"The King of Qin swept Liuhe, and the tiger looked at He Xiongya!" Swinging his sword to break the clouds, the princes came to the west. ”
This is Li Bai's poem praising Qin Shi Huang's merits in unifying China, and Qin Shi Huang as a person has great constructive significance in the development process of our Chinese history. The Zhou Dynasty was very unstable from the early days of its establishment, and the rebellion of the princes and the invasion of foreign enemies can be said to have continued for many years. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, Zhou was still a unified world, and when the Eastern Zhou Dynasty began to act independently, it was conquered for more than 400 years, resulting in the division of several completely different cultural systems in China at the end of the Warring States period.
It is conceivable that if Qin Shi Huang had not unified China and burned those books representing the consciousness of the Chu State, the State of Qi, the State of Yan, the State of Zhao, etc., then it is likely that China is not a country now, but a group of countries, for example, the two lakes and two guangzhous are the State of Chu, Shaanxi and Gansu are the State of Qin, and so on. Because people have formed an independent national consciousness.
So when Qin Shi Huang unified China, what was the rest of the world doing? We can analyze them one by one:
1 Europe
At this time, Europe was still in the stage of city-state civilization, and there were a large number of city-states around the Mediterranean, such as Greece, Sparta, etc., because they were relatively small city-states, so they implemented a system of democratic elections internally and created a Western culture with European characteristics.
In the 4th century BC, it is recorded that a Macedonian Empire launched a large-scale conquest war and established a relatively large state spanning three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, but due to the lack of unified culture and ideas, coupled with the resistance of the people everywhere, after Alexander's death at the age of 33, the short-lived Macedonian Empire soon collapsed.
At this time, traditional European countries such as France and Germany had not yet arisen, and their emergence did not begin to appear until after the division of the Roman Empire.
2 Africa
Now in our view, Africa is a very backward place, so what was African countries like in ancient times? In fact, Africa has always been very backward, except for some regions such as North Africa, which have created a relatively splendid civilization, most parts of Africa have always been in a very barbaric state, with neither the development of handicrafts nor the development of agriculture, and people rely on hunting to survive.
Ancient Egypt once created a splendid culture, but unfortunately it was not very long, and by the time Qin Shi Huang unified China, ancient Egypt had been destroyed by the Persian Empire, and there was no Egypt in the world since then.
3 Iran
In 343 BC, ancient Iran, that is, the Persian Empire, conquered Egypt, but Persia itself was not long,330 BC, Alexander of the Macedonian Empire defeated the Persian Empire, and the Persian Empire collapsed. So at this time, the Persian region was also in a chaotic warlord melee.
4 Japan
Japan has been actively learning Chinese culture for a long time, but when Qin Shi Huang unified China, Japan still had little contact with China, and Japan was extremely backward at this time, still in a Yayoi age using stone tools. Using stone tools, it was difficult for them to build large nautical ships, so they could not cross the ocean to China to study.
At this time, Japan did not know how to use bronze or iron, and wore an animal skin coat all day with a stone stick to "conquest", which can be said to make people laugh uncontrollably!
However, after Qin Shi Huang unified China, because Xu Fu deceived Qin Shi Huang that he had the elixir of immortality, in the case of not being able to find the elixir of immortality, Xu Fu finally deceived Qin Shi Huang into some troops and 3,000 boys, girls and boys to come to Japan, bringing advanced Chinese culture to Japan and playing a crucial role in the development of Japanese civilization.
In general, when Qin Shi Huang unified China, most of the rest of the world was in a state of chaos and division, which made China the first to form a stable culture of great unification, which provided innate conditions for China to be able to maintain basic unity in later history, so that China did not become a group of countries like Europe.