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The Witch Doctor President and Other Horrific Rulers

Khalid Elhassan December 25, 2019 32 min

29. The Megalomaniacal Emperor

China’s first emperor, Chin Shi Huang (259 – 210 BC), pulled off the impressive task of ending China’s Warring States Period – five centuries of chaos and violent feudalism – by conquering all the warring states. He then combined them into a unified, peaceful, and efficiently governed centralized state.

However, unification, pacification, and efficiency, came at a high price: tyranny, crushing oppression, and cruel megalomaniacal rule that reduced millions of Chinese to de facto state slaves. As a result, even though Chin Shi Huang was the most influential figure in China’s history, he was also the figure most loathed by the Chinese for millennia.

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.