Pines Yuri, Shelach Gideon, Von Falkenhausen Lothar, Yates Robin D.S. (Eds.). Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited

University of California Press, 2013. — 332 p.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.Yuri Pines is Michael W. Lipson Professor of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Lothar von Falkenhausen is Professor of Chinese Archaeology and Art History at UCLA. Gideon Shelach is Lous Freiberg Professor of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Robin D.S. Yates is James McGill Professor of East Asian Studies and History and Classical Studies and chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at McGill University.