Qin Shi Huang: the First Emperor of China and Architect of a Civilization

Qin Shi Huang at a Glance

Ying Zheng, known to history as Qin Shi Huang, was born in 259 BC in the state of Qin, in what is now Shaanxi Province in northwestern China. He would rise from a royal child held hostage in a foreign land to become the most powerful ruler the Chinese world had ever known, unifying a vast and fractious civilization under a single iron will. In 221 BC, at the age of 38, he proclaimed himself Qin Shi Huang Di, meaning the First Sovereign Emperor of Qin, a title he constructed by combining the honorifics previously reserved only for the legendary sage-kings of antiquity. He died in 210 BC during his fifth tour of inspection of the empire, almost certainly poisoned by the very mercury-laced elixirs his court alchemists had promised would make him immortal. He was 49 years old.

His reign lasted barely 11 years as emperor, yet the imprint he left on China and on all of East Asian civilization was so profound and so indelible that it is impossible to understand the subsequent 2,000 years of Chinese history without understanding him. He standardized the written language, the currency, the system of weights and measures, and even the widths of cart axles. He abolished the feudal system of rival kingdoms that had fragmented China for centuries and replaced it with a centralized bureaucratic state divided into commanderies. He built a network of roads and canals that stitched the empire together. He began the monumental construction that would eventually be called the Great Wall of China. And when he died, he took with him to the grave an army of more than 8,000 life-sized terracotta warriors, each one individually crafted, a silent underground legion meant to protect him in the afterlife.

He was feared, venerated, despised, and ultimately forgotten for much of the imperial era that followed him, yet the template of governance he established endured. The very name China is believed by many scholars to derive from the name of his dynasty: Qin, pronounced Chin.

Early Life and the World into Which He Was Born

To understand Qin Shi Huang, one must first understand the world of the Warring States period, for it was that brutal, brilliant, and transformative era that shaped every dimension of who he became and what he achieved. The Warring States period, which is conventionally dated from 475 BC to 221 BC, was one of the most violent and intellectually fertile epochs in human history. Seven major states competed for dominance over the territory that constitutes present-day China: Qin in the northwest, Chu in the south, Qi in the east, Zhao and Wei in the center, Han to the south of Wei, and Yan in the far northeast. These states had been evolving from loose feudal principalities into increasingly centralized kingdoms for generations, and by the time Ying Zheng was born, they had been locked in a cycle of war, diplomacy, betrayal, and military innovation for nearly three centuries.

Ying Zheng was born in 259 BC in the city of Handan, the capital of the state of Zhao, where his father, a Qin prince named Zichu (later known as King Zhuangxiang of Qin), was being held as a political hostage. The practice of exchanging royal sons as hostages was common among the Warring States as a guarantee of treaties and alliances. His mother was a woman of remarkable beauty and intelligence who had previously been a concubine of the wealthy and politically well-connected merchant Lu Buwei. The circumstances of Ying Zheng's birth would become the source of considerable historical controversy and later politically motivated rumor. The philosopher Han Fei and the historian Sima Qian recorded that Lu Buwei had presented the woman to Zichu already pregnant, suggesting to some that Lu Buwei was the boy's biological father, a claim that was later used by Qin Shi Huang's enemies to delegitimize his rule. Most modern historians treat this claim with deep skepticism, viewing it primarily as a piece of political slander rather than historical fact.