I promised you philosophers a while back, and believe me, you'll
get them. The thing is that the major contributors to Chinese thought, while
technically arising under the Zhou dynasty, were very much the products of
their time and situation. And part of that - a big part - was the fact that
in 771 or so BCE, the Zhou kings became UTTER AND TOTAL WEENIES WHO DIDN'T
DESERVE TO BE CALLED A DYNASTY ANY MORE.
Sorry. I'm a little bit cranky here. See, 771 was the year the Zhou kings
got their butts handed to them on a jade platter. I don't CARE if the royal
line is still intact - if nobody's LISTENING to you, then you don't qualify
as a dynasty, dammit! That'd be like saying Roumania still has a king! (Prince
Michael, if I recall, is still alive and well. He's just not, you know, in
charge. Or even in Roumania.) These things never happen in isolation, though,
and to some degree the Zhou brought it on themselves. Oh, sure, some of what
happened to them was the result of external threats, but. . .
Remember how the Zhou put together that whole feudal scheme I told you about?
This was a big empire they were ruling. There was no way one central authority
alone was gonna be able to keep the reins on any geographical area that large,
not with the state of roads and communications of the time. The Zhou kings
kept things in line by appointing the next best thing to extensions of themselves
to positions of rule, namely, men linked to the kings by blood or marriage.
Kinship bonds were extremely powerful things in most of the ancient world,
but especially powerful in the Middle Kingdom - the Chinese family is considered
one of the oldest enduring institutions in the world, at least if you believe
good old Larry
Gonick. The loyalty and affiliation values that grew out of this social
structure were probably a big part of how the Zhou kings kept hold of so much
territory. Uncles, nephews, sons by subsidiary wives, whatever - here's the
map, here's the land, there's a great noodle place in sector 423, wanna be
a marquis? You get the idea.
Trouble is, well, loyalty only goes so far. You're far away from the guy who
gave you the throne. You never really liked your cousin or uncle or brother-in-law
to begin with, although you're grateful he gave you such a nice chunk of real
estate. You've got a neighbour who's a pain in the ass because he thinks HE
ought to own your province as well as his own. You've got barbarians with
the worst breath and ugliest ponies in the world periodically riding into
your land and beating up on your peasants - and while peasant-beating is not
really a bad thing in THEORY, but seriously, YOU should be the only one to
grind the peons beneath your feet. And the guy back at the capital city in
Hao or Chang'an, you know, the firking bloody Son of bloody Heaven, that !)&(*#)&!
isn't answering ANY of your messengers asking for help because he's too busy
with that babealicious new concubine of his. . . Screw family ties. How long
are YOU gonna stay loyal? Round up everyone in the area who's willing to call
you lord, beat the snot out of your neighbour, and ignore the capital right
back.
Given this state of affairs, and the fact that the Middle Kingdom shared the
continent with some extremely nasty neighbours, it's no real surprise that
the neighbours decided to come in and help themselves to as much booty as
they could carry. Angry rebellious lords took one look at the barbarians at
the gate, threw them the keys to the drinks cabinet, and WHAMMO. Chang'an
is in ruins. The king is dead. The crown prince and his court are running
for their lives and plopping down their sorry butts in Loyang, which isn't
particularly central but DID have the advantage of not being, you know, crawling
with barbarians and unhappy nobles and things like that. No more Zhou Dynasty,
not really, anyway.
The problem is that the stupid royal family refused to die, and refused to
leave the country, and refused to acknowledge the fact that, frankly, they
had been BEATEN. Just because nobody listened to their court as the voice
of civil authority any more, that was no reason to give up calling themselves
the ruling dynasty, right? Right. The whole cult of the gods of Heaven relied
rather heavily upon the royal court as intercessors for the empire. Since
it was a toss-up between intellectual honesty over the current political situation
and keeping the gods happy, the gods were kept happy. From 771 BCE on down
to 256 BCE, the Zhou kings stayed out of the way and continued their ceremonial
duties, and the rest of the Middle Kingdom went on without 'em. There were
dukes and stuff to worry about, and barbarians periodically pounding on the
walls and demanding to know how much for de weeemen, and frankly, the old
system wasn't all it had been cracked up to be to begin with. The whole thing
began breaking down into a loose confederation of states, if you could even
call it organized enough to be thought of as a confederation. I mean, most
confederations' members don't spend QUITE that much time beating the snot
out of each other. By 403 BCE, there were only seven real states left, as
they'd devoured all the others. Their various leaders proclaimed themselves
King, effectively saying 'screw you' once and for all to what was left of
Zhou authority, and things got seriously down and dirty after that. Thus it
would continue until 221 BCE, when one of them finally got up and put the
mother of all smackdowns on the rest of the nation. . .
But that can wait for another lesson. That's the historical background you
need to know of the latter half of the Zhou dynasty. Next lesson we'll begin
the philosophers in earnest, and possibly go into the Classical Kickers of
Butt. And then - finally - we'll go into the time period to which we owe the
use of the name 'China'. It simply didn't apply until the Warring States period
ended.
I seem to be missing a Barry
Hughart reference for this installment. Shame, really.