For a general overview
of the Chinese Dynasties see:
Separate
States, Common Goals in Ancient China:
The
Warring States Period as a transitional phase to imperial China.
The
first reliable historical period in Chinese history also corresponds with its
longest stable dynasty: the Zhou. The Eastern Zhou period is commonly broken up
into two separate periods: the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn) period and
the Zhanguo (Warring State) period.1 These two periods spanned
roughly from 722 BC to 221 BC.2 Because the Zhou kings lacked a strong
centralized authority and ruled with a vassalage system, this has invited easy
comparisons to the vassalage system employed in Europe some fifteen hundred
years later.
However,
there are generally two failures within the historical analyses of
sovereignty-a limitation in scope and time.3 The limitation of scope, the
Eurocentric predilection of international relations, has been the subject of
numerous critiques by sinologists. The main critique is that the patterns of
international relations in Chinese history are significantly different from
those in European history. Hui calls the logic of domination instead of the
logic of balancing-is taken to define an alternate paradigm of international
relations.
Ideological
systems get individuals to agree on how the world is; ideological systems are
shared belief systems. More commonly, ideological systems can be understood as
religious, nationalist, and philosophical beliefs, as well as a host of other
connections to civic associations and society. With the number of potential
ideological systems being potentially infinite, it becomes difficult to determine
which systems are more crucial than others. Clearly, however, not all
identities are created equally. Thus the challenge is not predicting
which identity or belief system will become dominant but merely tracking how it
becomes dominant over time and space. The triumph of one ideological
organization over another is less important than the effect that triumph will
have on the scope of the ideological subsystem as a whole. Ideological
subsystems thus are simply the rules and methods of inclusion.
Numerous
scholars have suggested points of comparison between China and Europe.4 The
attraction in all of these comparisons is based upon the fact that
both periods were indeed feudal. That is, the rulers used vassalage to rule
over vast territories that they were otherwise incapable of ruling. However, as
demonstrated here and here, it would be a mistake to
equate feudalism with sovereignty. Feudalism, which is the system of vassalage
between lord and liege and between liege and serf, represented the
organizational structure of one subsystem. The bartered sovereignty that
emerged in Europe resulted from a composite of various systems: the
extensiveness of the church, the paucity of towns and poverty of trade, and the
limitations of horseback warfare. It would be a gross
oversimplification to equate one feudal structure to another.
Feudal
states in China were more autonomous, had no overlapping, cross-cutting
authorities, and had strong territorial markers. Given this, it would seem
that they had an entirely different set of sovereign principles at work.
Indeed, one argument that we will be making today is that during the
course of the Zhou Dynasty, we see a shift from transborder sovereignty
to absolute sovereignty, with the Warring States Period representing a
transitional phase to imperial China.
For
example, when the Zhou defeated the Shang, they had relatively weak coercive
control over the empire; they compensated for this with a relatively strong
ideological subsystem in the form of the Mandate of Heaven (t’ien ming).
The accelerated growth of the security subsystem in the 5th century BC
encouraged norms entrepreneurs to develop new principles of rule. The
relatively underdeveloped trade subsystem hampered efforts to consolidate rule
until the late 3rd century BC. Innovations in trade and agriculture in the 4th
and 3rd century BC encouraged expanding the trade subsystem relative to the
other subsystems. When the trade subsystem became relatively the same size as
the security and ideology subsystems, the new sovereign principle rapidly began
to structure a stable international order.
The transborder sovereignty
developed during the beginning of the Zhou dynasty is similar to bartered
sovereignty in numerous ways. This is probably what leads to the conflation of
the two in comparisons of China and Europe. In both the Zhou Dynasty and
medieval France, the security subsystem and the trade subsystem are relatively
the same sizes, while there is a relatively large ideological subsystem at
work. The key difference is the marked underdevelopment of the trade and
security subsystems in bartered sovereignty. In the European case, the
geographic scale of Christendom so far outstripped the scope of the cities and
fiefs that Christendom’s organizational structure provided little enforceable
hierarchy on a day-to-day basis. It wasn’t until the fiefs and towns began
their renaissance that lasting hierarchies began to emerge.
In
the Zhou Dynasty, each vassal state maintained a fair degree of power,
especially among the seven major states. The linkage provided by the Mandate of
Heaven was at once far weaker in its ability to generate unfailing faith in the
essential holiness of the king. Still, it was far stronger in its ability to
create a rigid hierarchy among all the numerous vassals.5
The
Confucian revolution of the Warring States Period largely circumscribed the
ideological implications of the Mandate of Heaven while reinforcing the
practical rigidity that its tenets suggested. This was not fully realized until
after the Warring States Period with rising Qin and Han dynasties. Transborder
sovereignty results from a set of circumstances where every political unit has
the strength to assert its own independence but is still bound by the
overarching loyalty to a single identity group and where the range of available
actions is constrained by belonging. This claim must be weighed not only
against the historical evidence but against prior and established arguments.
I
will start with the argument by Victoria Hui that a logic of domination
developed in China because of progressively self-strengthening reforms. Whereby
Hui critiques two dominant beliefs about the nature of international relations,
one Sinocentric, the other Eurocentric.
The
Sinocentric contention is that empire and consolidation are inevitable. The
Eurocentric contention is the opposite: balancing is the prevailing
characteristic of the international system. Hui points to the relative weakness
of the Qin state and its gradual ascent to total domination as proof that the
inevitability of each logic is flawed. Hui contends that the logic of balancing
and domination varies based on the external constraints imposed by contending
states and the internal ability to pursue what she calls self-strengthening
reforms. The rise of the Qin dynasty was predicated upon the ability of Qin to
subjugate other powers through superior strategy, superior tactics, and
superior organization. While this tells a convenient story vis-à-vis realism
and balance of power politics, it leaves the question of sovereign principles
unanswered.
Domination
and balancing distinguish between the centripetal and centrifugal aspects of
the international system without specifying the principles by which both forces
operate. Hui is too quick to dismiss the importance of dynastic ideas in the
Chinese case. Some world orders, such as medieval Europe, are driven by
non-state actors like the church. In the case of China, the balance
of power politics prevailed until Qin finally won out. However, even the
context of this competition is limited by the prior dynasty that the feudal
states warred over. While significantly weaker than Christendom, the
Zhou legacy bound all participants to acknowledge the inherent linkages between
the states at least. Europe experienced undisciplined feudalism, what some have
called variously fragmented, heteronymous, or acephalous, Chinese feudalism,
even during the Chunqiu period, was highly organized and continued to recognize
the centrality of Zhou law and identity.6
Roberts
points out one definition of feudalism that fits with Hui’s conception: The use
of the term [feudal] was first proposed by the Marxist historian
Guo Moruo in the 1930s, and its first application to China is based
on two assumptions. The first is that feudalism is a form of social
organization which arises under certain conditions, namely the decline of a
powerful centralized state and its replacement by a congeries of small states
owing only nominal loyalty to a central ruler. . . The second ground for
describing the Western Zhou as feudal concerns the essential elements of the
feudal relationship, granting fiefs to vassals, who promise to provide their
feudal lord with military support.7
But
even according to this definition, Western Zhou was not exactly feudal.
Feudalism accompanied the rise of a powerful Zhou state and not the decline of
Shang. The Zhou feudal system increased their ability of the king to rule over
vast territories instead of limiting their own absolute authority. This is
further evidenced by the dispersion of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions in
places distant from the central Zhou state. In Rome, it was a continual act of will to demand
submission by the marcher kingdoms. In the Zhou Empire, this was hardly ever an
issue. Even in the Warring States Period, non-Zhou people implicitly accepted
Zhou identity as they became involved in the system.8
In
Europe, the idea of Christendom was gradually eclipsed by the idea of Europe and
its parochial identities. In the Warring States period, the Zhou identity
remained intact during the rise and fall of numerous hegemons. We must conclude
that feudalism is a rather broad concept. The motives of domination are more
indicative of sovereign principles than the strategies of domination. We may
acknowledge the insights that Hui provides about domination and competition
strategies while also understanding that something is missing. To say that
every ruler throughout history must at least acknowledge the basic tools of
rule and domination is not to say that every ruler ruled the same. While the
tools may be constant, they build many different sorts of houses. This leaves
us with a fairly clear picture of what remains to be explained. We
can grant that Zhou feudalism created within it a logic of domination that
Europe lacked. But what are we to make of the centrality of Zhou in the first
place? Why did Zhou's identity remain intact when their power had so obviously
dissipated? We can grant that the Zhanguo period marked a profound
turmoil that produced profound physical destruction and intellectual ferment.
But why were innovations, and more importantly, innovators, shared so widely
among the kingdoms? Even when the last vestiges of Zhou had died out, the
common bonds between the Warring States were never in question. The Zhou
dynasty presented what Roberts believes to be the first vestiges of Chinese culture.
A common language united all the various states; literacy is, of course, an
entirely separate issue. Given the vastness of the territories and populations
at issue, the tenuous linkages are curious. The following section will attempt
to reproduce the origins of the transborder sovereign principle as it
developed in the early Zhou dynasty. It evolved up to the beginning of the Qin dynasty in
221 BC.
Part 1: Rome
Part 2: Europe
1. I will use these identifiers, Spring and Autumn for Chunqiu and Zhanguo for the Warring States Period, interchangeably. This is nothing more than a stylistic choice.
2.
The Western Zhou period began around the 10th century BC.
3.
Hobden, International relations and historical sociology: breaking down
boundaries, Hobden, S., and J. M. Hobson, 2002. Historical sociology of
international relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Hobson, J. M.
1998. The ‘second wave’ of Weberian historical sociology: The historical
sociology of the state and the state of historical sociology in international
relations. Review of 5 (2):284-320.
4.
Tilly, Charles, 2006, Westphalia and China Columbia International Affairs
Online, 1998.
5.
Hsü, Cho-yün, and Katheryn M. Linduff, 1988, Western Chou civilization. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
6.
Europe was described in these ways respectively by Gilpin, RB Hall, and
Machiavelli (among others). For the centrality of Zhou identity see Cho-Yun
Hsu. Gilpin, Hall, Rodney B. 2000. Book Review: The Nation-State and Global
Order: A Historical Introduction to Contemporary Politics by Walter C. Opello,
Jr.; Stephen J. Rosow. International Studies Review 2 (1):125 - 128, Hsü,
Cho-yün. 1999. The Spring and Autumn Period. In The Cambridge history of
ancient China: from the origins of civilization to 221 B.C, edited by M. Loewe
and E. L. Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Machiavelli.
7.
J. A. G. Roberts, A concise history of China. Cambridge, 1999, p.9.
8.
Edward L. Shaughnessy, Western Zhou History. In The Cambridge history of
ancient China: from the origins of civilization to 221 B.C, edited by M. Loewe
and E. L. Shaughnessy.1999, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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