Zhou Instability, the Politics of Zhou and the “Ideas Men” of Zhou

The socially sanctioned tribalism of the Shang period (and probably also the Xia period) based on tribal divisions, clan subdivisions and lineage sub subdivisions in which the Shang (and probably the Xia) emperors were the tribal heads of the strongest tribes of their eras (in which population and overcrowding were much less significant issues than they were soon to become) was replaced by a more formal (and less stable) political order in the Zhou period. The new order was probably a response to the spread in population settlement and thus the chances of conflict between powerful senior lineage chiefs of the Shang and Xia periods that may have had the strength to dominate several towns of a region each via the municipal rule of ambitious younger settler sons. According to one ancient source, at the beginning of the Xia period there were 10,000 states (probably a wild approximation) but (with the conflicts that had occurred up until Confucius’s time due to younger-son settlement projections) that had been reduced to about 100 (of which around 14 were especially powerful) by the mid Zhou period.

Kings that were formally vassals of the emperor were actually his social and to some extent also virtual political equals (certainly when compared with their relatively inferior status under later dynasties). Formally the system was a kind of feudal one with the emperor parcelling out his land in return for loyalty, military and other service and taxes and tributes but this regularly broke down in the many periods of Zhou strife especially as time went on. Instability was both external (the many barbarian encroachments and settlements) and internal (tribal conflicts) to this system and this necessarily led to an easy familiarity between the emperors and senior nobles on whom they relied. Nobles could gain power by defeating barbarians militarily. One vassal famously spat at an emperor over an argument.

The instability also produced a demand for ‘ideas men’ capable of efficient administration of the many divisions and this force for meritocracy was an impetus for serious scholarship focused on politics and the potential for legislation. “Barbarian” ideas (and their often better technology) threatening the Zhou for literally centuries (beginning in about the 9^th Century BCE) provided a serious spur in Chinese society both to internal tensions and local ideologies.

Confucius traditionally lived from 551 BCE to 479 BCE so in a period of strife and weakness in the later Zhou period (dying just a few years before the official commencement of the Warring States period) and Mencius lived in the 4^th Century BCE (so mid Warring States period) and was a follower and populariser of the teachings of Confucius but they were two of the many competing ideas men. I’ll examine the ideas and their results in overview in the context of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods in the next few posts.