Ch 1 - In the Beginning

Dynasties Come of Age

Out of the Zhou Dynasty came the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven.

When Ji Li reigned as leader of the Zhou, it was little more than a small vassal state of the Shang Dynasty. Ji Li led his people eastward along the Wei River valley and settled in Zhouyuan south of Qi Xian. They rebuilt the city walls and readied their forces for a march further east down the middle Yellow River. After losing a battle with the State of Shang, Ji Li was put to death. His son, Ji Chang ascended to the Zhou throne with a vow to avenge his father's death. Determined to make the state of Zhou strong enough to overthrow the Shang Dynasty, he sent his warriors to drive off the forces of neighboring nationalities and turned his attention to straightening out the internal affairs of his kingdom.

Born near the present town of Xunyi in western Shaanxi Province, Ji Chang grew up in a culture that blended the basic elements of Shang civilization with some of the martial traditions characteristic of the non-Chinese peoples living in the north and west. He ruled with kindness and generosity, showing great concern for the life of his people, especially old widows and widowers. Ji Chang dressed as a commoner and often went to the fields to supervise the peasants in planting and harvesting their crops. He set strict limits on taxes and levies and decreed that the innocent relatives of criminals were not to be punished. Such policies stood in sharp contrast to the cruelty of the Shang, and many people came from other states with their families and settled in the State of Zhou.

Always looking towards his objective of bringing down the Shang Dynasty, Ji Chang did all he could to attract talented people to his side. He treated them all with kindness, whether they were versed in letters or the martial arts, and never missed the opportunity to chat with them. Ji Chang's reputation soon brought a wealth of qualified people to serve in his court and his wise administration made the State of Zhou a strong western power, strong enough to alert King Zhou of the Shang Dynasty.

King Zhou made Ji Chang "Leader of the Western States" and invited him to the capital of the State of Shang at Qi Xian. Ji Chang was immediately imprisoned on a false charge and was not released until until his officials offered treasure and women to King Zhou. Returning home, Ji Chang accelerated the pace in his plans to wipe out the Shang. At the head of a major army, he crossed the Yellow River and fought deep into the heart of Shang territory, occupying nearly two thirds of their domain. Ji Chang died just before launching his final attack. His will directed that his son and successor, Ji Fa, complete the overthrow of the Shang Dynasty without hesitation. Ji Chang was granted the posthumous title of King Wen after his son founded the Zhou Dynasty.

Determined to fulfill his father's will, Ji Fa actively prepared for the destruction of State of Shang. At the time, King Zhou of the Shang Dynasty had troops spread across the land engaged in large scale warfare against states in the southeast. To test his own influence and military strength, Ji Fa called for a joint military maneuver that would bring many state armies together in the Yellow River valley at the town of Mengjin. The large number of states that responded to his call further strengthened Ji Fa's confidence of his ability to defeat the Shang Dynasty. Despite his success, the time was not yet ripe for a full-scale attack and the forces dispersed and returned home.

Traditional historians believe that in 1122 BC, nearly 5,000 thousand Chinese refugees from the territorial wars in northern China fled to the area corresponding to modern northwestern Korea and southeastern Manchuria. Among this band of refugees carrying rice and barley grains along with the trappings of Chinese culture was a former Chinese minister of state named Ki-ja (or Chi-tsu). Once settled in this new land, Ki-ja organized a large confederation of walled-town and tribal states scattered throughout the region which became known as Old Choson, the most advanced of the emerging peninsula states. The lands of Old Choson were rich in the raw materials needed to produce bronze. Under the influence of Chinese and Manchurian cultures, skilled metal workers in Old Choson developed two new metal technologies:  an iron culture from China and a bronze culture of Siberian origin. Creative local craftsmen soon developed new applications of bronze work and began to manufacture uniquely designed metal tools and weapons. The wholly native character of their work spread outward in all directions, even to the islands of Japan. The territory between the Liao River basin and the Taedong River near Pyongyang was seen as a fertile target for conquest by ambitious Xiungnu and Chinese warlords.

Four years after he took the crown as King Wu, Ji Fa launched a spring offensive of unprecedented size against the Shang Dynasty c. 1050 BC. An expedition army comprised of nearly 4,000 military chariots and 50,000 heavily armed warriors from many states mobilized near the suburbs of the Shang capital. After decrying the evil and tyranny of King Zhou, he led the final assault against the capital at Yan near modern Anyang in northern Henan Province. Trapped in a narrow strip of land, the Shang could not muster enough resources to resist the invading army and collapsed.

The collapse of the Shang Dynasty actually split China into several states. At the time, the Shang only held power over a relatively amount of territory in the Yellow River region around Anyang. When combined with the State of Zhou however, which already occupied a vast area to the west, the resulting territory of the Zhou Dynasty became incredibly large, numbering perhaps 200 to 250 city-states. Realizing that much of his own success lay in the fact he was able to turn disaffected city-states against the Shang, King Wu appointed family members and relatives of the royal family to rule over these city-states. He also vested meritorious officials and generals with hereditary titles and power to rule some of these city-states. Each vassal state was put under obligation to make regular contributions to the king and to provide military support for defense. King Wu established his traditional capital near the heart of his kingdom at Haojing, just southwest of modern Xi'an in Shaanxi Province.

Just as before, the city-state remained the basic political unit of China, a walled-town ruled by a noble lord that protected, controlled, and exploited the peasant population. These noblemen were permitted to rule over their territories in exchange for tribute and help in fighting wars. The effective control of city-states under the Zhou Dynasty evolved as a more sophisticated version of China's earlier tribal organization. Instead of using the feudal legal bonds imposed by the city-states of medieval Europe, the Chinese established control through the strength of familial ties and personal allegiance to the king.

In their new positions of power, the Zhou had to convince their subjects, especially the aristocracy, of the legitimacy of their power. They developed the concept for a new system of authority they called tian ming, "the Mandate of Heaven." They defined the lord or emperor as an intermediary standing between heaven and earth. Heaven, tian, desires that all human needs be provided. According to the idea of tian ming, heaven appoints the emperor as a "Son of Heaven" to see to the people's welfare. This "decree" or "mandate" of heaven marked the beginning of rule by divine right.

Although the Zhou followed traditional Shang religion, they developed tian ming into a guiding force which supported those who ruled virtuously and abandoned those who did not. An emperor or king who fell into selfishness and corruption and failed to see to the welfare of his people lost heaven's mandate and with it the right to rule. The successful dethronement of a king proved he had lost the mandate of heaven, which then passed to the usurper;  if the usurpation failed however, it proved the king had retained the mandate of heaven. The doctrine of tian ming not only explained and justified the demise of the two earlier dynasties, it also supported the legitimacy of China's present and future rulers. This important concept remains an integral component of Chinese ruling authority to this day.

King Wu died in the capital of Haojing less than two years after overthrowing the Shang Dynasty, having succumbed to long years of military life and hard work. Ji Fa's brother, Zhou Kung, acting as regent for the former king's young son, crushed the remaining rebellious tribes in three years of fighting all over China. A second capital city was built at Luoyang on the Yellow River to control the dozens of feudal states in the east, though the traditional capital remained at Haojing in the western Wei River valley.

The first two centuries of rule under the Zhou Dynasty passed in relative peace despite frequent wars of expansion with nomadic tribes along the kingdom's frontiers. The Zhou adopted much of Shang life and culture, including writing, religion, agriculture, and government. The early Zhou government established six special ministries under the royal court that have lasted in varying configurations in China for about three thousand years. The Prime Minister presided over the management of government officers and secured uniformity in the kingdom. The responsibility for education in the states, diffusing knowledge of human obligations and training the military in obedience fell to the Minister of Instruction. The Minister of Religions presided over ceremonies and regulated religious services. Military forces and border security were overseen by the Minister of War. Enforcing the laws of the kingdom and punishing criminals fell to the Minister of Crime. Finally, the Minister of Works presided over land use, the four classes of people, and agricultural management. By conquest and colonization, the early Zhou Dynasty gradually extended Shang culture through much of China Proper north of the Yangtze River.

The Western Zhou Dynasty began unraveling during the reign of King Li, a tyrant who ruled between 878 and 841 BC. Quick to anger by criticism, King Li used a court sorcerer to point out people who dared criticize him. Those identified were killed. He boasted how he effectively silenced his slanderous critics by making people afraid to even talk. The Duke of Shao once stated that King Li had only dammed up the growing criticism, a situation that could be as dangerous as holding back a river. Three years later, an angry Zhou aristocracy turned against King Li and expelled him from the capital. Two noblemen continued his reign until the Crown Prince could be installed as the new king.

King Li's reign left the Western Zhou in perilous condition and all attempts to revitalize the kingdom by improving domestic affairs and resisting foreign invasions proved little more than superficial. When Ji Gongnie took the Zhou throne as King Yu, the last monarch of the Western Zhou Dynasty, he inherited a nation in crisis. With a notorious penchant for self-indulgence and sensual pleasures, the greedy monarch trusted wicked officials and favored flatterers to the negligence of state affairs. Two years into his reign, a severe earthquake struck the Wei River basin near Haojing causing major landslides and flooding that destroyed vast areas of valuable farmland. The disaster forced thousands of commoners to abandon their lands, roaming the kingdom as starving refugees. Nomadic tribes from the northwest compounded the problem by invading the State of Zhou and nearly pushing it into a total collapse. None of this brought King Yu to his senses.

In a domestic dispute over his sexual proclivities, King Yu killed his own wife, the Zhou queen, for the love of a young concubine. Crown Prince Yi Jiu fled in terror to the eastern capital in Luoyang and reported his mother's death to the Marquis of Shen, the queen's father. Enraged by the news of his daughter's tragic death, he formed an alliance with a marauding nomadic tribe in the west and launched an attack against King Yu. In 771 BC, the invading alliance overran the Western Zhou and conquered the capital at Haojing. King Yu died in the fierce fighting that raged near the foot of Lin Shan (Mount Lin), northeast of the modern town of Xian in Shaanxi Province.