2026 Theses Doctoral

Rethinking Unification: Ideology, Standardization, and Local Accommodation in the Qin Empire (221–207 BCE)

Kim, Yong-Ha

Historiography has often portrayed Qin’s empire-building as a story of “unification,” an ideal of various Warring States thinkers, promoted by Qin’s self-representation, and recast by Han historical writing. However, it is a problematic concept that collapses the empire’s political, economic, and cultural differences into an appearance of coherence.

Drawing on textual and material evidence of imperial governance, I argue that unification under the Qin was regionally uneven, locally contested, and internally contradictory, thereby undermining the very concept of unification. I develop this argument across six chapters.

Chapters 1 and 2 examine the mutual distrust between the Qin state and conquered populations in the pre-imperial and imperial periods, when ideology advanced universal inclusion and acceptance. Chapter 3 probes Qin’s strategic variance in its treatment of regional elites, underscoring the selective application of unification policies. Chapter 4 demonstrates diversity within unity by tracing the continuity of local artisan traditions observed in standardized weights and measures. Chapter 5 reveals that unification was self-contradictory: it promised peace through disarmament, but dominance was maintained by military force and further expansion, which provided weapons to a disintegrating rebellion. Chapter 6 discusses cultural revival, focusing on efforts to recover the Warring States’ scripts after the Qin standardization.

The dissertation challenges the self-fulfilling prophecy of unification, long reinforced by the concept of dynastic cycles and modern nationalism. It recontextualizes the Qin as an empire, a process of intensifying asymmetrical interaction between dominant and subjugated societies around the issue of diversity. The dissertation highlights the nature of empires as maintaining unequal relationships, negotiating regional diversity, and, at times, contradicting unity in governing the conquered. It also attributes agency to local actors in responding to conquest.