# Archaeology and standard accounts record Qin wall-building with corvée labour

Date: 1974

## The fact

Qin connected and extended northern walls using corvée and convict labour, in the received account and in archaeological traces later published. This Fact stores that labour-wall programme as recorded, dated via modern public archaeology and standard narrative, not a surviving daily roll-call.

## Context

Walls reduced some raid lines and killed and displaced workers. Both can be true. Shiji’s death numbers are estimates of a hostile Han source.

[Qin Shi Huang](/people/qin-shi-huang) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official museum/encyclopedia/agency pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum (https://www.bmy.com.cn/; Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum).

## Significance

Forced frontier labour is a welfare harm path even when the wall is later called heritage.

Forced frontier labour is a welfare harm path even when the wall is later called heritage.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Qin Shi Huang: https://factrail.ai/people/qin-shi-huang

## Drivers

- Humanitarian Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/humanitarian-access

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Qin-Shi-Huang
- https://www.bmy.com.cn/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-qin-long-wall-labour