"The First Emperor" Qin Shi Huang

(Qin SHi Huang)

Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇) (259 BC – 210 BC), personal name Ying Zheng (嬴政), was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 246 BC to 221 BC during the Warring States Period. He became the first emperor of a unified China in 221 BC. He ruled until his death in 210 BC at the age of 49. Calling himself the First Emperor (始皇帝) after China's unification, Qin Shi Huang is a pivotal figure in Chinese history, ushering nearly two millennia of imperial rule. After unifying China, he and his chief advisor Li Si passed a series of major economic and political reforms. He undertook gigantic projects, including the first version of the Great Wall of China, the now famous city-sized mausoleum guarded by a life-sized Terracotta Army, and a massive national road system, all at the expense of numerous lives. To ensure stability, Qin Shi Huang outlawed and burned many books and buried some scholars alive.

 (Empire of Qin)

Title meaning

During the preceding Zhou Dynasty (700 BCE-221 BCE), later rulers of the independent states of China by convention used the title “King” (Chinese: 王; pinyin: Wáng). Following his defeat of the last of the Warring States in 221 BC, King Zheng of Qin became de facto ruler of all China. To celebrate this achievement and consolidate his power base, King Zheng created a new title calling himself the First Sovereign Qin Emperor (Chinese: 秦始皇帝; pinyin: Qín Shǐ Huángdì; Wade–Giles: Ch'in Shih Huang-ti), often shortened to Qin Shi Huang (Chinese: 秦始皇; pinyin: Qín Shǐ Huáng; Wade–Giles: Ch'in Shih-Huang).

• The character (始) means “first”. The first emperor's heirs would then be successively called "Second Emperor", "Third Emperor" and so on down the generations.
• The characters "皇帝" (pinyin: Huángdì) come from the mythical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors Era (Chinese: 三皇五帝; pinyin: Sān Huáng Wŭ Dì) (3^rd Century BC), from which the two characters (皇帝) are extracted. By adding such a title, Qín Shǐ Huángdì hoped to appropriate some of the previous Yellow Emperor's (黃帝) divine status and prestige.
•  Additionally, the character "Huáng" (皇) literally means "shining" or "splendid" and was "most frequently used as an epithet of Heaven.

 (The First Emperor)

First unification of China

In 230 BC, King Zheng unleashed the final campaigns of the Warring States Period, setting out to conquer the remaining independent kingdoms, one by one. The first state to fall was Han (韓; sometimes called Hann to distinguish it from the Han 漢 of Han dynasty), in 230 BC. Then Qin took advantage of a natural disaster, the 229 BC Zhao state earthquake, to invade and conquer Zhao where Qin Shi Huang had been born. He now avenged his poor treatment as a child hostage there, seeking out and killing his enemies.

Qin armies conquered the state of Zhao in 228 BC, the northern country of Yan in 226 BC, the small state of Wei in 225 BC, and the largest state and greatest challenge, Chu, in 223 BC. In 222 BC, the last remnants of Yan and the royal family were captured in Liaodong in the northeast. The only independent country left was now state of Qi, in the far east, what is now the Shandong peninsula. Terrified, the young king of Qi sent 300,000 people to defend his western borders. In 221 BC, the Qin armies invaded from the north, captured the king, and annexed Qi.

For the first time, all of China was unified under one powerful ruler. In that same year, King Zheng proclaimed himself the "First Emperor" (始皇帝), no longer a king in the old sense and now far surpassing the achievements of the old Zhou Dynasty rulers. In the South, military expansion continued during his reign, with various regions being annexed to what is now Guangdong province and part of today's Vietnam. 

(Qin Shi Huang Maoseleum)

North: Great wall

The Qin fought nomadic tribes to the north and northwest. The Xiongnu tribes were not defeated and subdued, thus the campaign was tiring and unsuccessful, and to prevent the Xiongnu from encroaching on the northern frontier any longer, the emperor ordered the construction of an immense defensive wall. This wall, for whose construction hundreds of thousands of men were mobilized, and an unknown number died, is a precursor to the current Great Wall of China. It connected numerous state walls which had been built during the previous four centuries, a network of small walls linking river defenses to impassable cliffs. A great monument of China to this day, the Great Wall still stands, open to the public to challenge its million steps.

 

(Terracotta Army)

South: Lingqu canal

A famous South China quotation was "In the North there is the Great wall, in the South there is the Lingqu canal" (北有長城、南有靈渠). In 214 BC the Emperor began the project of a major canal to transport supplies to the army. The canal allows water transport between north and south China. The canal, 34 kilometers in length, links the Xiang River which flows into the Yangtze and the Li Jiang, which flows into the Pearl River. The canal connected two of China's major waterways and aided Qin's expansion into the southwest. The construction is considered one of the three great feats of Ancient Chinese engineering, the others being the Great Wall and the Sichuan Dujiangyan Irrigation System.

 (Qin Shi Huang)