There is also controversy about the incident of "burning books to bury Confucianism", which is regarded as the crime of Qin Shihuang's brutal autocracy and controlling people's thoughts for thousands of years, but there have been more and more voices calling for injustice for him for a long time. The word "burning books to bury Confucianism" often appears at the same time, but burning books to bury Confucianism is actually two events, and they are two unrelated events.
At the beginning of Qin Dynasty, Qin Shihuang destroyed six countries, and "unification" became the key word at that time, unified measurement, unified track, unified currency and unified writing, but these were superficial unification, which was of great significance, but it was relatively easy to start. The difficulty at that time was unity of thought. As we all know, in the pre-Qin period before the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, people's thoughts had an unprecedented explosion, and various theories became popular, all of which had their own fanatical fans, which was called "a hundred schools of thought contend" in history.
Because of flattery at a banquet, a book burning incident broke out. In the thirty-fourth year of Qin Dynasty, Qin Shihuang celebrated the victory of building the Great Wall and conquering the land of South Vietnam. During the dinner, an official named Zhou flattered Qin Shihuang: "The former Qin State was only a few thousand miles away, and it was because of your wisdom that the world was settled and today's Daqin Empire came into being. Now your majesty implements the county system, so that the country is free from war and the people live and work in peace and contentment. This is enough to be passed down from generation to generation. A word of flattery made Qin Shihuang very useful.
While he was gloating, Dr. Chun Yuyue put forward a different view. Chun Yuyue is a man who cares about the past and cherishes the present. It is in line with etiquette to propose to emulate the enfeoffment system of the ancients and enfeoffment the children of the emperor and the heroes of the country. He criticized Zhou for praising the county system and flattering Qin Shihuang, but this matter was caught by Li Si, the prime minister who strongly advocated the rule of law and the county system. He took this opportunity to criticize Chun Yuyue for not doing so.
Qin Shihuang listened to Lisi's suggestion. On the second day of the banquet, books were burned all over the country. So what book is this book-burning fire burning? According to records, only poems, books, hundreds of languages, historical books and other books that praised the countries that implemented the feudal system before the Spring and Autumn Period were burned, while books on medicine, divination and agriculture were not burned. Moreover, those Confucian classics only require that the people can't circulate and the government can read and collect them.
The reason why "burning books" became a stain of Qin Shihuang's brutal dictatorship in the eyes of future generations is probably related to another incident: "pit Confucianism". After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Confucianism became the ruling ideology, and the status of Confucian scholars was improved. Speaking of Qin Shihuang's "cheating Confucianism", these Confucian scholars hated it, and the history books were written by these Confucian scholars. Qin Shihuang was slowly portrayed as a cruel king. "