Shi Huangdi (Ying Zheng)

In 221 BC, having conquered the last of the rival Warring States, King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself Shi Huangdi, "First August Emperor," creating both a unified Chinese empire and the title its rulers would bear for more than two millennia. Born Ying Zheng in 259 BC, he succeeded to the Qin throne in 246 BC at the age of thirteen, with the chancellor Lü Buwei dominating the government. He assumed personal control in 238 BC after suppressing the revolt of the queen dowager's favorite Lao Ai, and Lü Buwei was disgraced soon after. The story that Lü Buwei was his natural father appears in the Shiji but is widely regarded as a hostile insertion.

The conquest of the six remaining states—Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan, and Qi—was completed between 230 and 221 BC by generals including Wang Jian, building on a century of Qin institutional and military advantage. The new empire abolished hereditary fiefs in favor of centrally appointed commanderies and counties, and standardized the writing script, currency, weights and measures, and even axle gauges. Roads radiated from the capital Xianyang, existing northern walls were linked into a continuous frontier barrier under the general Meng Tian, and campaigns extended Qin power south to the Guangzhou region.

The First Emperor's posthumous reputation as a paradigmatic tyrant rests largely on accounts written under the Han, the dynasty that replaced and delegitimized the Qin. The famous "burning of the books" of 213 BC—a ban on privately held histories and classics—is recorded in these sources, while the companion story of burying scholars alive is vaguer and has been questioned by modern historians, some of whom read it as a later embellishment. That his regime imposed harsh laws and enormous labor levies is not in doubt; the lurid personal portrait deserves more caution.

His later years were marked by a preoccupation with immortality, embassies sent in search of elixirs, and repeated tours of the empire. He died on one such tour at Shaqiu in 210 BC. His tomb mound near present-day Xi'an, described by Sima Qian and still unexcavated, was guarded by the terracotta army discovered in 1974. The succession was manipulated by the eunuch Zhao Gao: the heir apparent Fusu was destroyed by a forged edict, the pliable son Hu Hai was enthroned, and the dynasty collapsed within four years.