The Zhou Dynasty: Development of a Feudal State
The Zhou lived in the Wei Valley, and were employed by the Shang kings to patrol their country’s borders,
guarding against invaders from the west. The Zhou eventually became tired of the Shang kings, and under the
leadership of Wu the Martial, overthrew the Shang dynasty in 1050 B.C.E. The Zhou were polytheistic, but unlike
the Shang, the supreme god was called Tian, or heaven. Tian demanded that all people display right and good
behavior, especially the king. If a king was a good and just ruler then he would receive Tian’s support or the
“Mandate of Heaven”. If the ruler was evil, he would not have Tian’s support, and would be overthrown.
The Zhou also developed a new type of social system called feudalism. Under feudalism, the king owned all of the
land. In exchange for a percentage of the food produced on the land, and the promise of warriors in times of war,
the king would grant nobles large plots of land. Nobles in turn would provide warriors with food, shelter, and
weapons in return for a promise to fight for them. The nobles would also give peasants small plots of land to work
and live on in return for a percentage of the food they produced each year. Finally, there were independent
craftsmen and merchants who often lived outside of the nobles’ or king’s walled cities producing and selling their
goods and services.
The nobles lived in large, brick homes with tiled roofs, and they lavishly decorated their homes with
expensive furnishings. These homes were usually protected by large stone walls, similar to those built by the
Shang. The nobles were also known for their huge dinner parties they threw and the large quantities of food they
consumed. Similar to the ancient Egyptians, the nobles were buried in large tombs with many of their possessions
buried with them for use in the afterlife.
The leaders of different clans were continually waging war with each other, and warriors were always in
high demand. Warriors were knights in bronze armor who went to battle in horse-drawn chariots made of wood
and bronze. They wore bronze helmets, and carried daggers, spears, and axes. Each chariot had a driver, a
spearman, and an archer. Behind them came the foot soldiers, who were usually peasants, forced to leave their
fields to fight for the nobles.
Most people in the Zhou dynasty were farmers, or peasants. Their life was very hard. Farmers lived in
nearby villages in very simple homes made of mud and straw. In the summer, peasants lived on the land near
their fields, and in the winter they moved back to their permanent homes in the villages. They would farm small
plots of land with primitive stone and wood tools. They did not own the land, but rented it from the nobles in
exchange for a percentage of the food they grew each year.
Merchants and craftsmen were one social group that outside the social pyramid of the Zhou feudal state.
Since this group did not produce food and were not part of the nobility, they were considered to be outside of the
class structure. Like slaves, they were hardly considered men. In times of war, when the city was attacked, they
were not taken inside the protective walls, but were left to fend for themselves as best they could.
Zhou Dynasty Fragmentation
By the early 8th century BC, the Zhou dynasty was starting to come apart at the seams. Ironically, the
fragmentation that the Zhou dynasty was experiencing under the later kings was a result of the successes of early
kings of the Zhou dynasty. The Zhou dynasty was the dynasty in Chinese history that lasted the longest, and this
long lasting dynasty helped the Zhou to gain power and vast amounts of expanding land. As a result of this power
and land expansion, the Zhou kings were forced to come up with more efficient ways to run the large empire. In
order to run the large territory, which went far beyond the borders of the Shang dynasty before them, the Zhou
kings began to decentralize their own power in favor of local administrators. The local administrators became
emboldened as time went on, and they began to defy the Zhou king in the capital city, who was quickly losing
power through the generations.
The Zhou kings were not able to put down any of the defiant administrators outside of the capital city
because of large military turbulence to the north, and many of the local administrators to the king were military
leaders, which made it increasingly difficult to retake the power out of their hands. This feudal system that the
Zhou had established was collapsing in on itself, and this allowed a new people to build power against the Zhou,
the Qin. The Qin, a newly rising dynasty, was ironically developing power in the same area the Zhou dynasty was
gaining their power against the faltering Shang, the dynasty the Zhou succeeded. With the increasing power of the
Qin, the Zhou began to retreat eastward, including moving their capital East at Luoyang, north of the Luo River.
Warfare was becoming commonplace in China with the rise of the Qin and with the fragmentation of the Zhou
rulers. The Zhou territories had fragmented into smaller states, which were becoming more and more numerous
as well as more and more unmanageable. Certain states began to align themselves with other states, leading to
full scale warfare throughout much of the Zhou province. The idea of "legitimate" power as dictated by the Zhouissued Mandate of Heaven laid with the Zhou kings, but actual power was outside of his hands and instead in the
hands of the more powerful of these small states until around 450 BC. In the 5th century BC, larger warring states
that had become aligned with one another were beginning to take over the weaker, smaller states and
reabsorbing them as the fragmentation of the Zhou territory seemed to be molding itself into fewer and fewer
larger provinces as it had been before.
The rulers of these small states and provinces were increasing their own revenues by giving land to
smaller, even more local administrators for their services. It was not long before the entirety of China was based
off of land and this new national agrarian economy. After much of the violence and large fragmentation was
coming to a close as wealth was moved from military leaders to these smaller, more local administrators, the
people of China were still left with a large amount of social problems. These problems allowed for a rise in
different schools of thought to address the people's problems, including Confucianism and Daoism, two common
schools of thought even today in China that got their roots in this tumultuous yet historically significant time
period of Zhou fragmentation, the Warring States Period.