maga maniac. And guess what he attracted the wrath of the real divine. That is why the moment he died, rebellions happened and toppled his dynasty that lasted not even 15 years.

That is why, after his dynasty, not one, repeat NOT one, future emperor ever dared to use the same 'Divine' 'Human Emperor' title at all. Not one..

All of them called themselves in formal way xyz Human emperor....

But the term 'Divine' 'Human Emperor' or 'Huang Di' stuck in informal uses since.

This explains the confusion.

One more point about the 'First' emperor.

He wasn't actually the one that conquered all China for the first time. First of Xia and Shang king/emperor did it. So did the Zhou's Wu King too.

Hence another confusion. The 'First' emperor only reunited China and brought in a new style of governing the empire.

Also, it was his ancestors over 150 years that laid the foundation for his success in such a short period. The battles he fought in forming his dynasty were 23:19 smell scale vs some of the battles his ancestors did in those 150 years. Frankly, without his ancestors, he wouldn't have done it.

The Zhou dynasty went through fragmentation very quickly due to the feudal system it used. Literally each of domains were self governing with own tax system and even military. Automatically it means that Zhou was destined to be suffering from chaos forever till it was toppled and another system brought in.

That constant warfare especially from 700'sBCE means that many tried to find an intellectual ways of brining peace into the then China.

Hence you had the flowering of different schools of thoughts of how to achieve such. The 100 schools if thoughts is the expression.

One of these, the Legalism was adopted by the home state of Qin Shi Huang Di about 150 years before he took all China.

Legalism means that rules of laws applicable to all from king to peasant. It also meant rewards are given due to merits instead of by birth right.

It leads to strict applications of laws and regulations as well as punishments for any breach. It also means that promotions and awards in the government is due to capabilities instead of the ranks in the society.

This greatly increased outputs from agriculture and strengthening of the military.

Other ancestors ripped the benefits of these reforms in fighting large wars vs their enemies. This series of wars greatly weakened Qin's enemies.

Qin Shi Huang Di hence didn't and shouldn't get the sole credit for the outcome of brining the empire back together AGAIN.

This makes sense as you look at the European experiences. Not one state has ever taken all Europe. Not even the Romans. It'd take incredible reforms and determinations and luck of winning wars for a long hundreds of years to happen. But it has never and likely will never given the size of population these days.

The period before the 'first' emperor serves the back story of many rebellions in China since. That period lasted over 500 years and such fragmented China happened a few times after his time.

The next dynasty was founded by a commoner with no loyal blood connection at all. Not even a proper education, this founding emperor of Han Dynasty also changed and left one of the main ethos in Chinese mind.

That is, anyone could become the emperor of China. No blue blood and no divinity involvement. This means a lot of Chinese at any time believes that they could too found a new dynasty.

That is also why China has more years of fragmentation of civil wars these last 2, 200 years than peaceful unified periods.

That is, it is the NORM for China to be fighting internally. It's THE Chinese FATE.