Birth of an Empire (New Perspectives on Chinese Culture and Society): Volume 5 - Softcover

"The editors deserve enormous credit for presenting an interdisciplinary and multi-faceted look at the Quin period . . . [they refrain] from imposing intellectual uniformity . . . A commitment to moving the study of early China out of the margins into the mainstream of academic discourse."--Miranda Brown"Journal of Chinese Studies" (01/01/2015)

In 221 BCE the state of Qin vanquished its rivals and established the first empire on Chinese soil, starting a millennium-long imperial age in Chinese history. Hailed by some and maligned by many, Qin has long been an enigma. In this pathbreaking study, the authors integrate textual sources with newly available archeological and paleographic materials, providing a boldly novel picture of Qin's cultural and political trajectory, its evolving institutions and its religion, its place in China's history, and the reasons for its success and for its ultimate collapse.