In the 11th century BC, a frontier state called Zhou gained prominence. Under the rule of King Wen, the kingdom of Zhou soon became powerful. When King Wen died, his son Jifa, known as King Wu succeeded him. In 1122 BC, assisted by Jiangshang and Zhoudan, King Wu launched a punitive attack against King Zhou of the Shang. Having suffered much during the reign of King Zhou, the Shang army turned coat and led the Zhou army to the Shang capital. King Zhou committed suicide and the Shang Dynasty collapsed.

The Shang was followed by a new dynasty named Zhou, also spelled Chou. The Zhou Dynasty is traditionally divided into two periods: the Western Zhou (11th century BC to 711 BC) with Haojing as its capital and the Eastern Zhou (770 BC - 221 BC), when the capital was moved east to present Luoyang.

Zhou reigned over 800 years and was the longest-ruling dynasty in Chinese history. It was especially noted for it brilliant achievements in culture.

Western Zhou Dynasty (The 11th century BC - 771 BC)

After defeating the Shang, King Wu founded the Zhou Dynasty, making Haojing his capital city, near the present city of Xi'an in Shaanxi Province. Historians call this period Western Zhou Dynasty (the 11th century BC - 771 BC).

Political History

Like the Shang kings, the Zhou kings worshipped their ancestors, but they also worshipped Heaven. The Shujing (Book of History), one of the earliest recorded texts, describes the Zhou's version of their history. It assumes a close relationship between Heaven and the king, calling the king "the Son of Heaven." It explains that Heaven gives the king a mandate to rule so long as he does so in the interest of the people. The last Shang king had been decadent and cruel, so Heaven withdrew the Mandate of Heaven from him and entrusted it to the virtuous Zhou kings.

In order to reassure and pacify the people of Shang and consolidate the new regime, the Western Zhou introduced a feudal system. During the Zhou Dynasty, all the land and people were nominally the property of the king. Kings, as supreme rulers, distributed both land and the people on it to their relatives, meritorious ministers and generals founding many small vassal states. These kingdoms had to comply with the orders issued by Zhou emperors. This entailed providing an army to fight for the emperor and regular payment of tribute and homage to the emperor. Each of these vassals could pass his title down to a son, thus making each domain a hereditary vassal state. Within each state, there were noble houses holding hereditary titles. King Wu's enfeoffment of dukes was the first practice of the feudal system during the Western Zhou Dynasty. Under this system, the Western Zhou Dynasty strengthened its rule and became a powerful slave owning country with vast lands.

Valuable lessons were learned from the collapse of the Shang. Consequently, Zhou established a complex state machinery to effectively control the entire country. Systematic criminal laws were instituted and a larger standing army was maintained than had been under the rule of the Shang Dynasty.

Economy and Society

The Western Zhou made a further achievement in social economy. Slaves were popularly exploited in pursuit of the production of greater surpluses, thereby creating wealth for their owners. Handcrafts progressed in this period and the bronze industry was especially important. Besides the bronze workshops controlled by the central government, the small kingdoms also had foundries of their own. Bronze products greatly increased in quality, quantity and variety so that their use covered nearly all aspects of life. The Western Zhou Chariot Burial Pit unearthed near Xi'an exemplifies the high technical standard of bronze production of this period.

The development of the bronze industry also promoted the prosperity of other industries. In agriculture, iron tools and the coupling-plough were brought into use for the first time, this greatly enhanced productivity. Bazaars appeared in some larger towns, where silk, weapons, cattle as well as slaves were traded. In addition, script became more widely used. People not only engraved inscriptions on oracle bones, but also engraved epigraphs on thousands of bronze utensils, recording the social life of that time.

Decline of the Western Zhou

The Zhou kings maintained control over their vassals for more than two centuries. Like the Shang, the Western Zhou achieved a flourishing age during its period of rule. However, as generations passed, vassal lords traded and sold land they had acquired from the Zhou kings. This gradual change in ownership created larger more profitable estates. In turn, this strengthened the position of the feudal lords giving them greater autonomy. As the Zhou kings were no longer the sole possessors of the land, the ties of kingship and vassalage inevitably weakened.

Added to this, although Zhou was the most powerful kingdom at the time, it actually didn't rule the whole of China, which then consisted of a number of quasi-independent principalities. During the reign of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the central plains had reached the peak of the Bronze Age while the neighboring regions lagged behind. In search of more wealth, the Western Zhou launched many wars against those kingdoms. At the same time, the Quanrong, an ancient minority lived in the north-west, constantly harassed the Zhou, becoming the biggest threat to the Zhou Dynasty.
During his reign King You indulged Baosi, one of his concubines, and this engendered a power struggle within the kingdom. The Chinese idioms "A single smile costs one thousand pieces of gold" and "the sovereign rulers are fooled by the beacon fire" have been passed down to us from the King You's reign.

King You's neglect of duty finally led to the fall of the dynasty. In 771 BC when several of the vassals rebelled, the army of the Quanrong minority took its chance, captured Haojing and killed King You. The Western Zhou Dynasty collapsed.

The next year, in 770 BC, King Ping moved the capital to Luoyi (now Luoyang City in Henan Province). This was the start of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770 BC - 221 BC).

Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770 BC - 221 BC)

In its early days, the Western Zhou Dynasty (The 11th century BC to 711 BC) was sufficiently powerful to be able to control the vassal states. In particular the states were prevented from fighting each other in order to annex their neighbors. However, from the time that King Ping moved his court to Luoyi (now the city of Luoyang in Henan Province) establishing the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the Zhou influence went into decline. Although the king retained his position as nominal overlord he was no longer able to control the activities of his vassals. Economic imbalance meant some states were stronger than others. In turn this led to the stronger states declaring war on the weaker ones and annexing them regardless of the prohibition of such activity by the Zhou.

So, from the beginning of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to the unification by Qin, China was marked by disunity and continuous conflicts. Historically, this is recorded as two periods: the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC - 476 BC) and the Warring States Period (476 BC - 221 BC).

Political History

Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC-476 BC)

Marked by overlord politics, this period was named after the book Spring and Autumn Annals (the history of Lu) adapted by Confucius.

After the eastward move of King Ping, some vassal states progressed in social economy. They became stronger while the royal authority took a nose dive, gradually loosing its control over them.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, there were over 150 kingdoms coexisting with Zhou, among them Qi, Lu, Jin, Yan, Qin, Chu, Wu, Yue, etc were the stronger. These powerful states, relying on their military and economic advantages, launched wars to expand their territories, forcing small states follow them so as to establish their dominance as overlords.

In the early to middle stage of the Spring and Autumn Period, five dukes, namely Huangong of the Qi state, Xianggong of the Song, Wengong of the Jin, Mugong of the Qin and Zhuangwang of the Chu, once fought for the "overlordship", known as the "the Five Overlords of the Spring and Autumn Period", in which Huangong of Qi was the first one to establish his hegemony by advocating "respect the king and repulse the alien tribes."

Continuous wars brought enormous balefulness to the people giving rise to wide opposition in the small states. Finally, in 579 BC and 546 BC, two treaties were made between Jin and Chu kingdoms, resulting in a short peace in the Central Plains.

In the epilogue to the struggle to become overlord of the Central Plains, Wu and Yue, two kingdoms located in the downstream area of the Yangtze River, rose up. Firstly defeated by the kingdom of Wu, Goujian, the king of Yue, applied himself to the development of agriculture and training his army He finally got an opportunity to conquer the Wu and became the last overlord during the Spring and Autumn Period.

According to historical records, during this period, a total of thirty-six kings were killed and fifty-two vassal states were demolished.

This constant conflict and annexation of one state by another during the Spring and Autumn Period hastened social and economic change and had the effect of integrating people of different tribes and nationalities.

The consequence of this period of drastic upheavals, reshufflings and regroupings, what had been several hundred states were reconstituted into seven mega-states. China entered the Warring States Period.

Warring States Period (476 BC - 221 BC)

After long-term wars, seven kingdoms, namely Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, Wei and Qin, appeared as the most powerful states in this period, known as the "Seven Overlords" in history. To expand their forces and territories, the seven overlords, on the one hand, carried out reforms in their own states to strengthen themselves and, on the other, were warring against each other and scheming to annex other states, which gave rise to the situation of seven powerful states existing side by side and struggling against each other.

Qin, situated in the remote west, used to be a vassal state enfeoffed by King Ping for Qin Xianggong's contribution of escorting the king on his move east. During the Spring and Autumn Period, Qin Mugong annexed twelve states, largely expanding his territory, making himself an overlord. During the Warring States Period, Qin, because of its outlying position, was more backward than the states in the Central Plains.

When Qin Xiaogong was in power, Shangyang, an aristocratic descendant of the Wei kingdom, was entrusted by the monarch to carry out a series of reforms in 359 BC and 350 BC to strengthen the power of Qin. Shangyang's reforms include abolishing the outdated well-field system, legalizing the private ownership of land, canceling the hereditary system pf rank and initiating a county system.

In addition, Qin also paid attention to the development of agriculture. Around 250 BC, Libing, a governor of Shu prefecture (present Sichuan Province), together with his son, directed the construction of Dujiangyan Irrigation Project, which not only controlled flooding but also irrigated the whole Chengdu Plain.

Qin, based on the reforms and improvements, quickly became a powerful state, laying a solid foundation for the future unification of China by Emperor Qin Shi Huang.

At the end of Warring States, the royal house of Eastern Zhou existed in name only. In 256 BC, Qin dispatched army and defeated the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Before long, after King Yingzheng succeeded to the throne, he expedited his project of annexation and finally in 221 BC united China and established a unified, multi-national, autocratic and power-centralized state, putting an end to the Warring States Period.

At the end of Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - 24 AD), Liuxiang, based on the information about this period, compiled a book and named it the History of Warring States according to the character of this period. Later generations then named this chaotic era the Warring States Period.

Culture and Religion (The Hundred Schools of Thought)

In this turbulent period, each regional lord competed in building strong and loyal armies and in economic production to ensure the advantage over others rivals in the struggle for survival among warring regional wars. Kingdom rulers sought the advice of teachers and strategists. Thinkers and intellectuals, besides teaching their disciples, were employed as advisers of the various kingdom rulers concerning methods of government, war, and diplomacy procedures. This fueled intensify activities and debates in the intellectual and ideology system. The golden age of China - philosophy came along thereafter. The five most influential schools of thought that evolved during this period were Confucianism, Taoism (Daoism), Mohism, Legalism and Militarism.

Among numerous schools, the oldest, and the most influential school of thought was Confucianism. It traced its origin to K'ung Fu-tzu or Confucius (551-479 BC), a member of the lower nobility and a minor official in the small state of Lu and was later extended by Mencius (372-289 BC), like Confucius, an itinerant scholar teaching his disciples in different states and offering advice to their rulers. He repeatedly tried to convince rulers that the ruler should cultivate moral perfection in order to set a good example to the people and the ruler who governed benevolently would earn the respect of the people. He held the view that human nature was fundamentally good as everyone is born with the capacity to recognize what is right and act upon it. Just opposite to his view, Xunzi (about 313-238 BC), also a Confucian of the state of Chu argued that people are born selfish and that it is only through education and ritual that they learn to give up evil and return to good. He intensively negated the role of Heaven. Xunzi stressed the importance of the inner faith and belief of human beings exceeds any other spiritual beings.

Another school, the Mohism founded by Modi flourished in the latter half of the fifth century. It resembles Confucianism in its reverence for humanism. Master Mo called for a universal love encompassing all human beings in equal degree. He suggested a harmonious relationship between people on a reciprocal basis. Thus he is an assertor of unionism who suggested a practice of a political relationship of mutual benefit or dependence between states.

In contrast to these doctrines, and utterly opposed to them, were the tenets of the Legalist school, which sought by every means possible to strengthen the state and increase its military might. It began to take shape late in the fourth century. Legalists sought by every means possible to strengthen the state and increase its military might. They defined the duties of people in society by framing out detailed laws and figured out penalties accordingly to punish those who failed to fulfill them. Old customs and moral codes were to be replaced by those laws. Shangyang an aristocratic descendant of the kingdom Wei, was a representative of this school. He carried out a series of reforms in 359 BC and 350 BC to strengthen the power of Qin. Later in the Warring States Period, another legalist named Hanfei or Han Fei Zi who advocated harsh rules and laws was also an adviser to the ruler. He bent on organizing society on a rational basis and finding means to strengthen their states agriculturally and militarily. They devised elaborate means for controlling people's lives and actions through laws and punishments.

The doctrines of Daoism, the second great school of philosophy emerged during the Warring States Period. The Chinese word tao (pronounced "dao") means a way or a path. Considering it much too limited that Confucians use the term tao to speak of the way human beings ought to behave in society, the Taoists preferred to understand the tao as the Way of Nature as a whole. They tried to tell people that do not exaggerate the importance of man too much. Because human life is only a small part of the universal and the only way can human actions make sense is to act in accord with the principles of Nature. They hold disapprove of the over and unnatural mode of behavior and advocated the way of spontaneity and harmony. Many Taoists denounced violence as reflecting the ultimate ignorance of the Way of Nature. Tao-te Ching (Classic of the Way and Its Power) which is attributed traditionally to Laozi and later complied by Zhuangzi is a Taoist bible in which many theories mentioned above were narrated.

Due to the disunity and disturbance state, the earliest known treatise on war and military science, Chinese classic Bing-Fa (The Art of War) came out. It was traditionally attributed to Sun Tzu also spelled SUN-TZU or Sunzi (4th century BC), a military strategist and general who served the state of Wu near the end of the Spring and Autumn Period (770 - 476 BC). The Art of War is a systematic guide to strategy and tactics for rulers and commanders. The book discusses various manoeuvres and the effect of terrain on the outcome of battles.

Besides the glory achievements in the ideology field, another noted man you should not miss is Quyuan (340 BC - 278 BC) - a great poet and politician served as a chancellor to King Huai of the Kingdom of Chu. Two poetic essays written by him named Chu Ci (Chu Songs) and Li Sao (The Lament) exercised great influence on poetry writing of later ages.