If you want to give a sequence to the chinese emperors, then the first person to appear must be Qin Shi Huang. Qin Shi Huang was the first political figure to complete the unification of China and the first monarch in China to be called emperor. Qin Shi Huang laid the basic pattern of China's political system for more than two thousand years, and the "one emperor in all ages" is worthy of the name.
Territory of the Qin Dynasty - Picture Baidu Encyclopedia
The merits of the First Emperor began in 230 BC, and in ten years, the Qin State, which was originally a princely state, successively annexed the other six princely states of Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan, and Qi. This led to the reunification of the Central Plains Dynasty. After the annexation of the Six Kingdoms, Qin Shi Huang attacked the Xiongnu in the north to collect the River Loop and the southern conquest of Baiyue, laying the foundation for a multi-ethnic unified country. The construction of the Spiritual Canal to connect the Yangtze river and the Pearl River system made today's rich Pearl River Delta part of the Central Plains regime more than 2,000 years ago. The Qin Dynasty eventually formed an unprecedented territory, stretching from Liaodong in the east to the plateau in the west, Lingnan in the south, and Yinshan in the north, which became the territorial basis for the future unified dynasties.
The merits of the First Emperor were not only the unification of China in terms of territory, but also the unification of culture and economy. The whole country has a unified script, a unified currency, and a unified weight and measure. Even the wheelbase was unified in that era.
Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang
China is a big place, and the pronunciation of customs and languages varies from place to place. The unity of writing has enabled the great unified nation to have a stable identity. Today, more than two thousand years later, even if the compatriots in the north cannot understand Cantonese, Hakka, Minnan, or Wu, this does not affect our identity as a national nation, because we have the same script. This foundation was laid after Qin Shi Huang unified the country. Assuming that there was no unified script of the Qin Dynasty, it is very likely that China today will be like Europe, you speak Italian, I speak French, he speaks German. Europeans sought unity, but there were great difficulties in terms of language and culture.
The unification of writing, currency, and weights and measures has provided convenient conditions for economic and cultural development and promoted the development of a unified country.
In terms of administrative system, the First Emperor and his ministers created the abolition of the sub-feudal system and replaced it with the county system. Although this measure did not pass on the Qin Dynasty to all generations, and even in the early years of the Han Dynasty, the successor of qin, it was proved by later generations to be the basic system that a strong country should have. The county sheriff and county decrees under the county system were directly appointed and dismissed by the emperor, thus enabling the monarch to effectively strengthen the centralization of power, which was conducive to political stability and economic development; the county system fundamentally negated the system of sub-feudalism, broke the situation of dividing and dividing the territories since the Western Zhou Dynasty, strengthened the central government's management of the localities, helped prevent local divisions and divisions, effectively safeguarded the unity of the country, and provided an important historical reference for the division of modern administrative divisions.
Of course, Qin Shi Huang's ability to achieve a unified dynasty was also the result of Yu Lie, the sixth emperor. The kings of the Qin dynasty laid a solid foundation for Qin Shi Huang to finally sweep through Yunei and lay a solid foundation. But this did not affect the great achievements of the First Emperor as the first emperor to unify China.
The First Emperor was also a man. After reunification, it was the fault of the First Emperor that there was still a drain on the people's strength and did not know how to recuperate. The scope and extent of the "book burning pit Confucianism", and even the authenticity, although controversial, also left the First Emperor with the name of "tyrant". At the same time, the death of Qin Dynasty II may also have a causal relationship with the above-mentioned faults of the First Emperor. It should be noted that today's historical materials about the First Emperor are mostly historical books written by the Han Dynasty, and we should have a clear understanding of this, and we need to make a fair evaluation of controversial issues with an objective attitude.
In general, the merits of the First Emperor were far greater than his faults. The achievements of the First Emperor in which China of later generations can always strive for the pursuit of great unification and deeply imprint the great unification in the hearts of every Chinese; today's China can become a great power standing tall in the world, and the Chinese nation can become a cohesive nation with the merits of the first emperor.