The Qin Court Burned Books to Control How People Remembered History

In 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huang unified the states of the Warring States period. After the wars, he did more than collect armies and taxes. The court imposed common writing, currency, measurements, and roads across the new empire. When a government decides that people must write in the same way, it can also decide which book is allowed to explain the past.

Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian says that Chancellor Li Si proposed burning histories of the former states and private books used to criticise the present. Books on medicine, agriculture, divination, and copies kept in the imperial archive were exempt. The order was not an attempt to destroy every kind of knowledge. It targeted political memory: who had ruled, why the old states had been conquered, and whether another dynasty could replace Qin.