Qi

Qi was the great eastern power of ancient China, founded when the Zhou conquerors enfeoffed their strategist Jiang Ziya on the Shandong coast with his capital at Yingqiu, later Linzi. The land lived on salt, iron and fishing, and its dukes turned wealth into armies earlier than anyone: under Duke Huan, advised by the administrator Guan Zhong, Qi standardised taxes, ran state monopolies and led the feudal lords as the first Hegemon, sheltering the Zhou court behind its spears. Linzi grew into the largest city of its age, crowded with academies where the Jixia scholars debated every school of thought. In 386 BC the ministerial house of Tian, which had quietly captured the state's offices and granaries, received Zhou recognition and replaced the Jiang line without changing the state's name; the new Tian Qi stood among the Seven Warring States, proclaimed itself a kingdom in 334 BC, and twice nearly destroyed Yan. Its very success invited encirclement: in 284 BC a five-state alliance led by Yan sacked Linzi and nearly erased Qi, though Tian Dan's fire-oxen stratagem recovered the state. The reprieve lasted a lifetime. Qi watched the other states fall one by one and offered no help; in 221 BC the Qin armies marched in unopposed, the last king was taken, and Qi's eight centuries closed the age of the warring states themselves.