Shi Huangdi was a powerful Chinese ruler during the Qin dynasty. I feel that he was a bad ruler for a few reasons. He killed many people, burned history and literature books, and he sent his own son into exile. Although he did many things to benefit China, he ruled through fear and intimidation, sacrificing many of his people for his own personal goals.
The best example of Shi Huangdi’s brutality was the number of people he killed. When taking over the warring states into his own empire, he killed two thirds of the other states population. He had a dream of building a great wall. To build it he needed a constant flow of peasant workers who almost always died building the wall from malnutrition or exposure. Then they simply threw the dead bodies into the wall to use as building material. Also, Shi Huangdi wanted all history to begin with him. Therefore he burned all books having to do with history and literature as well as Confucius’s 9 analects. He gathered up around 460 scholars and made the dig a 15 foot deep hole. The next day they scholars were forced to jump into the hole and then were buried alive. During this event, Shi Huangdi’s oldest son questioned why his father was doing this. Shi Huangdi then sent his own son to northern China. All these things Shi Huangdi did prove how horrible of a ruler he was.
Shi Huangdi was a bad ruler because he killed many people, burned history and literature books, and sent his own son into exile. Regardless of his few accomplishments for China, his reign was a one of fear and intimidation for the people.
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