Friday Reflection: Before the Empire
Andrew Seth Meyer on the Warring States and the Invention of Imperial China
Why This Conversation Matters
There are eras that feel foundational because they are familiar. Classical Athens. Republican Rome. The age of Alexander. We know their names; we can (maybe, just barely) summon their chronology. But between the death of Confucius in 479 BC and the rise of the First Emperor of China in 221 BC, another revolution unfolded—one that shaped nearly a quarter of humanity for over two millennia. And that is quite possibly an underestimate of how many were influenced by it.
Yet this period remains almost invisible in the English-speaking world.
If we want to understand why East Asia developed the political, educational, and cultural forms it did—and why those forms still matter—we must return to this hinge moment in human history.
A few questions to consider as you read or listen:
Is centralization the inevitable answer to prolonged instability, or merely one possible solution?
When does intellectual innovation become politically transformative?
Throughlines
The conversation begins with scale. Covering the period from Confucius’s death to the First Emperor’s unification is the equivalent, Zambone notes, of writing a single history stretching from Marathon to the Second Punic War. The Warring States period occupies the final centuries of the Zhou dynasty, a time when regional powers increasingly acted independently of a king who retained ritual prestige but little material authority.
China did not lack a past before 481 BC; it possessed a written tradition stretching back to the Shang oracle bones. But during the Warring States era, political fragmentation and consolidation occurred simultaneously. More than a hundred early polities were gradually absorbed until seven powerful states dominated the landscape. Disunity and centralization advanced together.
Socially, the period was dominated by a robust hereditary aristocracy. Power correlated with lineage; elite clans traced descent from gods or divine ancestors. Warrior and priestly functions were intertwined through ancestral cults that mediated access to the divine. Yet this order was under strain. The wealth generated by intensive agriculture and expanding administrative capacity transformed the scale of warfare. Standing armies, crossbows, careful record-keeping, and what Meyer calls “social technologies” required literate administrators and systematic governance.
From here, the discussion pivots to four great questions the period forced into the open. First: Is the state the patrimony of a ruling clan, or a bureaucratic machine designed to achieve material ends? Texts like the Art of War were not neutral manuals but radical challenges to aristocratic honor culture. Victory without battle offended warrior sensibilities—but made perfect sense in a security-oriented state.
Second: Should political order rest on multipolar autonomy or centralized unity? The partition of the powerful state of Jin into three rival powers demonstrated both the dangers of overconsolidation and the possibilities of cooperative balance. Yet in the end, the western state of Qin rejected compromise, conquering and abolishing its rivals outright.
Third: What is the relationship between education and government? Confucius’s imagined humiliation on the road dramatizes how fragile the role of the intellectual once was. By the end of the period, however, masters and their disciples formed a recognized and institutionalized class—consulted, empowered, and eventually indispensable.
Finally: What becomes of hereditary aristocracy? Over three centuries, divine lineage ceased to be the sole determinant of status. The rise of men of talent—culminating in the peasant-born founder of the Han dynasty—signaled a social revolution as profound as the political one.
The Qin unification in 221 BC appears triumphant but paradoxical. The dynasty collapsed after fifteen years. Yet the empire it forged endured. The revolution was incomplete under Qin; under Han, it was made durable.
Questions for Reflection & Discussion
Why does the Warring States period remain comparatively unknown in the English-speaking world, and what does that reveal about our historical priorities?
How did political fragmentation and consolidation occur simultaneously during this period?
In what ways did hereditary aristocracy shape early Warring States society?
Why was the idea of “winning without fighting” so radical in an aristocratic honor culture?
How did administrative and military innovations reinforce one another?
Was Qin’s decision to eliminate all rival states an act of necessity or of ideological conviction?
How did the role of the intellectual change between Confucius’s lifetime and the First Emperor’s reign?
What social and political pressures made merit-based advancement possible?
Why did the Qin dynasty collapse so quickly despite its overwhelming military success?
Which of the four “great questions” discussed in the episode feels most urgent in our own political moment?
For Further Investigation
Andrew Seth Meyer, To Rule All under Heaven: A History of Classical China, from Confucius to the First Emperor (Oxford University Press, 2026)
Liu An, The Dao of the Military: Liu An’s Art of War, translated by Andrew Meyer
Liu An, The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Imperial China, translated by John S. Major, Sarah Queen, Andrew Meyer, Harold D. Roth
Erica Fox Brindley, Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BCE-50 BCE (Cambridge, 2015)
Constance A. Cook, Ancestors, Kings and the Dao (Harvard, 2017)
J.I. Crump, Legends of the Warring States: Persuasions, Romances and Stories from Chan Kuo Ts’e (University of Michigan, 2022)
Paul Goldin, The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them (Princeton, 2020)
Mark Edward Lewis, Violence and the Rise of Centralized States in East Asia (Cambridge, 2022)
Li Feng, Early China: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge, 2013)