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Insane Indulgences Of The Rich & Powerful From History

Khalid Elhassan April 5, 2023 32 min

Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past, 1947. Encyclopedia Britannica

China’s Greatest Emperor Was Also its Weirdest

The Warring States, before they were united by Qin Shi Huang. Wikimedia

Qin Shi Huang (259 – 210 BC), founder of the imperial Qin Dynasty, was king of the Chinese state of Qin in the Warring States Period. He ascended the throne as a child, and when he reached his teens he wrested power from the regents who had governed in. To consolidate his power, he massacred palace plotters who tried to usurp his prerogatives. He then went on the warpath, pushed back the northern barbarians, conquered all adjacent Chinese states and consolidated them under his rule, and declared himself the first emperor of a united China.

Qin Shi Huang set out to unify his newly conquered empire. He standardized the currency, weights, and measures. He also introduced a system of government known as Legalism, based on strict laws and harsh punishments. China’s first emperor ended the feudalism which had led to the centuries of warfare that gave the Warring States Period its name. He replaced it with a centralized bureaucratic government in which advancement was based on merit. So far, so good – but then came the weird.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.