6. Ripples in the Pond (ca. 200 – 137 BS)
(Note: the term “China” will be used here to indicate what Chinese people call “Yigong” [Erjiang] [1], literally “two rivers”, meaning the plains of the Yellow and the Blue River, as well as the hilly area in the south.) [2]
While Qart-Hadasht grew in power in the far west of Asia and Persia in the middle, in the far east a great power had fallen apart. The great Zhou dynasty in the north of what we know has China had shattered into a multitude of polities in battle with each other. Most of them were concentrated in the wide plain between the Yellow and the Blue River [Yangtze], which flowed parallel from west to east. By 200 BS [330 BC], the fiefdoms had consolidated into seven kingdoms tied together by ephemeral alliances: Qin in the west, Zhao and Yan in the north, Chu in the south, Qi in the east, Wei and Han at the center of all.
The early period of fragmentation had been the cradle of Chinese culture. While it produced fine artwork out of jade and bronze, its greatest accomplishments were the major schools of Chinese philosophy. Legalism claimed that man is innately prone to vice, and must be held in check by a ruthless application of the law. Daoism placed a greater value over the individual, teaching to adapt oneself to the natural order of the world, more than to society. Confucianism held that a state can work only if everyone acts according to their role in social relationship through rituals and hierarchies, the key of which was the relationship between father and son. Mohism, on the contrary, taught to treat everyone with equal compassion, and to evaluate customs by their usefulness.
Forged in the fire of centuries of war, the kingdoms strove to apply their philosophies in the most effective way. Pragmatism had long replaced honor in warfare. The first such case were the Legalist reforms that Shang Yang applied to the kingdom of Qin in 223 BS [356 BC]. He abolished hereditary nobility, exerted a totalitarian control of the assets of the state, and reorganized the army to promote officers by merit. These reforms endowed Qin with an extremely powerful military, which allowed it to break Wei's hegemony and annex outer regions like Shu.
The other states gathered in an alliance against Qin, and unsuccessfully attacked it in 185 BS [318 BC]. Chu, meanwhile, expanded in the south, conquering the vast Yue lands and becoming by far the largest of the Warring Kingdoms. During negotiations among the largest kingdoms, king Huai of Chu was abducted to Xianyang, the Qin capital. [3] As Qin prepared to take on the alliance, the unexpected occurred.
In the summer of 164 BS [297 BC], a horde of bow-wielding horsemen spewed forth from a mountain pass in the far west. Over the last century, the expansion eastward of the Sarmatian Empire had displaced many nomad tribes of central Asia, and each of them pushed others away. As from a stone cast in a pond, the ripples spread outward until they reached the borders of China, channeled through the Gansu Corridor, and Qin was the first nation on their path.
Historical sources about the invaders – tentatively identified with the Yuezhi – are scant, but they certainly were desperate. Xianyang, on which all the western routes converged, was pillaged while most of the Qin army was occupied defending the Hangu pass from the Wei army. As they advanced east, they found the bulk of the Qin army, and were forced to turn back. As often in history, this unpredictable event turned the tides of the war. [4]
The king Zhaoxiang hurried back to Xianyang to find not only that the population had fled to the countryside and that his palace had been looted, but also that his general Bai Qi had taken over. The traditional story has Zhaoxiang rushing into the palace just to be killed by a guard that had mistaken him for a straggling looter. The king's five-year-old son, Xiaowen, was brought out of the capital by his mother, who would rule as queen dowager. King Huai managed to bribe soldiers into escorting him back to the Chu border.
Bai Qi had the fame of an excellent general, if a vicious one. However, the extreme centralization of the Legalist state meant that the devastation of the court, as well as the uncertainty of the officials as to whether obey general Bai or the queen dowager, prevented him from organizing an effective defense. Many officials were executed. While the Wei army broke through the Hangu pass, Chu soldiers appeared in the south to recover Huai.
Once again in his capital at Ying, Huai felt deeply frustrated by the inability of his own kingdom to protect him from abduction. Comparing Chu's organization with Qin's, he decided that the fault lay in the waste and corruption of its government. He entrusted his minister Gan Mei with a reform as thorough as that of Shang Yang, although based on Mohist doctrine.
The assets of the aristocracy were requisitioned on a massive scale to fund the reconstruction of the army – as well as collecting state-owned land as a reward for soldiers that performed well, which was recognized as a major factor in the effectiveness of the Qin army. Administrative power went to a system of appointed officials whose status depended from their performance. The full extent of Gan Mei's reforms took over eight years, and their details will be described later. By 153 BS [286 BC], the Chu army was more than able to stand up to Qin, which was now unambiguously ruled by Bai Qi, but had been greatly weakened by the loss of Hangu. Wei accepted a new alliance with Chu; it was sealed by marrying a Wei princess to Huai's son Qingxiang.
The Chu army marched again northwest into Qin, and after two years of bloody warfare Xianyang fell again. Bai Qi was executed, and Xiaowen was allowed to retake the throne on condition he swore loyalty to Huai and disbanded most of the army. The Qin state became functionally Chu territory, and Xiaowen's son wouldn't be allowed to inherit the throne.
King Huai died in 146 BS [279 BC], and the continuation of the war fell to Qingxiang, who had administered the kingdom during his father's imprisonment. With Qin gone and Wei secured, he turned to conquer the southern lands of Minyue and Nanyue, and spent most of his reign trying to maintain order. Meanwhile, Wei was attacked by Han from the south and Zhao from the north; Qinxiang allowed the fight to weaken Wei, and then intervened crushing and annexing Han. Wei, too, accepted annexation in exchange for protection from Zhao, which was dangerously close to its capital. However, even Zhao wouldn't last long, falling to Yan a few decades later.
By 137 BS [270 BC] the only surviving kingdoms were Chu, Qi and Yan. With its capital on the Yangtze and trouble controlling the far south, Qingxiang decided to cease fighting, and instead strengthened the borders. In that year, he performed in Ying the yearly sacrifice to Shangdi, which was once prerogative of the Zhou. In doing so, he marked himself the only and rightful successor of the Zhou royal dynasty. The age of the Warring States had officially come to an end. The Chu Empire had begun.
[1] ITTL the standard version of Chinese is much more similar to modern Cantonese, because of the more southern orientation of China. For this reason, I use Cantonese names (in Yale romanization) for concepts like titles or regions, indicating the Mandarin (Pinyin) equivalent between square brackets. However, for the sake of clarity, I keep using Mandarin/Pinyin for historical kingdoms and people. At this time they would have all spoken Old Chinese anyway.
[2] IOTL the term “Zhongguo” (“middle kingdom”) was used unambiguously to indicate all China only under the Qing dynasty, so I'm making up a purely geographical term to replace it.
[3] Everything in this chapter until now, at the best of my understanding, occurs as OTL.
[4] IOTL Zhaoxiang, great-grandparent of Qin Shi Huangdi, conquered with Bai Qi the Chu capital Ying in 278 BC (that's why it's in Qin territory in the map above), and went on to defeat Zhao and execute the last Zhou emperor. Eventually Bai Qi would fall into disagreement with Zhaoxiang, who forced him to commit suicide.
In the next installment: we see what the new China looks like.