Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE)

Zhou 周
c. 1046 BCE–256 BCE
Government	Monarchy
History
• Established	c. 1046 BCE
• Dissolution	256 BCE
Population
• 273 BCE estimate	30,000,000

The Zhou dynasty was the last royal dynasty in Chinese history and the longest-reigning dynasty. One notable advancement of the Zhou dynasty was that they marked a break way from slavery and into early feudal society (Fēngjiàn, 封建) which worked differently from the European feudal system.

Origin

The Zhou people (Zhōu, 周), located on the western side of the Shang Empire, were a tributary community of the empire, with a mythological history of their own. Their early history involves a change from a hunting-gathering society, before developing to an agricultural society, going back to hunting and gathering, and finally settling down as more permanent farmers. According to Ken Hammond, these societal changes reflect the environmental conditions at the time (some 4000 years ago), when northwestern China was wetter, cooler, and the weather had not settled permanently, which made food sources change over time.

After the Zhou settled into sedentary agricultural communities, they became affiliated as a tributary state to the Shang, a process that left them resentful of their new lords. Around the late 12th century BCE, as the Shang dynasty was facing external raids they could not defend against, the Zhou rebelled against their overlords and seized power from them.

Western Zhou

War against the Shang

Tai Zhou, a Zhou king, organized a long-term plan to take over the Shang. In a first move, the Zhou people followed the Wei river eastward and resettled closer to the Shang. Secondly, they sustained greater communication with other subordinated people of the Shang Empire, particularly on the west side of the Shang territory so as to create the alliances necessary to overthrow the Shang kings. Finally, around the year 1050 BC, the Zhou initiated a war against the Shang. According to Dr. Hammond, the war seems to have been initiated by Wen Zhou (as Tai Zhou had died by then), referred to as a king in historical records, but his son Wu was the one who took the throne from the Shang.

While the exact date of this war has been lost, paleo-astronomers have narrowed down the range of possible dates to within a few years of 1045 BCE based on the study of celestial events described at that time.

On that date, the Zhou people and their allies marched to the capital of the Shang (modern day Anyang), and set themselves up on the west side of a river. On the morning of the battle, the young king Wu gave a speech calling for the overthrow of the Shang and then led his armies forward into the city. A number of ancient documents that have survived to this day describe the battle that took place on that day; the Classic of Documents contains a purported transcript of the speech king Wu gave on that day as well as a document describing the battle. It is said that on this day, blood flowed so heavily in the streets that wood was seen floating in streams of it.

The battle concluded with the killing of the Shang king; the Shang state was thus seized by the Zhou and king Wu crowned.

King Wu died only three years into his rule as the Zhou king. His son, Cheng, was proclaimed the new king but was too young to rule, and so a regency was organized. Wu's younger brother, known as Ji Dan, was the principal regent for the young king. He was seen as a very sage and moral character, as he could have easily usurped the throne from the young king, but instead was happy to serve as an advisor.

The duke of Zhou thus became a very important figure in Chinese history, even serving as a model for Confucius some 500 years later.

Although the Shang had been defeated, the Zhou did not exterminate them. The Shang were moved away from the capital of Anyang to the south and east and given a territory of their own, made into subordinates of the Zhou. They were allowed to retain their customs, including the worship of their royal family's ancestors. To this day, certain families in southeastern Anhui province trace their family all the way back to the Shang.

At the same time, the Zhou moved the capital (and thus center) of their empire from Anyang back to their own ancestral homelands in the valley of the Wei river. They built a new capital at Chang'an (modern-day city of Xian), which served as a capital for a number of later dynasties.

The Zhou also established a pattern for the design of capital cities which was later picked up by subsequent dynasties. Their city was designed to be the physical representation of a well-ordered world, drawing back to the Mandate of Heaven. The city of Chang'an was laid out as a square surrounded by a wall, and oriented on a north-south axis with a compound in the northern part that formed the residence of the ruler. In the southern part of the city were residential areas for the common people, markets, and other centers of activity for daily life. Surrounding the city in the four cardinal directions (north, west, south, east) were ritual complexes -- altars and other temples for the performing of sacrifices and other ceremonies.

Creation of the Mandate of Heaven

To understand the Mandate of Heaven, it is important to understand what Heaven is in China. According to Ken Hammond, the Chinese people in earlier history (including the Zhou) worshiped what we translate as Heaven (tian). Tian should not be thought of as the Christian Heaven, but rather sort of a natural operating system, the overarching mechanism that governs the functioning of everything in the universe. Tian should be understood as an all-encompassing organic system, and not as a divinity or god. However, it does have the capacity for action. One such capacity is the bestowing or withdrawing of the Mandate of Heaven.

The Zhou were the ones who developed this doctrine to justify their conquest of the Shang, arguing that there was a "proper" way for society to be organized, which was focalised around a good ruler. since the Shang were unable to protect their tributary people from raids (and thus did not maintain the livelihood and prosperity of the people), they were unfit to rule and Heaven (tian) had withdrawn the Mandate from the Shang and given it to the Zhou, as the Zhou were able (or allowed) to defeat the Shang and seize power from them.

The Mandate of Heaven would become central to all political transitions from one dynasty (or form of government) to another, even enduring to this day in the People's Republic. The Mandate formed instant justification for an overthrow of a dynasty: if one succeeded in seizing the state, then they had clearly received the Mandate of Heaven. If they failed, then they clearly had not received the Mandate and thus the old dynasty would keep ruling.

For the first time, the state was not the property of a ruling family but instead, drawing on earlier mythical accounts of kings Yao and Shun, considered to be something that involved the moral qualities of the rulers. The Mandate is bestowed and removed by forces outside of human control, and as such the state belongs to the dynasty that was picked by Heaven to rule.

Eastern Zhou

The first two to three hundred years of Zhou rule were successful; that period was marked by territorial expansion (particularly in the south and southeast) and population growth. By the 8th century BCE, the Zhou state was four times larger than the Shang at the time of conquest in terms of territory.

These successes lead to new administrative challenges. Governing the entire realm from the capital became difficult as it grew due to the sheer distance to cover, and the Zhou kings started delegating power to members of the royal family: brothers, cousins, etc. were sent to these regions to fulfill administrative roles. However, the Zhou soon ran out of family members to appoint and turned to military leaders, loyal to the dynasty. The practice in the Zhou kingdom was that the military commander who brought new territory to the state would be appointed its political supervisor.

In the first few reigns of Zhou kings, this system worked well. The Zhou could appoint loyal individuals and let them take care of administrating remote regions on the border of the kingdom.

Decline

As time went by, the monarchy became an established institution -- not solely dependent on a moral king, but on the entire royal family. Members of the Zhou clan, who grew up in the royal capital, knew that they would be given a title to administrate eventually, and became complacent about it. At the same time, in local communities around the kingdom, the delegates managing these territories were the descendants of the original appointees, and thus they did not feel loyal to the Zhou dynasty, whose presence in these regions was almost null; they resented that they had to send taxes and tribute to the capital. This sentiment was particularly strong in the fertile southern and southeastern areas that produced a lot of food, but still had to send most of their surplus to the king as tribute.

Thus these local rulers started to hold back some of the tribute they were supposed to send, while at the same time subverting the established hierarchy; records show, in fact, that at the beginning of the 8th century BCE, certain local administrators (appointed by the Zhou royal family) began to refer to themselves as kings instead of dukes, most notably in local official documents.

In normal times, as the Zhou king heard of these developments, he would have sent troops to restore his authority on these tributary provinces. However, at the start of the 8th century BCE, a new people emerged from the western frontier of the Zhou kingdom, called the Qin. They started to raid into Zhou territory, which prompted them to move their capital far eastward, at the site of what is today the city of Luoyang, which remained a very important capital and cultural center for later dynasties.

This move to a more secure area made the Zhou abandon their ancestral homeland in Chang'an. Because of this, the Zhou were unable to attend to the matter of local administrative appointees proclaiming themselves as kings, which was a challenge to the rule of the Zhou; as more local rulers proclaimed themselves king over their appointed lands, the legitimacy of the Zhou rule was called into question.

The crisis took several centuries to mature: despite the challenges, the Zhou dynasty remained on the throne and ruled from Luoyang. While tributary rulers kept paying some amount of respect to the Zhou dynasty, it became clear that the Zhou did not control any territory beyond their capital.

Philosophy

Confucianism

Confucius (Kong Fuzi, 孔子), was a shi and perhaps the most influential figure in Chinese philosophy. He was born in the Lu state circa 551 BCE and died in that same place around 480 BCE.

Most of the information that survived about Confucius was written down by his students and their students later on, but very little is known from his contemporaries. Confucius grew up in the state of Lu and later spent a fair amount of time travelling around eastern China as a shi, offering his services to various rulers. However, Confucius was not very successful in this effort and only landed minor roles and positions as an advisor. He eventually gave up on his goal of trying to achieve political success through serving in administrations, went back to his home state of Lu and settled into the role of a teacher.

The core of his ideas were about human relationships; if one wanted a well-ordered society in which people could live together in peace and prosperity, then he argued people needed to realize that this happened through relationships with one another. He saw the family as a microcosm of this societal relationship: they involved on the one hand bonds of duties and obligations, and on the other bonds of affection and compassion.

Five great relationships

Confucius defined a set of five great relationships, concrete examples which represented his overarching idea of all relationships in society. These are the relationship between the ruler and the subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and the relationship between friend and friend. All of these relationships have certain characteristics; in each pair, one side plays a "leading" role and one plays a "following" role, even in the friend relationship: according to Confucius, there will always be a set of circumstances that puts one friend as a leader above the other (age, skill, etc).

While there is a hierarchy in these relationships, they also have an aspect of reciprocity: the ruler (or father, or husband) must be a good ruler; they must fulfill their role in a proper way. If they abuse their role, then the subject (or the son, the wife, etc.) is released from the bond of obligation. The reciprocity of these relationships is what makes them work, and differentiates them from a simple domineering relationship (where the ruler would just force the subject to comply to his will). If both sides are fulfilling their roles properly then, according to Confucius, society will function properly.

These relationships structure society, but to make them work people need to understand this system as they encounter it so they can apply it. To make that happen, Confucius relied on ritual: he saw rituals as central to the implementation of his order of relationships in daily life. Rituals are simply repeated behavior and can be as simple as a handshake (when two people meet, they shake hands) or as elaborate as a graduation ceremony, which involve hundreds of people.

Analysis of the Zhou period

When looking back at the decline of the Zhou period, Confucius attributed its downfall to the violation of the proper ritual order: when people started taking for themselves the title of king and performing the rituals of royalty at their court, they broke with the right way of ordering society and all the wars and suffering that afflicted China since then stemmed from that event.

To fix this situation, Confucius argued for the return of the ritual order of the early Zhou rather than the chaotic disordered of the warring states period. He also advocated for the rectification of names or, in other words, to "make names fit reality" (going back to the rise of the Hegemons who usurped the title of king).

A critical individual in this process of rectification is what Confucius called the gentleman (jūn zǐ, 君子, literally "noble's son"). This individual is one who models the proper ritual order and behavior in himself: he engages in learning about the past, and he seeks to approach the Dao (道, meaning "path", also spelled Tao), i.e. the way one should live in the world to manifest the rectification of rituals. As a role model, the gentleman can be emulated by others in society.

Around 150 years after Confucius' death, a man by the name of Mencius (Meng Ke, 孟軻) picked up his work and developed Confucius' ideas further. Mencius especially turned his attention towards the relationship between a ruler and his subject, talking about the necessity of the ruler to "do the right thing", and that the people had the right to overthrow him if he failed at this duty.

Daoism

Daoism (or Taoism) was theorised by Laozi (Lǎozǐ, 老子, also romanised as Lao Tsu meaning "old master") and was as important and influential as Confucianism in traditional Chinese society. While Confucianism had a very proactive outlook (society will prosper if people act towards the natural order), Daoism is radically at odds with Confucianism; it is based upon a skepticism of our knowledge and epistemology (the ability to know things).

Not much is known about Laozi, and it is not certain that he even existed. His most famous work is a book that bears his name, with most subsequent writings being attributed to a later follower by the name of Zhuangzi who wrote around the 3rd century BCE.

For Daoists, all knowledge is arbitrary and partial. When we think about knowledge, all we're talking about is our ability to communicate: we know something is an orange, for example, because we name it an orange; names are meaningless and made up to describe things existing in reality. Thus our knowledge, Daoists argue, is partial: it is always limited and one can never know everything.

Acting on the basis of partial knowledge will lead to consequences which can't be anticipated; in trying to make things better, we often end up making them worse.

Zhuangzi liked to write in fables to explain his teachings, and one such fable is of an eagle soaring high in the sky who cannot discern between individual rocks and trees, it just sees patterns of color on the ground. By contrast, a small sparrow is hopping around on the ground and sees everything up close: the individual grains in the stalks of wheat, the leaves on the trees, the gravel on the road, etc. According to Zhuangzi, neither one is right in their interpretation of what they see as they're limited by their perspective. This fable illustrates the fundamental Daoist belief of questioning one's ability to know things. It is reminiscent of the theories of later idealist philosophers such as Kant or Berkeley.

Daoists were of course worried about the troubles facing China, and in fact Laozi wrote about his vision for a well-ordered society. In his opinion, an ideal life is one in which everything one should want and need is already found in one's immediate community. Thus, wanting to conquer other states does not lead one anywhere, all it does is take one out of the proper order where one really belongs. A critical concept in Daoism is wu wei (translated as "inaction")—not to act in a way that goes against the natural flow of things or being.

For Daoists, the point isn't to make the world a better place (because one cannot know all the necessary information to achieve that goal), but to live in one's own proper order.

Mohism

Mohism is remembered for two aspects of its school: the doctrine of universal love and defensive warfare. Mohists believed that one should love everyone equally and treat other people the way one would like to be treated. While there are some parallels to Confucianism (for example, Confucius' famous silver rule "do not impose on others that which you yourself do not desire"), the Mohist doctrine of universal love developed as a critical response to the Confucians' theories of reciprocal relationships, especially how some relationships were more important than other. The Mohists argued that the priority given to one's family were the vector of war as ruling dynasties were themselves a family, and thus put their family's interests above other rulers'.

The Mohists, following their doctrine, also became renowned experts in defensive warfare. Their idea was that by building up the defenses of smaller and weaker states (so that they could resist the attacks of stronger states), then aggression would cease to be a profitable course of action and they would stop fighting—and instead pursue their interests by other less violent means. The Mohists offered their services as consultants to states which were at risk of being invaded, and in some cases proved to be quite effective (but obviously did not stop warfare entirely).

The ideas of Mòjiā faded away as the warring states period came to an end, as they were a product of this period and ceased to be relevant in the time of peace that followed.

Legalism

Legalists had an approach on politics, government and social order that was rather different from any other schools of the time. The doctrines of legalism are associated particularly with the state of Qin -- the same one that forced the Zhou to move their capital and led to their decline soon after.

The Qin developed a very effective military state; the whole of their society was mobilized in the army and directed towards the objective of expansion. These methods began to be formulated during the 4th century BCE by Shang Yang (Gōngsūn Yǎng, 公孫鞅) who was the chief minister of the Qin state at that time. His basis was simple, and revolved around rewards and punishments.

On this basis, Shang Yang began a process that went on for over 150 years of promulgating laws, codes and regulations which gave the people in Qin society a clear understanding of what their obligations and duties were and what the consequences of failing those laws were. The idea was that by having clear laws that everybody knew and understood the consequences of breaking, then people would behave properly. The Qin proved to be truly effective in this regard, as the laws were applied equally to everyone regardless of class or status: whether they were a farmer or a general, one was punished the same for the same crime.

These laws were fairly harsh; punishments often involved amputation, execution or banishment even for relatively minor offenses. In theory, the harshness was mitigated by the fact that everybody knew of the punishments for breaking the law.

In the 3rd century BCE, Han Fei (hán fēi, 韩非 ) developed a philosophical rationale to legalism. He himself was a shi, and had worked in a number of courts before coming to the employment of the Qin for the remainder of his life. He developed a theory of human nature, theorizing that people are naturally selfish and greedy and will seek to maximise their own personal gain while minimizing their pain. In theory, by exploiting this nature, it was possible to get people to do what one wanted them to do. This theory is interesting not only because it draws parallels to modern-day neoliberal arguments and justifications, but also because it broke away from other schools at the time (such as Confucianism and Mohism) who claimed there was a natural proper order to the world and people should perform their proper roles. In legalism, the state exists for the ruler: the ruler owns the state as his private property and there is no reciprocity like in Confucianism. Thus the state is not wielded as a tool to achieve the greater good, but to do what the ruler wishes.

The doctrines of legalism served the Qin state very well during the warring states period, as they emerged victorious after defeating the last remaining state of Chu and unified China once again under a single dynasty.