As is well-known, the Qin 秦 dynasty lasted for only 15 years (221–206 BCE), making it one of the shortest in the history of imperial China. Traditional historiography has attributed its fall mainly to the moral failings of the Qin rulers and to Qin’s overly draconian laws. But in recent decades, newly discovered manuscripts on bamboo and wooden strips have made possible a thorough reconsideration of the administrative and legal system of Qin, as well as of actual Qin administrative and legal practice, unencumbered by Confucian prejudice and based on far more detailed information than was ever available before. The largest body of new source material—more than 37,000 strips, some 17,000 thereof inscribed—was unearthed in 2002 from some disused wells at Liye, Longshan (Hunan) 湖南龍山里耶; dating to between 222 and 209 BCE, it represents part of the administrative archive of Qianling 遷陵, a small and remote county in the southern border region that the Qin kingdom had conquered in 278 BCE. Even though they have not so far been completely published, the Liye strips as well as other, smaller troves of Qin manuscripts (some of them scientifically excavated, others looted and subsequently acquired by academic institutions in China) have already spawned an enormous scholarly literature. In the book under review here, Chun Fung Tong 唐俊峰 reexamines the demise of Qin in light of these previously unknown first-hand sources.

The book starts out with a historical introduction that outlines the history of imperial Qin and reflects on the topic of collapse. There follows a chapter ambitiously entitled “Toward a Theory of the Qin Collapse.” Once one gets past the redolently “dissertationese” style of presentation, one is quite impressed with how thoughtfully and effectively the author links grand social-science ideas concerning “state power” to the specifics of Qin history. Each of the following three chapters focuses on one aspect of Qin state power that, in light of the newly available sources, was insufficiently developed for the Qin empire to be able to endure.

In the first place, the newly available manuscript sources show that, as Qin expanded its territory, it failed to coopt the entrenched local elites. Instead, recruitment for positions in local administration tended to be based on loyalty to the dynasty. In the process, the inhabitants of newly conquered territories were systematically discriminated against, while people from the former core region of Qin enjoyed privileges. Such practices—exacerbated by the harsh enforcement of Qin’s famously strict legal code—caused social tensions and failed to legitimize the Qin regime in the eyes of many of its subjects. In a less specific way than in the excavated manuscripts, this point is also confirmed by the transmitted histories, which highlight how, by contrast, the subsequent Han dynasty (202 BCE–CE 220) won the heart of the people by mitigating some of the Qin policies.

Second, the sources reveal that the Qin administration suffered from a serious and persistent shortage of personnel that hampered the extension of “state power” into newly conquered territories. This included full-time functionaries as well as their local assistants, often forcing the former to delegate important tasks to the latter in defiance of the law. For its many ambitious public projects, the Qin relied on huge numbers of convict laborers—people who had fallen afoul of its draconian laws and been sentenced to various terms of forced labor. Newly discovered manuscripts provide a great deal of previously-unknown detail as to the functioning of the Qin convict-labor system, which continued with little change under the Han dynasty. For Imperial Qin, the Liye manuscripts show a crippling shortage of convicts, which rendered the local administration unable to perform some of its basic tasks. The problem persisted even after the government tightened the application of statutes with the evident intention of increasing the pool of convicts. In addition, the sources show that military conscripts, as well, were in short supply—insufficient to keep pace with the increasing need to secure Qin’s control over newly conquered territories. This clearly put the Qin state in considerable danger.

Third, the sources reveal considerable—sometimes shocking—inefficiencies in the functioning of the Qin local administration. Tong devotes considerable effort to calculating, from the day dates given in some of the newly excavated documents, the time it took for official correspondence to be delivered both within Qianling County and from Qianling to nearby localities; and he finds that the actual times fell far short of what the statutes stipulated in theory. This hints at serious insufficiencies in the transport infrastructure, which the authorities were unable to remedy due to the already-noted lack of sufficient personnel. Clearly, the Qin administration—especially in out-of-the-way places like Qianling—functioned far less smoothly than it was designed to do. This problem became particularly serious in times of war.

In all three cases, one is left wondering about the differences between Qin and Han. It would be interesting to know, for instance, whether Han bamboo-strip manuscripts, of which there are a considerable number, can attest a difference vis-à-vis Qin in the treatment of the common people by the state and in people’s attitudes toward the state. With respect to the labor situation, as well, one would like to know how the Qin situation compares to that under the Han—in particular, whether Han manuscript sources can show improvements with respect to the availability of officials, convicts, and conscripts when and where they were needed, and what this may tell us about changes in administrative practice. Likewise, one would be interested in a Qin vs. Han comparison with respect to the efficiency of administrative communication. Such comparisons may provide further help in understanding the predicament of the Qin that eventually led to the dynasty’s fall. Here may lie a worth-while project for future research.

Tong deserves praise, above all, for his presentation of the new sources and for highlighting their potential. The book is full of new and, to the general reader, unfamiliar information, and it is apt to stimulate a comprehensive reconsideration of basic themes in early Chinese history. In these ways it has considerable value. Yet it is not without some small flaws. Perhaps reflecting the nature of the manuscript texts, but also due to pervasively imperfect editing (for which the blame lies with the publisher), the author’s translations, and the arguments he draws from them, are not always completely clear. Occasionally, his interpretations strike one as overly speculative, or they seem semi-consciously plugged into unreconstructed traditional viewpoints. All in all, however, the author’s presentation makes sense. Even if neither of the three factors isolated for analysis single-handedly caused it, there can be little doubt that, jointly, they contributed to the fall of the Qin dynasty.

Was it a collapse? The author devotes part of his Introduction (7–12) to this question and specifies that the demise of Qin was not the “collapse of a civilization” but the “collapse of a state.” But then he discusses, very convincingly, considerable continuities from the Qin into the succeeding Han dynasty. Throughout the book, he cites Han-period manuscript sources attesting how the administrative and legal institutions of Qin continued to function, apparently quite seamlessly, under the new régime. Archaeology simultaneously attests the pervasive, uninterrupted continuity of imperial Qin and Han visual and material culture. All this suggests that, even though the long-established lineage of Qin rulers fell from power in 206 BCE, the empire they had created was stable enough to be able to function regardless of who was in charge. While the continuities should perhaps not be overstressed, and the disastrous impact of the civil wars that followed upon the First Emperor’s death must be duly acknowledged, the Qin empire did not fall apart; and it arguably did not collapse. Qin remained seminal. Modified as changing circumstances demanded, Qin institutions endured for some 2000 years. Not without reason, the word “China,” used by many outsiders since antiquity to refer to continental East Asia, renders the name of the Qin state.

As the author is well aware, the whole notion of “collapse” has recently been problematized by scholars who, instead, tend to emphasize resilience.Footnote ¹ Rather than zeroing in on Qin, those in search of a collapse in the history of Early Imperial China might find a more plausible case in the fourth century CE, when North China was overrun by invaders from the steppes, followed by immense devastation, political fragmentation, and population loss. But that collapse as well, such as it was, was not a complete one, as traditional dynastic regimes continued in the south and west, and the newcomers eventually created their own versions of the by then well-established, Qin-derived modes of imperial governance. Mutatis mutandis, I am unsure whether any of the later convulsions in Chinese history qualifies as a collapse of a state, not to mention of a civilization.

Turning to earlier epochs, recent archaeological research all over the core area of traditional Chinese civilization—the Yellow River basin, the Middle Yangzi region, and the Shandong peninsula—points to massive depopulation right at the beginning of China’s early dynastic epoch, about 2000–1900 BCE. Systematic area surveys have revealed a sudden 80–90 percent reduction in the number as well as the size of archaeological sites. This suggests a major cataclysm, the reasons of which—an environmental disaster? a pandemic? a military invasion?—still remain in the dark.Footnote ² At present, this may be the closest thing to a collapse—in this case, arguably the “collapse of a civilization”—China ever experienced. Still, the participants in the Erlitou culture (二里頭文化; ca. 1900–1600 BCE) managed to assemble and retain many or most of the ideological, technological, and artistic achievements made all over continental East Asia during the preceding Neolithic epoch, incorporating them in the highly distinctive civilization of the Chinese Bronze Age. So even here, resilience prevailed, and the interpretation of the archaeological-survey record as a collapse must be proposed with some caution.

Viewed in a long-term perspective, thus, the Qin–Han transition would seem to have been more of a temporary crisis than a wholesale collapse. But this should not detract from the considerable merits of the book under review, which makes an important and quite original contribution to our understanding of the Qin regime. The author may be commended for his careful analysis of new source materials, from which he develops a compelling analysis of some of the interrelated causes for the dynasty’s fall. State Power and Governance in Early Imperial China should be read not only by historians of China, but also by scholars interested in a comparative understanding of the internal functioning of early empires.