Qin Shi Huang was born in 259 BC as Ying Zheng in the city of Handan while his father was effectively a political hostage in the rival state of Zhao. Despite this precarious start, he eventually rose to power and became the man who unified China for the first time in history.
Before he unified China, Qin Shi Huang first became king at the incredibly young age of 13 in 247 BC after the death of his father, King Zhuangxiang of Qin. Because he was still a child, the wealthy merchant and politician Lü Buwei ruled as regent until the young king took full power several years later.
Qin Shi Huang did not originally call himself an emperor. After conquering all the rival states in 221 BC, he invented the entirely new title “Huangdi,” meaning emperor, combining ancient mythical titles to elevate himself above the old kings of China.
The title created by Qin Shi Huang proved incredibly influential. For the next two thousand years, nearly every Chinese ruler would use the title emperor, showing just how lasting his political innovations were.
During the Warring States period, China was divided into several powerful kingdoms constantly fighting each other. Qin Shi Huang ended centuries of warfare by conquering all six rival states between 230 BC and 221 BC.
One of the earliest states Qin Shi Huang conquered during his unification campaign was Han in 230 BC, which was considered the weakest of the major kingdoms competing for dominance in China.
Qin Shi Huang’s conquest of the powerful state of Chu was one of the most difficult campaigns of his wars of unification, requiring a massive invasion that eventually captured the Chu capital in 223 BC.
After conquering the last independent state, Qi, in 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang officially declared the beginning of a unified Chinese empire, ending the Warring States period that had lasted for more than two centuries.
Qin Shi Huang reorganized China into a centralized bureaucracy, replacing the old feudal system with administrative divisions like commanderies and counties so that local rulers could no longer build independent power bases.
One of Qin Shi Huang’s most important reforms was standardizing weights and measures across China so that trade and taxation would work the same way throughout the newly unified empire.
The emperor also standardized the width of wagon axles across China, which ensured carts could travel smoothly along the same ruts on the new imperial road system.
Qin Shi Huang unified China’s writing system as Hanzi by standardizing Chinese characters, allowing people across regions with different spoken dialects to share a single written language.
A standardized copper coin known as the Ban Liang became the official currency of the Qin Empire, simplifying trade and taxation across the enormous territory.
Qin Shi Huang built an extensive network of imperial roads and canals so that armies, officials, and merchants could travel more easily across the empire.
One of his most famous engineering projects was linking earlier defensive walls into what became the earliest version of the Great Wall of China to guard against northern nomadic groups.
Hundreds of thousands of laborers were forced to work on early Great Wall construction projects, and historians believe many died during the grueling building process.
Qin Shi Huang also commissioned the Lingqu Canal in 214 BC, a 34 kilometer engineering project connecting two major river systems and helping expand Chinese control in the south.
The emperor built an enormous road system across China, with some routes reportedly wide enough to allow several carriages to travel side by side.
Qin Shi Huang’s palace complex at Xianyang was said to include more than 200 connected palaces and corridors so the emperor could travel secretly between buildings.
The emperor was obsessed with assassination threats and used elaborate security measures, including traveling with multiple identical carriages to confuse potential attackers.
In one assassination attempt in 227 BC, a man named Jing Ke tried to kill Qin Shi Huang by hiding a dagger inside a rolled up map that he presented as a diplomatic gift.
During Jing Ke’s assassination attempt, Qin Shi Huang barely survived when he managed to slash the attacker’s thigh after struggling to draw his sword in the palace.
Another assassination attempt involved a famous musician named Gao Jianli, who hid a heavy piece of lead inside his instrument and tried to strike the emperor during a performance.
A third plot against Qin Shi Huang involved a massive 160 pound metal cone thrown at his carriage during an imperial tour, but the attackers hit the wrong carriage and failed.
Qin Shi Huang is often associated with the controversial burning of books in 213 BC, when he ordered many historical and philosophical texts destroyed to prevent criticism of his rule.
Ancient sources claim Qin Shi Huang also executed hundreds of scholars for possessing banned books, although modern historians believe some of those victims may have actually been alchemists who deceived him.
Legalism, a philosophy that emphasized strict laws and harsh punishments, became the official ideology of Qin Shi Huang’s empire.
Qin Shi Huang believed in the ancient Chinese theory of the five elements and associated his dynasty with the element of water, which symbolized the color black.
Because of this belief, black became the official color of Qin imperial flags, clothing, and ceremonial objects.
Qin Shi Huang reportedly commissioned twelve gigantic bronze statues made from melted weapons confiscated from the defeated kingdoms to symbolize his complete domination of China.
The emperor was fascinated with immortality and sent expeditions across the seas searching for magical islands said to contain the elixir of eternal life.
One expedition led by a man named Xu Fu sailed with hundreds of young men and women to search for a legendary island called Mount Penglai but never returned.
Legends claim Xu Fu’s expedition may have reached Japan, where the group supposedly settled rather than return to the emperor empty handed.
Ironically, one story suggests Qin Shi Huang may have died from mercury poisoning caused by elixirs given to him by alchemists promising immortality.
Qin Shi Huang died in 210 BC at age 49 during an imperial tour of eastern China after ruling as emperor for about 11 years.
After his death, officials hid the news for weeks while transporting his body back to the capital, placing carts of rotten fish around the wagon to mask the smell of the decomposing corpse.
Qin Shi Huang’s massive mausoleum complex near modern Xi’an was built by hundreds of thousands of workers and remains one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world.
Guarding the emperor’s tomb is the famous Terracotta Army, consisting of thousands of life sized clay soldiers, horses, and chariots meant to protect him in the afterlife.
The Terracotta Army was only discovered in 1974 when farmers digging a well accidentally uncovered the buried statues.
Although Qin Shi Huang’s dynasty collapsed only a few years after his death, historians widely agree that his unification of China and sweeping reforms permanently shaped the structure of Chinese civilization for the next two thousand years.