to the shores of the Gulf of Chihli--a stretch of territory about 600
miles long by 300 broad. The population, as already stated, was between
one and two millions. During the first two thousand years of their
known history the boundaries of this region were not greatly enlarged,
but beyond the more or less undefined borderland to the south were
_chou_ or colonies, nuclei of Chinese population, which continually
increased in size through conquest of the neighbouring territory. In
221 B.C. all the feudal states into which this territory had been
parcelled out, and which fought with one another, were subjugated
and absorbed by the state of Ch'in, which in that year instituted the
monarchical form of government--the form which obtained in China for
the next twenty-one centuries.

Though the origin of the name 'China' has not yet been finally decided,
the best authorities regard it as derived from the name of this feudal
state of Ch'in.

Under this short-lived dynasty of Ch'in and the famous Han dynasty
(221 B.C. to A.D. 221) which followed it, the Empire expanded until
it embraced almost all the territory now known as China Proper
(the Eighteen Provinces of Manchu times). To these were added
in order between 194 B.C. and A.D. 1414: Corea, Sinkiang (the
New Territory or Eastern Turkestan), Manchuria, Formosa, Tibet,
and Mongolia--Formosa and Corea being annexed by Japan in 1895 and
1910 respectively. Numerous other extra-China countries and islands,
acquired and lost during the long course of Chinese history (at one
time, from 73 to 48 B.C., "all Asia from Japan to the Caspian Sea was
tributary to the Middle Kingdom," _i.e._ China), it is not necessary
to mention here. During the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1280) the
Tartars owned the northern half of China, as far down as the Yangtzu