| Abstrakt: |
Zheng (who became Shi Huangdi after becoming emperor) was born the son of the king of Qin state. After his father’s death, at the age of thirteen, Zheng became king and began a crusade to reform China. By 221 b.c.e., Qin’s armies had conquered the six other primary Chinese states, unifying China for the first time in its history. Zheng, now Shi Huangdi, emperor of the Qin Dynasty (Ch’in; 221-206 b.c.e.), further unified the country by deposing the remaining feudal warlords, establishing a system of prefectures administered by government officials appointed from the Qin capital, codified Chinese law, introduced standard weights and measures, issued a single national currency, and formulated a single written Chinese alphabet and language. To protect his newly unified nation, Shi Huangdi began the construction of a defensive barrier along the northern frontier, known as the Great Wall (some scholars believe that this wall is not the same as the Great Wall that stands today, which was constructed in the sixteenth century, during the Ming Dynasty). |
