Meng Tian links the northern walls into the Qin Great Wall
- Date
- c. 215 to 214 BCE
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- China (northern frontier)
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
Around 215 BCE the First Emperor dispatched General Meng Tian with a large army northward against the Xiongnu, driving the nomads from the Ordos region.
To consolidate the new frontier, from about 214 BCE Meng Tian directed the linking and extension of the older border ramparts built earlier by the states of Qin, Zhao and Yan into a continuous defensive line, the ancestor of the later Great Wall. Stretching, by tradition, from Lintao in the west toward the sea in the east, the work was carried out by hundreds of thousands of conscripted soldiers and labourers under harsh conditions, and the human cost became a byword for the burdens of Qin rule. Although little of the rammed-earth Qin wall survives, the campaign defined a durable strategic frontier between the agrarian Chinese world and the steppe, and established the wall-building tradition that later dynasties, especially the Ming, would continue and monumentalise.
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Empires active in c. 215 to 214 BCE
- Qin Dynasty221 BCE to 206 BCE
- Maurya Empire322 BCE to 185 BCE
- Roman Republic509 BCE to 27 BCE
- Odrysian Kingdom480 BCE to 46 CE
- Seleucid Empire312 BCE to 63 BCE
- Ptolemaic Kingdom305 BCE to 30 BCE
Related military & conflict events
- Battle of Gaixia and the founding of the Han dynasty202 BCE
- The Kalinga War and Ashoka's turn to Dhammac. 261 BCE
- Battle of Gaugamela destroys the Achaemenid Empire1 October 331 BCE
- Alexander the Great invades the Persian Empire334 BCE
- Battle of Cannae: Hannibal annihilates a Roman army2 August 216 BCE
- Battle of Zama ends the Second Punic War19 October 202 BCE
Essential reading
- Han-Xiongnu Heqin Treaty Inaugurates Tribute-and-Marriage Diplomacy198 BC
- Earliest securely dated Maya/Mesoamerican Long Count inscription36 BCE (Long Count 7.16.3.2.13)
- Wang Mang nationalises land under the Xin dynastyAD 9
- Indianisation of Southeast Asia: Spread of Hindu-Buddhist Culturec. 1st century CE
Further reading
The wider story
The Terracotta Army
Accessible account of the First Emperor and his tomb army.
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