home | 1000 BCE to 500 CE

EMPIRE and the ANCIENT CHINESE (2 of 13)

With the breakup of the Zhou Dynasty and the appearance of what can be called warlords, Chinese civilization entered what came to be known as the Spring and Autumn Period, to last to about 475 BCE when the Warring States period began.

State formation had taken place. There were as many as seventeen of these political entities -- one definition of a state being a political institution that maintains a monopoly over the use of force within a certain territory.

Historians have been interested in the balance of power dynamics between the states that for awhile prevented one state from growing in its ability to dominate or conquer all the other states. The balance of power worked as states that felt threatened by the growing power of the strongest and most aggressive state united against that state. Their combined power controlled the expansion of the strongest state, as did the costs that always accompanied attempts at expansion and the possibility of strong states to weaken themselves.

The state called Chu began as the most powerful of the states and the state others had to reckon with. Of the 148 or so powers during the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese civilization, Chu was the largest in the size of its territory and the richest in natural resources, and it was strengthened by a freedom from Zhou Dynasty feudalism -- in other words, there was respect for centralized authority that is commonly diminished by feudalism. Chu expanded territorially and was the first of the states to appoint dependent officials tied to central authority rather than to create hereditary nobles as fiefs.

The Period of Warring States had begun, and by the end of the 400s the power of the Chu state was in decline. The Chu government had become corrupt and inefficient. Much of the state's treasury paid for a large official retinue (advisors and such), with many officials having no meaningful task other than receiving money. Chu's corrupt and awkward bureaucracy reduced the quality of its military.

There were more aggressions. Historian Victoria Tin-bor Hui writes of 160 wars "involving great powers" between 656 and 357 BCE (War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe, p. 64). Some of the powers had been gobbled up by others, and of the 148 or so powers that had existed, the tendency of big powers to absorb smaller powers was reducing that number -- to something like seventeen, or whatever, at the beginning of the Warring States Period.

A few scholars have been interested in the balance of power dynamic among the major powers around these times in Chinese history -- a balance of power achieved by various powers creating alliances that contributed to holding in check any one power from becoming so big and powerful as to overwhelm with its aggressions the rest.

The tendency of one power to emerge dominant remained as it had elsewhere in the world: In ancient Sumer, Kish was the first of the cities to dominate the whole of Sumer; Egypt eventually was united by one conquering king; the Greek city states would be united by the successful warring of the Macedonian, Phlip II, and his son Alexander. The balance of power among the Chinese states would not hold -- as would the balance of power during early modern Europe. And the state that would unite what thereafter would be called China was Qin (pronounced chin -- the word from which the state today called China gets its name).