Download or read book Birth of an Empire written by Yuri Pines and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.