Chinese historians themselves term the closing period of the Chou the Age of Warring States. Diplomacy lubricated the machinery of conflict, smoothing struggle without eliminating it. The regional governments fought each other for centuries, though at times venturing into collective security pacts entrusting authority to a preeminent king for defense against the outer barbarians. The last years of interstate wars, however, were marked by an ever increasing awareness of the meaningless character of a struggle which had enveloped the Chinese world. Legalism and militarism, twin media of centralized monarchy, blossomed forth. While the Western political system, molded by geography and conditioned by language, has frozen into a pattern of theoretically sovereign and theoretically eternal states--the "mortal Gods" of Hobbes's imagination--without promise of workable universal government, China's states were swept aside by the conqueror Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, who established imperial unity for Chinese government. With the rise to domination of the state of Ch'in, its king took the title of _Shih_ (First) _Huang Ti_ (Emperor), and the Chinese Empire was established. _The Chinese Imperial Government_ The Shih Huang Ti was not revered by succeeding ages for the great mission which he performed. His methods were those not of a cautious reformer but of a bullying conqueror. With the aid and advice of a legalist philosopher, he organized all of China (covering the area of much of modern China) into a strongly centralized and despotic military monarchy. He destroyed all books not of obvious practical use, completely eradicating the histories of rival states and the works of philosophers whose opinions might undermine his regime. His tyranny brought his house to a rapid end; his heirs held the throne only a short while. But the work he had done was done. He had persecuted the worship of the past. He had extirpated a large part of the literature which might have survived as a source of dissent. He had cleared China of all military power but his own. He had brought operative law into being and had spread the institution of private ownership of land. Feudalism might remain as a form, but its economic and political realities were lost. In 206 B. C. there began the reign of the Han dynasty. They effected a compromise between the past and the governmental, military, and political system created by the Shih Huang Ti. They retained legalism in practice but turned more and more to Confucianism. Under them the cult of Confucius grew into the major influence on the state.[4] The Han allowed the imperial system to grow, whereas the Shih Huang Ti had sought to build it. In consequence, Han rule--although interrupted in the time of Christ by a Utopian usurper--lasted from the third century B. C. to the third century A. D. There followed the turbulent Chinese middle ages, extending until the reinstitution of organized government with the Chin and the Sui.[5]