Qin Shi Huang
Discover Qin Shi Huang — China's first emperor who unified the warring states, standardized writing and currency, and built the Great Wall.
Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BCE) — born Ying Zheng — was the first emperor of a unified China and one of the most consequential rulers in world history. Through a combination of military conquest, political ruthlessness, and systematic reform, he ended the chaos of the Warring States period and created a centralized state that set the template for Chinese governance for the next two millennia.
Zheng became king of Qin at thirteen and spent two decades methodically conquering the rival states of Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan, and Qi. In 221 BCE, with unification complete, he declared himself Qin Shi Huang — 'First Emperor of Qin' — deliberately choosing a title that had never been used before to signal the unprecedented nature of his achievement.
His reforms were as sweeping as his conquests. He standardized the Chinese writing system, enabling communication across a linguistically diverse empire. He unified weights, measures, currency, and even axle widths. He connected defensive walls into the Great Wall. He built roads and canals that knit the empire together. But the human cost was enormous. Legalist policies meant harsh punishments for minor offenses. Forced labor killed hundreds of thousands. Intellectual opposition was crushed — the burning of books and burying of scholars became legendary symbols of authoritarian excess. His terracotta army, discovered in 1974, remains one of the most astonishing archaeological finds in history.