Let's talk about his mistakes first. Basically, there are too many wars and too many corvees, "burning books and burying Confucianism."
Start a war, right? During the Spring and Autumn Period, hundreds of years of chaos caused numerous casualties and people's livelihood was difficult. It was the birth of Qin Shihuang's "sweeping Liuhe, the world is a family" that ended the war. Sometimes war is for peace. Without Qin Shihuang, how many years would the Warring States have been fighting and how many people were killed or injured?
It is said that Qin Shihuang blackmailed and the corvee was very heavy. Noda
For a country, the initial expenditure of the country must be quite large. Southeast, northwest, northwest to open up territory, Wan Li Great Wall to be built, palaces, tombs to be built. It costs money everywhere, and of course there must be corvees. Besides, there is no standard answer to whether the corvee is heavy or not and whether taxes are heavy or not. So that historical writers can make full use of it.
Let's talk about "burning books to bury Confucianism". Should Qin Shihuang carry this pot? As we all know, at that time, the Qin Dynasty had just been unified, the political situation was still unstable, and an unprecedented New Deal was being implemented. There are always conservative and stubborn forces to stop the destruction. Those saboteurs went against the historical trend and were suppressed by the iron fist policy. This is really not tyranny. Is it wrong for Qin government to suppress counter-revolution?
After talking about Qin Shihuang's "country", let's talk about his achievements. In the past, Xia, Shang and Zhou all danced in front of their own homes. Although it is also called "the world is king", it is only a slogan and decree wandering in the Yellow River basin. Qin Shihuang included the vast territory from Gansu in the west, Yalu River in the east, Liaodong in the north and central Vietnam in the south, and "abolished feudalism and established counties", extending its administration to the county and township level.
Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu were all under the jurisdiction of the central government of Qin Shihuang. It was also collected by Qin Shihuang of Vietnam, but it was lost by later generations. Qin Shihuang's rule was more than six times that of the Zhou Dynasty. Qin Shihuang also unified coins, weights and measures, writing and transportation.
The unification of Qin Shihuang not only laid the foundation for the territory of later generations geographically, but also laid the ideological foundation for the unification of later generations culturally. In fact, every dynasty in the next two thousand years inherited many systems and ideas of the Qin Dynasty. This is the beginning of unified thinking. Later dynasties devoted themselves to the unification of China, laying the foundation stone for Qin Shihuang.
In addition, by the way, the Qin dynasty is one of the few dynasties that did not kill the founding heroes. Ministers of the Qin Dynasty sat and chatted with Qin Shihuang, and ministers of the Qing Dynasty knelt and talked to the emperor.
Today, the idea of China's reunification has been deeply rooted in people's hearts and is the spontaneous belief of every Chinese descendant. Is Qin Shihuang worthy of the title of "the first emperor through the ages"?