King Zhaoxiang of Qin
Reigning over 55 years, he was one of the longest-serving rulers during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Although making numerous policy mistakes during his later years, his aggressive territorial expansions were pivotal in consolidating the state of Qin as the dominant military powerhouse in the late Warring States period. It was the strategic dominance established during his reign that paved the way to Qin's eventual successful unification of China under his great-grandson, Ying Zheng.
Qing dynasty in Inner Asia
The Qing dynasty was founded not by Han Chinese, who form the majority of the Chinese population, but by a sedentary farming people known as the Jurchen, a Tungusic people who lived around the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang. What was to become the Manchu state was founded by Nurhaci, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribethe Aisin Gioroin Jianzhou in the early 17th century. Originally a vassal of the Ming emperors, Nurhaci embarked on an intertribal feud in 1582 that escalated into a campaign to unify the nearby tribes. By 1616, he had sufficiently consolidated Jianzhou so as to be able to proclaim himself Khan of the Great Jin in reference to the previous Jurchen dynasty. Two years later, Nurhaci announced the "Seven Grievances" and openly renounced the sovereignty of Ming overlordship in order to complete the unification of those Jurchen tribes still allied with the Ming emperor. After a series of successful battles against both the Ming and various tribes in Outer Manchuria, he and his son Hong Taiji eventually controlled the whole of Manchuria. However, during the Qing conquest of the Ming in the later decades, the Tsardom of Russia tried to gain the land north of the Amur River. This was eventually rebutted by the Qing in the 1680s, resulting in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 which gave the land to China. During the mid-19th century, however, Outer Manchuria was eventually lost to the Russians during the Amur Acquisition by the Russian Empire.