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camwynEvening, folks, and welcome back to our lessons. Tonight we're starting coverage of the Zhou Dynasty. !teacher, !historian, !responsible for your grade, you get the idea.
In our last lesson we covered the Shang about as well as anybody can reasonably expect without expanding into a whole lecture on legends. Unfortunately, the Zhou dynasty is absolutely CRAWLING with legends. They take up most of the historical space available. I'm going to do what I can with the basic outline tonight; tomorrow we start on the key legends that grew out of the Zhou time frame. I'd rather stick to the history, but there are two problems with that. One is that a lot of the history that comes after is shaped by these legends to a tremendous degree. Another is that there's not much to be had in the way of concrete history, thanks to a ruler who will get REAMED when I get up to his entry.
But for now - the Zhou Dynasty.
The last Shang ruler was a dissolute wastrel who made a lot of mistakes. One of them had to do with a fellow he wrongfully imprisoned. Larry Gonick refers to him as the Chief of the West. Tradition has it that he was one of the Shang king's vassals and that he'd had responsibility for protecting the western frontier. He passed his time in prison with study and composition, and eventually got released thanks to mass protests. Thus did Jie demonstrate himself to be a wholly inefficient Evil Overlord; had he been serious about maintaining his power, he would have executed this man at the first opportunity. Guess who came back to bite him in the bum? Riiiight. Jie went down in a big way and the imprisoned chap got into the history books as a decent guy. Nyar.
The Zhou were a western tribe that may or may not have had some kind of Turkic-based language - I don't know enough to say for sure. They were a fairly powerful bunch, although they didn't have the kind of bronze skill that the Shang did. Best explanation I can offer for why they managed to take over is that the ruler had managed to dissipated a big chunk of the empire's strength. Funny how often that happens. And funny how the Zhou generally felt the same way.
In fact, this feeling of theirs resulted in a concept being introduced into Chinese philosophy that has stayed with us ever since: the concept of tianming, or the Mandate of Heaven. (天命 in characters, although I don't know how many of you will be able to read that without adjusting Explorer somewhat.) As far as the Zhou were concerned (or at least as far as they wanted the public to feel they felt), they were able to take over because the Shang had become a buncha moral degenerates. Heaven had obviously withdrawn its favour from the masters of bronze and granted its favour to the Zhou in the hopes that more morally appropriate leaders would take command of the empire. Otherwise, how could they have succeeded? Heaven must have been with them, and not the Shang rulers. The Zhou had a mandate from Heaven to rule because they were morally worthy of the responsibility. Future generations would seize on this, since it included a neat little escape clause: a rebellion against the throne was not wrong if it ultimately succeeded. Successful rebellions would be signs that the Mandate had passed from the rulers and into the hands of the rebels.
This goes well beyond the 'divine right of kings' idea that the West came up with. I don't remember any escape clauses about knowing when the king was no longer under God's favour happening this side of the Middle Kingdom. The story of Saul and David doesn't count, because once you got out of that sector of the Bible, you didn't really see any more contentions between a former king whom God no longer liked and a new king who said God liked him. Not that I remember, anyway. Remember, as I said, I'm not a historian.
This isn't to say that the Zhou thought everything about the Shang was corrupt. They liked their bronze techniques. A lot. They liked their writing, too. They liked a whole bunch of things about the Shang, although not enough to live with 'em properly. If they built new villages in the west they'd often import Shang families wholesale in order to integrate the artisans' skills, They'd house 'em in separate quarters of the new community, though. Lots of Zhou cities discovered by archaeologists were segregated - Shang families and such on one side, Zhou families on the other. Even the imperial capital, a city called Hao in what's now the vicinity of Chang'an, was divided like this. Exactly what the point was, I don't know, given that they adapted as many of the Shang rituals and administration techniques as they could get their hands on.
Maybe it was that the Zhou didn't like Shang religion. WOW did they come down like a bag full of hammers on the practice of human sacrifice. Nope. Nuh-uh, not gonna happen. The Zhou worshipped the sun, the stars, and the supreme God of Heaven - I think you get the idea. Some of the more popular gods already in place got incorporated into the pantheon and made vassal deities under the God of Heaven's rule. This rather neatly mirrored Zhou governmental patterns; they had something like to the much, much later European idea of feudalism. Empire's divided up into a certain number of squares based on a map grid that puts a big chunk in the middle for the emperor to rule directly. Emperor hands out parcels of land to his rulers as rewards, and they run things wherever they might wind up. Landowners had to support the ruler, etc. etc. Pretty straightforward. More focused on family ties rather than legal bonds, and eventually it turned into rule of city-states more than lord-vassal stuff, but even so people insist on calling it feudal. It was a bit different from the way the Shang ran things, but given that the Zhou had gone all patriarchal on them and declared inheritance to be from father to son rather than brother to brother, what was one more difference?
The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than ANYBODY, although for part of their reign the kings sort of ran things in name only. The first period is the Western Zhou, and that covers the time between 1040 or so BCE until, um, some incidents in 771 BCE. We'll talk about those another time, though. For now, I hope this'll do. Next up... hrm. We've got the I Ching, eunuchs, the Eastern Zhou, and the explosion of philosophy yet to cover. Oh, and some stuff going on in India that'd be of interest to the Middle Kingdom eventually. Just not yet. Let me know if you have a preference for the next lecture. Thanks.
In our last lesson we covered the Shang about as well as anybody can reasonably expect without expanding into a whole lecture on legends. Unfortunately, the Zhou dynasty is absolutely CRAWLING with legends. They take up most of the historical space available. I'm going to do what I can with the basic outline tonight; tomorrow we start on the key legends that grew out of the Zhou time frame. I'd rather stick to the history, but there are two problems with that. One is that a lot of the history that comes after is shaped by these legends to a tremendous degree. Another is that there's not much to be had in the way of concrete history, thanks to a ruler who will get REAMED when I get up to his entry.
But for now - the Zhou Dynasty.
The last Shang ruler was a dissolute wastrel who made a lot of mistakes. One of them had to do with a fellow he wrongfully imprisoned. Larry Gonick refers to him as the Chief of the West. Tradition has it that he was one of the Shang king's vassals and that he'd had responsibility for protecting the western frontier. He passed his time in prison with study and composition, and eventually got released thanks to mass protests. Thus did Jie demonstrate himself to be a wholly inefficient Evil Overlord; had he been serious about maintaining his power, he would have executed this man at the first opportunity. Guess who came back to bite him in the bum? Riiiight. Jie went down in a big way and the imprisoned chap got into the history books as a decent guy. Nyar.
The Zhou were a western tribe that may or may not have had some kind of Turkic-based language - I don't know enough to say for sure. They were a fairly powerful bunch, although they didn't have the kind of bronze skill that the Shang did. Best explanation I can offer for why they managed to take over is that the ruler had managed to dissipated a big chunk of the empire's strength. Funny how often that happens. And funny how the Zhou generally felt the same way.
In fact, this feeling of theirs resulted in a concept being introduced into Chinese philosophy that has stayed with us ever since: the concept of tianming, or the Mandate of Heaven. (天命 in characters, although I don't know how many of you will be able to read that without adjusting Explorer somewhat.) As far as the Zhou were concerned (or at least as far as they wanted the public to feel they felt), they were able to take over because the Shang had become a buncha moral degenerates. Heaven had obviously withdrawn its favour from the masters of bronze and granted its favour to the Zhou in the hopes that more morally appropriate leaders would take command of the empire. Otherwise, how could they have succeeded? Heaven must have been with them, and not the Shang rulers. The Zhou had a mandate from Heaven to rule because they were morally worthy of the responsibility. Future generations would seize on this, since it included a neat little escape clause: a rebellion against the throne was not wrong if it ultimately succeeded. Successful rebellions would be signs that the Mandate had passed from the rulers and into the hands of the rebels.
This goes well beyond the 'divine right of kings' idea that the West came up with. I don't remember any escape clauses about knowing when the king was no longer under God's favour happening this side of the Middle Kingdom. The story of Saul and David doesn't count, because once you got out of that sector of the Bible, you didn't really see any more contentions between a former king whom God no longer liked and a new king who said God liked him. Not that I remember, anyway. Remember, as I said, I'm not a historian.
This isn't to say that the Zhou thought everything about the Shang was corrupt. They liked their bronze techniques. A lot. They liked their writing, too. They liked a whole bunch of things about the Shang, although not enough to live with 'em properly. If they built new villages in the west they'd often import Shang families wholesale in order to integrate the artisans' skills, They'd house 'em in separate quarters of the new community, though. Lots of Zhou cities discovered by archaeologists were segregated - Shang families and such on one side, Zhou families on the other. Even the imperial capital, a city called Hao in what's now the vicinity of Chang'an, was divided like this. Exactly what the point was, I don't know, given that they adapted as many of the Shang rituals and administration techniques as they could get their hands on.
Maybe it was that the Zhou didn't like Shang religion. WOW did they come down like a bag full of hammers on the practice of human sacrifice. Nope. Nuh-uh, not gonna happen. The Zhou worshipped the sun, the stars, and the supreme God of Heaven - I think you get the idea. Some of the more popular gods already in place got incorporated into the pantheon and made vassal deities under the God of Heaven's rule. This rather neatly mirrored Zhou governmental patterns; they had something like to the much, much later European idea of feudalism. Empire's divided up into a certain number of squares based on a map grid that puts a big chunk in the middle for the emperor to rule directly. Emperor hands out parcels of land to his rulers as rewards, and they run things wherever they might wind up. Landowners had to support the ruler, etc. etc. Pretty straightforward. More focused on family ties rather than legal bonds, and eventually it turned into rule of city-states more than lord-vassal stuff, but even so people insist on calling it feudal. It was a bit different from the way the Shang ran things, but given that the Zhou had gone all patriarchal on them and declared inheritance to be from father to son rather than brother to brother, what was one more difference?
The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than ANYBODY, although for part of their reign the kings sort of ran things in name only. The first period is the Western Zhou, and that covers the time between 1040 or so BCE until, um, some incidents in 771 BCE. We'll talk about those another time, though. For now, I hope this'll do. Next up... hrm. We've got the I Ching, eunuchs, the Eastern Zhou, and the explosion of philosophy yet to cover. Oh, and some stuff going on in India that'd be of interest to the Middle Kingdom eventually. Just not yet. Let me know if you have a preference for the next lecture. Thanks.
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Date: 2002-03-19 01:02 am (UTC)After a while, you will be able to see the pattern. The court is decadent, the crops are failing, the Emperor disses his mother, there is injustice through the land - and then the clincher, the rivers flood. Oh man, the rivers flood is like the Big OmenTM of all Big Omens. It's like the singing of the National Anthem before the first pitch. That, coupled with crop failure, means almost certainly that the peasants are taking up their rakes and rampaging on the capital - and after that, it's only a matter of time before the feudal lords are hedging their bets and maneuvering to see who's most popular and therefore in line to be the founder of the next dynasty.
This cycle happens with so much regularity it's frightening. Basically, the social contract is much less implicit than it is in Western societies. You better take care of the peasants, because if you don't, they'll bite you on the ass. Confucianism helps in this respect as it establishes a more familial relationship between yourself and the serfs, so everyone's one happy family. Until Daddy lets you down.