The Empire-Building in the Pre-Qin Era

Abstract

Marked by its many different dynasties, Chinese history is characterised by recurring rise and downfall of imperial regimes, but it is equally noticeable that the persistence of an imperial structure penetrated the history. Not much later than the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations, sedentary agriculture and then cities started to form in valleys of the Yellow Riverthe Yellow River and the Yangtze Riverthe Yangtze River. Since the Xia dynasty, the so-called first dynasty which was legendarily recorded in historical texts, has not been confirmed by archaeological evidence, and the Shang (c. 1600–c. 1046 BCE) dynasty was in effect a tribal state, a strictly defined Chinese civilisation that has existed for around three thousand years, from the Western Zhou dynasty in around 1000 BCE to the downfall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Although there were several periods which were tagged with political fragmentation and military turmoil, unification after such periods of fragmentation were predominant throughout the history of the empire. During this three-thousand-year period, the deep-layered structure of governancegovernance always succeeded in controlling the territory which it possessed and in self-sustaining itself as symbolised by recurring dynastic cyclesdynastic cycles.