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The Witch Doctor President and Other Horrific Rulers

Khalid Elhassan December 25, 2019 32 min

26. Thought Control

The Burial of the Books and the Burning of the Scholars. University of California, San Diego

China’s Warring States period had been a period of chaos, but it had also been a golden age of Chinese philosophy and free thinking. The centuries preceding China’s unification in 221 BC came to be known as the “Hundred Schools of Thought”. It was an era during which a broad range of philosophies, including Confucianism and Taoism, emerged and were freely debated.

Chin Shi Huang brought that to an end by banning all schools of thought, except Legalism. He saw his new state as a radical break from the past, and to emphasize that break, as well as to keep his subjects from pining for bygone days, he ordered the burning of all history books throughout his realm. He also ordered the burning of books on philosophy, and every other subject except for agriculture, science, and magic. When scholars protested, he ordered 460 of them buried alive.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.