Ying Zheng crushed six rivals and coined China imperial
From 230 BC the state of Qin under King Ying Zheng conquered its Warring States peers, finishing unification in 221 BC. Shang Yang's earlier reforms had forged a centralized war machine. The first imperial dynasty lasted only until revolts after 210 BC, yet it set the template the Han inherited.
Qin began as a Zhou fief raising horses in Gansu; by the fourth century BC, after subduing western tribes, it could strike into the central plains. Shang Yang's reforms between 359 and his execution in 338 BC standardised currency, weights and writing, built Xianyang on the Wei, and yoked peasantry directly to the state, funding mass labour on border walls, roads and canals. Guanzhong's fertile basin and mountain wraps made the homeland a natural fortress; Xianyang was the only Chinese capital of the age that needed no walls. Warfare turned ruthlessly pragmatic, discarding older gentlemanly norms.
Unification sequencing hit Han in 230 BC, Zhao in 228, Yan in 226, Wei in 225, Chu in 223, then Qi in 221. Zheng, king since age nine, became Qin Shi Huang, sidelining chancellor Lü Buwei and melting down confiscated weapons into twelve giant statues at the capital. In 214 BC he sent some 500,000 soldiers south against the Baiyue; guerrilla fighting cost over 100,000 men, but a new supply canal enabled a second push that took the coast around Guangzhou.
After the emperor's 210 BC death, scheming advisors installed a weak heir; their feuding killed both of them and the second emperor, and popular revolt let Chu generals Xiang Yu and Liu Bang topple the house, with Liu Bang founding Han. With only two emperors and fourteen years, Qin is the shortest major dynasty in Chinese history.
Its reach outlived it. Han kept most Qin military and administrative practice, so the imperial system it inaugurated survived in some form until 1911, while its labour armies left the linked northern walls and the Terracotta Army.
Source: Qin dynasty
