Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
The Ancient Great Wall in a New Era
About one century after the fall of Alexander's empire which extended from
Macedonia eastward as far as the Indus River, a great empire began to merge in the
central part of China. It was the Empire of Qin.
The founder of this Qin Empire who came to the throne in 221 B.C., claimed to
be the fi rst emperor of China or, in Chinese, Shi Huangdi. It is from the word Qin
that the empire was known to the West as China.
1
However, before the Qin Empire
China had already had a long period of historical development. The real contribu-
tion of Qin Shi Huang is that he was the fi rst ruler in China who created a political
system of centralized government by ending the power of the contending feudal
states. This marks the beginning of the history of imperial dynasties with absolute
power in the hands of a monarch, which lasted for more than 2,000 years until
1911 A.D.
Besides his political achievement, Qin Shi Huang left two material legacies for
the present day. One is his tomb with the famous clay army discovered recently. The
other is the Great Wall.
Walls were built in China as military fortifi cations long before Qin Shi Huang's
time, but the building of the Great Wall was attributed to Qin Shi Huang. He was the
fi rst emperor who mobilized thousands of peasants to connect the walls constructed
by three former feudal states along their northern boundaries. In addition, he built
new sections both at the east and the west ends. Eventually a great long wall of
thousands of miles came into existence; hence the name
Wanli Changcheng
which
means a long wall of 10,000
li
, or simply the Great Wall. Since then the Great Wall
