Chinese history is often seen as a long succession of different interchangeable
native Dynasties. While this description is not necessarily a bad one; it is limited.
China, in fact, experienced several periods of disunity and foreign rule throughout its
long history that had enormous formative impact. Some of the changes they brought
were positive and some weren’t.
In China, periods of chaos had a tendency to provoke the adoption of new
philosophical traditions. The first, and most famous, period of disunity within Chinese
history occurred in the reign of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.( 770-256 BC) 1 During this
period, regional lords, who were traditionally servants of the Emperor, became more
powerful than the weak Zhou emperors and began to follow their own selfish ambitions.
War became a natural part of life and disrupted the peaceful lives of most of the
agricultural Chinese population.
This chaos proved the seed for one of the most prolific eras of Chinese
philosophy and would give birth to Confucianism, which became the most dominant
ideology within Chinese society as well as many other “philosophical schools.” Among
the “hundred schools of thought” that came about were, Daoism, Legalism, and even
the famous treatise on war, “The Art of War.” 2
The “Age of Division,” which occurred hundreds of years later during similar
instability, provoked a loss of faith in theses traditional philosophical legacies of
Confucianism and Daoism. In this era, many Chinese were experiencing more suffering
and death than traditionally a part of their way of life and sought something to bring
them comfort.
1
2
38 Ebrey
53, Ebrey
To fill this void, many Chinese embraced a Religion that was filtering into the
country from a foreign kingdom to the West, Buddhism. Buddhism spread throughout
the country and enhanced many aspects of Chinese culture. From art, to Religion, to
philosophy its impact can be seen. Chinese culture was, again, introduced to a new
worldview that helped shape the Chinese mindset. Buddhism’s influence even
encouraged the further development of Daoism, China’s previous dominant religious
tradition.
Were these developments good or bad? That ultimately depends upon your
perspective. It’s possible that the warring states inflicted a trauma so horrific on the
Chinese historical consciousness that it gave birth to the rigid orthodoxy of philosophies
like Confucianism. On the other hand, without the developments of both the Warring
Staves Period, and the Disunity period, much of China’s existent intellectual tradition
would have never existed.
Outside the realm of ideas, which philosophic traditions exist in, these periods
meant very real shifts in the lifestyles of the peasants who lived in them and these were
not necessarily positive. During stable native Imperial dynasties, farmers could pay
their taxes and spend their lives, relatively, peacefully.
Because the foreign rulers, such as the Jurchens and the Mongols, came from
the Northern Mongolian Steppe, a place where life was far more nomadic and violent
than within China, they brought with them alien social traditions that were not always
beneficial to the Chinese population. Under ages of foreign rule such as the “Age of
Division” and the Mongol Yuan dynasty, many peasants were forced to enter into feudal
type agreements with powerful warlords in exchange for protection.3 In essence, they
became bonded laborers, whose freedom and standards of living plummeted. This
was because, as stated in Patrcia Ebrey’s China, “the customs of northern pastoral
tribes reinforced the tendency towards increased incidence of serfdom and slavery.” 4
In the Mongol Yuan dynasty, the Chinese people found themselves under
detrimental heavy taxation and were forced into serfdom or slavery. 5 These foreign
leaders proved less skillful in managing China’s economy than some of the more
successful Chinese dynasties and because of this, there was an overall decline in the
Chinese standard of living.6
The periods during which China was ruled by foreign Emperors had a
significant impact on what it meant to be Chinese. In some cases, their alien overlords
imposed a new layer of Aristocracy that gave their ethnicity special social preference.
An example of this is the fact that the Mongols insured that “Mongols and other nonChinese would get half the degrees awarded” by the civil service examinations.7 While
all this may be true, many of the foreign rulers adopted Chinese custom and attempted
to merge with Chinese culture. In truth, it would have been nearly impossible, and
wildly obtuse to attempt to govern without the use of their Confucian bureaucracy and
most of China’s foreign rulers did; some even took Chinese names.
8
The Chinese had previously been at ease with absorbing other cultures into the
Chinese identity, just as long as these foreigners adopted Confucian way of life. This
3
Ebrey, 94
Ebrey 94
5 Ebrey 86
6 Ebrey 168
7 Ebrey 177
8 EBREY 169
4
was how China integrated many Northern “Barbarian Tribes” into its boundaries.
This
philosophy was put to the test when China was ruled by foreign “Barbarians.”
Interestingly enough, under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, many Chinese intellectuals
rejected these foreigners even though they adopted Chinese traditions.
This meant they were acknowledging that being Chinese was something more
interchangeable and less flexible than culture and were defining what it meant to be
Chinese. Doing this helped give rise to a national Chinese identity that had previously
not existed within China, helping to draw more stringent lines between what it’s people
did and didn’t consider to be Chinese. So, in some ways, foreign rule produced a slight
xenophobic streak within Chinese culture.
China’s very short periods of disunity and foreign had an enormous amount of
impact on its culture. By giving the Chinese extreme situations to react to, they were
forced to look within themselves, and at the world around them, and to decide what they
believed. In this sense these periods were very positive. On another level, poor
treatment by foreign rulers lead to much suffering and hunger, which is clearly not such
a positive impact. Once again these short periods were enormously important it
shaping Chinese history.