The Great Wall of China 221 BC–AD 1644
(Fortress 57)

The Great Wall and its builders

 The first Chinese ruler to have exercised the policy option of building walls against the nomads is commonly believed to have been the first emperor of a unified China: Qin Shihuangdi, the tyrant who reigned from 246 to 210 BC and who is guarded in death by the famous army of terracotta warriors. Ying Zheng, as the Qin Emperor was known before his successful unification in 221 BC, was the ruler of the kingdom of Qin, one of a number of neighbouring states whose wars with one another gave their name to the ‘Warring States Period' in Chinese history. Qin Shihuangdi certainly commanded the vast resources of wealth and manpower that would be needed for such an enterprise, but did he really build the first Great Wall?

The evidence for both claims: that the wall he built was the first of its kind in Chinese history and that it was in any sense ‘greater' than any walls that had preceded it is remarkably poor. One characteristic of the military interaction between the warring states that the Qin conquered had been the erection of border walls between them, both as physical barriers to invasion and also as defining boundary markers. At least nine such walls are known. They were built between c .369 and 279 BC, and were of considerable length and manned by border guards. In addition to these walls the kingdoms of Qin, Zhao and Yan also built walls to provide protection against the nomads of the neighbouring steppes. Nor were these walls the first long barriers of any kind in Chinese history. References to similar enterprises go back as far as 656 BC.

It is now generally agreed that Qin Shihuangdi did not construct something that was completely original on the Chinese scene. Whatever it was that he built after his unification of China, it was firmly in the tradition that he himself had followed during the Warring States Period. The common acceptance is that he took the existing structures built by his rivals and augmented them to produce one great unified barrier in much the same way that he had produced one great unified empire. The process began after the Qin Emperor had successfully expelled the Xiongnu from the bend of the Yellow River in 215 BC. The key historical reference is found in Shi Ji (‘the records of the grand historian'), the first systematic Chinese historical text:

After Qin had unified the world, Meng Tian was sent to command a host of 300,000 … and built a great wall, constructing its defiles and passes according to the configurations of the terrain. It started at Lintao, crossed the Yellow River, wound northwards touching Mount Yang and extended to Liaodong, reaching a distance of more than 10,000 li.

In this brief passage we find the two key phrases that were to be re-used throughout history to describe Qin Shihuangdi's enterprise, as well as all the other walls that followed it. The first is chang cheng (long wall or great wall) and the other is wan li (10,000 li , one li being half a kilometre). Put the two phrases together, and Qin Shihuangdi is credited with building the first wan li chang cheng, an expression often used in modern Chinese literature for what is now commonly understood as the Great Wall of China. In this view, the Qin Emperor's wall provided both the prototype, the route and the actual foundations for what we see today, which is the result of later ‘repairs' or the ‘rebuilding' of Qin Shihuangdi's original.

Before considering the likely accuracy of this claim, we must put out of our minds any visual image of the mighty stone edifice near Beijing. That dates from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and any defences built by Meng Tian would have been much simpler constructions of beaten earth reinforced with wood. Another passage in the Shi Ji tells us how Meng Tian ‘utilized the natural mountain barriers to establish the border defences, scooping out the valleys and constructing ramparts and building installations at other points where they were needed'. This implies a very sensible form of civil engineering. Meng's wall (or walls) augmented not only any surviving barriers from the Warring States Period, but also supplemented what nature herself had provided. This attitude had a long philosophical tradition behind it, because to the ancient Chinese rulers frontiers were the creation of Heaven, not of man, and the exercise of virtue by a wise ruler would bring uncultured peoples into submission. It was only when rude nomads refused to recognize such a profound concept that it was felt necessary to add to Heaven's gift.

On this basis one cannot envisage Meng Tian sending his ‘great wall' sweeping unnecessarily along mountain ridges as the Ming were to do. It is therefore not unreasonable to conclude that, given the resources available to Qin Shihuangdi and his well-known ruthlessness in applying them, a wan li chang cheng could indeed have been built, particularly if one regards ‘ wan li ' as indicating ‘very long' rather than a precise measure of distance. In fact over 1,000 years later in 1077 a certain Su Song was to write a poem at the strategic Gubeikou Pass noting that he was once again ‘crossing the 10,000 li wall of the Qin emperor'. There may have been nothing left of the wall itself, but as a folk memory it still had the power to stir a poet's imagination as he passed through an area that had been a vital defensive concern for many centuries, and in which there had once been something very special, whatever it actually was.

In spite of all his enterprise and assets, the reign of Qin Shihuangdi was a short one, but his successors in the much longer-lived Han dynasty were to follow his example by placing some of their faith, at least, in the defences provided by long walls. Emperor Wudi's expedition against the Xiongnu in 119 BC represented a different approach, and when peace with the Xiongnu was proposed various arguments were put forward in favour of negotiations. It was pointed out that the other alternative to war – the erection of border defences – was not a good option because walls decayed without constant maintenance and therefore represented a long-term commitment. Yet even with this apparently half-hearted dedication to a chang cheng the Han emperors were to produce another version of the Great Wall. They did it by utilizing what remained of the Qin and Warring States' walls and adding extensions of their own. To some extent this was a natural process that arose out of their westward expansion along what was to become known as the Silk Road, but the new border defences relied on much more than just walls. A minister under the Wendi Emperor, who lived between 202 and 157 BC, recommended that the frontier area should be colonized with families resettled there to work the land, and as many as 50,000 or 60,000 men may have been involved in these tuntian (agricultural colonies). ‘High walls and deep ditches' were to be built round them to hinder the Xiongnu's advances. We may understand most of these ‘high walls' as small-scale defences for the settlers, but there is archaeological evidence that a long wall was built in addition, and that its watchtowers provided a link with the fortified villages.

The Han Great Wall undoubtedly contributed to the stability that characterized the mandate of Heaven that that dynasty enjoyed for four centuries. The Han were followed by 200 years of upheaval during the Three Kingdoms Period, whose civil wars, romanticized in Chinese historical mythology, found no place for long wall building. Towards the end of the 6th century AD the Northern Wei dynasty, who had originated in Mongolia, considered building a great wall to supplement the fortresses they had built against any other nomads who might be tempted to copy their example of limited conquest. But the plan was never put into operation, and out of the rival kingdoms of the time, it was only the Northern Qi dynasty (AD 550–77) who built walls.

With the reunification of China under the Sui dynasty (AD 581–618) the idea of a Great Wall was revived, but the three centuries of the rule of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) saw the borders of China extended beyond the lines in the sand that marked all previous ‘great walls'. A combination of wise strategic alliances, good government and a strong military gave the Tang all the security they needed. A telling comment by Emperor Taizong that one of his generals was ‘a better Great Wall than the ramparts built by the Sui emperor Yangdi' sums up neatly the attitude of the Tang to themselves and to their predecessors' military efforts.