By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Next we will test, or conclusion so far on hand of the following case study in regards to ancient China, followed by a conclusion of what we herewith thus found out. Plus, while we will use the identifiers, Spring and Autumn for Chunqiu and Zhanguo for the Warring States Period, interchangeably, one critique by us is, that the patterns of international relations in Chinese history are significantly different from those that we see within European history. Indeed numerous scholars have suggested points of comparison between China and the Europe based upon the fact that both periods were indeed feudal. That is, the rulers used vassalage as a means of ruling over vast territories that they were otherwise incapable of ruling. But like we suggested before, it would be a mistake to simply 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 was the result of 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.

In fact 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.

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 an expansion of 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 that 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 size while there is a relatively large ideological subsystem at work. The key difference is the marked underdevelopment of the trade and security subsystems in the case of 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 case of 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, but was far stronger in its ability to create a rigid hierarchy among all the numerous vassals.

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 rise of the 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 are constrained by the belonging.

This claim must be weighed not only against the historical evidence, but against prior and established arguments. The following section will address this issue. Subsequent sections will deal with the evolution of sovereign principles through the Zhou Dynasty. (See Cho-yün Hsü and Katheryn M. Linduff, Western Chou civilization, 1988).

In fact as the only of its kind, Hui’s work is admirable in its theoretical reach insofar as it addresses the general problems of IR theory in clearly argued comparisons between feudal Europe and China. However, the problem Hui addresses is far different than the one which this dissertation is dealing with. Logics of balancing and domination are, in some ways, secondary to principles of sovereignty. Though these competing logics are likely favored based upon the various sovereign principles at work they are not themselves sovereign principles. Nonetheless we can draw from Hui’s work a general sense of the state of the IR research in the Chunqiu and Zhanguo Periods.

Hui critiques two dominant beliefs about the nature of international relations, one Sinocentric, the other Eurocentric.(Cho-Yun Hsu ,The Nation-State and Global Order: A Historical Introduction to Contemporary Politics by Walter C. Opello, Jr.; Stephen J. Rosow, International Studies Review, 2000, 2 (1):125 – 128).

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 logics of balancing and domination vary based 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, 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. The Zhou legacy while significantly weaker than Christendom bound all participants to at least acknowledge the inherent linkages between the states. Where Europe experienced an 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.

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 element of the feudal relationship, the granting of fiefs to vassals, who in return promise to provide their feudal lord with military support. (J. A. G. Roberts, A concise history of China. Cambridge, 1999, p.9).

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. (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. Cambridge, 1999 p.

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 arrive at the conclusion 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 the strategies and tactics of domination and competition 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 identity remain intact when their power had so obviously dissipated? We can grant that the Zhanguo period marked a period of profound turmoil producing within it 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 was never in question. The Zhou dynasty presented what Roberts believes to be the first vestiges of a Chinese culture.248 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 and as it evolved up to the beginning of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC.

Part II: The Origin of the Mandate of Heaven As the Zhou began to consolidate and take power from the Shang, King Wen, leader of the Zhou contended that the Mandate of Heaven had passed from the dissolute and dissipated Shang kings to him by virtue of his virtue. While we may acknowledge that the Shang had become corrupt and that the Zhou was likely a more vigorous people, the moral authority to depose the Shang was somewhat dubious. In battle, the Zhou probably employed a superior combination of strategy and tactics in the critical confrontations that took place during this transitional period.

The Shang believed that the kingship fell from brother to brother and then to subsequent generations. The pre-existing ideological order had to shift significantly so that another set of rulers could claim that the Mandate of Heaven had shifted authority to them. It is from this shift that we can begin to detect the beginnings of Zhou sovereign principles. Walker notes, that, “Traditional history reports that the [Zhou] conqueror and his successors set up 1,773 states in the area where the [Zhou] established their power.” (Richard L. Walker,The Multi-state System of Ancient China, 1953 pg. 20.).

It was actually King Wu, Wen’s son, and later Cheng, Wu’s son, who consolidated much of the territory that was to be distributed. By the time Qin rose to power in 221 BC the number of states was down to seven. Nonetheless, we find that as a means to power, and as a result of power, King Wen and his descendents were plenty throughout the Yangtze and Yellow River Valleys. Hsu and Linduff are particularly mindful of the relative weakness of the Zhou at this point of conquest: The [Zhou] had accomplished the nearly impossible task of allying and uniting the semi-independent and independent powers of north China. The small armed force that they controlled directly was not strong enough to hold the vast territory by force. Part of their solution was to maintain ties established by the Shang and to legitimate them through moral decree. (Hsü, and Linduff. Western Chou civilization. pg. 100).

There was thus at the very beginning a basis for rule based upon moral superiority. The Mandate of Heaven provided a basis for negotiations that would inevitably need to take place given the fact that the Zhou lacked the coercive power to enforce submission. But how did they maintain control over so many independent states? And, since we know that consolidation took place rather frequently, consolidation must have occurred frequently to arrive 500 years later at the 130 or states that began that Chunqiu period instead of the thousand or so that existed at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty, under what principles did the consolidation take place?

While Shang had been conquered by Wen and his son Wu, the Shang territory had not been brought under the dominion of Zhou rule until the rule of Cheng. Cheng’s ascension to the throne was interrupted by the meddling of Wu’s brother, Zhou Gong Dan, because Cheng was still in his minority. A civil war subsequently erupted between Zhou GongDan and his brothers. The battle over succession rights came to also involve the remaining Shang power, Wu Geng. Wu Geng sided with Zhou Gong Dan. Zhou Gong Dan triumphed, but Shang would never be a threat to the Zhou kings again. In the early portion of Cheng’s rule, Zhou Gong Dan acted as the de facto regent. Some scholars credit Zhou Gong Dan with the creation of Chinese feudalism while others contend that he actually supported a meritocracy. Cheng and Zhou Gong Dan’s victory not only secured the eastern portion of the new kingdom for Zhou domination it also legitimized the process by which the mandate would be passed along. King Cheng received the mandate, but was dependent upon Zhou Gong Dan and his half-brother Shao Gong Shi for legitimacy, and indeed was more puppet than prince. (Shaughnessy, pp. 310-315).

Once Cheng came of age the debate, captured in the Book of History (Shu Jing), between Zhou Gong Shi and Shao Gong Shi over the nature of the mandate established the principle of rule for much of the Western Zhou period into the beginning of the Chunqiu period. In it Zhou Gong Shi supports a meritocracy while Shao Gong Shi believes that heaven bestows legitimacy upon the eldest son regardless of merit. King Cheng sided with Shao Gong Shi. In so doing Cheng established a hereditary principle of rule that bound all feudal lords to him and his kin while making merit-based claims more or less illegitimate.

In feudal treaties medieval France the fealty of a vassal was contingent upon the time and place and the nature of the conflict. It was not unusual for a vassal to have to commit troops to both sides of a conflict. In contrast, in ancient China , we find enfeoffed elites in Zhou strictly bound by pre-ordained laws and regulations. For example, the hierarchy of royalty is laid out in the first line of the first verse of book three: According to the regulations of emolument and rank framed by the kings, there were the duke; the marquis; the earl; the count; and the baron:--in all. Five gradations (of rank). There were (also), in the feudal states, Great officers of the highest grade,--the ministers; and Great officers of the lowest grade; officers of the highest, the middle, and the lowest grades:--in all five gradations (of office). (James Legge, The Sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism, 1968, pg. 27).

Laid out as such with five ranks and five offices universally applied we find something far more hierarchical and consistent than France where titles were varied more according to local custom and historical circumstance. The section immediately following the description of rank and office establishes that land granted to the son of Heaven (the king) and all lower feudal ranks. While it was possible for elites to be enfeoffed multiple times to gain lands, the allotment of each was predetermined. In fact it was quite common for feudal lords to trade various lands amongst each other within the preordained limits. The trade of the lands was itself strictly regulated by the king and his ministers. Presumably the regulations of verse 24 reflect specifically on the moral grounds established in verse 23. The king, the son of Heaven was bound by ritual and decree to hunt in a sporting manner, that is, to give the prey a chance to escape. Even if we grant that such regulations were developed after the fact and represent some sort of agreement between the king and his vassals, we must nonetheless consider instances in which the Mandate of Heaven overruled norms of religious propriety. For example, King Wu’s initial war against Shang was based upon auspicious omens which contradicted accepted norms. Wu’s father Wen had died and custom held that Wu was supposed to accompany his father’s corpse home. However, before mourning the death of his father Wen, we read that he used turtle shell divination and found the omens promising and thus felt obliged to attack. The conflict then between omens from heaven and regulations determining behavior are thus present at the very beginning of the Zhou dynasty. Omens overruled norms in this case. Therefore when we read in the Book of Documents (Section II, verses 10 & 11) that the king is bound to consult with others before placing individuals in offices we must assume that such rules, and thus hierarchies were coequal with the boundaries of the Zhou dynasty if they did not exceed them in the first place. The Book of Rites notes that: 10: The rule was that the abilities of all put into offices over the people should first be discussed. After they had been discussed with discrimination, the men were employed. When they had been (proved) in the conduct of affairs, their rank was assigned; and when their position was (thus) fixed, they received salary. (S. J. Marshall, The mandate of heaven: hidden history in the I ching, 2001, pg. 80).

Officers of the royal court were able to vouch for capabilities of other potential officers. It is important to note that at this point while the merit of an officer might be important the offices were largely distributed through linkages of kinship. Furthermore, the marriage of rank and office was open to, at the very least, input from the lesser nobles. The Mandate of Heaven suggests a hierarchy that exists based strongly in the ideological subsystem. The Zhou sovereign principle contended that, ‘Place (in terms of rank and office) is determined by regulations and regimentation is determined by ritual.’ This is clearly different than both the hierarchical sovereignty of Rome and the bartered sovereignty of feudal Europe. A common identity exists among and between the feudal states. It is on the one hand determined by a strict regimentation of land grants and offices conferred by the king, in consultation with other officers of the court,  and on the other hand regulated by the laws of heaven. While one might be outside the bounds of the terrestrial regimentation, one was never outside of the celestial regulation. Let me be quite explicit here that this is not a common Chinese identity. The Chinese identity, and idea of China as a territory were quite a ways off. This is instead an ideological role structure based upon kinship and rank and land-holding. This is a form of transborder sovereignty. We may understand it both by its ability to transcend Zhou borders, but also by its ability to link feudal states inside the Zhou world order.

This principle, which we can think of in terms of terrestrial regimentation and celestial regulation, was challenged periodically and over time enforced differently. Ferguson and Mansbach point out that, “The relative isolation in which early Chinese polities and civilization developed meant that a ‘Chinese’ identity and loyalty to the ideal of a united China were rarely at issue. Nevertheless, the aspiration toward unity often flew in the face of the reality of disunity and civil strife.” (Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, Polities: authority, identities, and change,1996, pg. 192).

From the onset of the Zhou dynasty in about 1070 BC to the collapse of the Western Zhou rule in 722 BC we find this principle to be rather stable. It is after barbarian invasions, from the north and the west, forced the Zhou capital eastward from Zongahou to Luoyang that the underlying subsystems begin to shift suddenly. In moving eastward the Zhou king Pingwang was too weak to assert the control that he had formerly had, which had been marginal to begin with. The mandate remained in name and ideology, but ceased to regiment and regulate the affairs of the feudal lords. While they remained bound by a common identity and written language, they were now left to openly vie for power within the vacuum left by impotent Zhou king. The Spring and Autumn period was marked by constant and internecine warfare and remarkable intellectual ferment. (Xueqin Li and Kwang-chih Chang, Eastern Zhou and Qin civilizations, 1985, pg. 9).

In the beginning of this new intellectual environment we see the rise of the ba (hegemony) system. Yuri Pines, among others, have divided the Spring and Autumn period into three distinct eras.261 In the first from about 722 to 643 the mandate still held significant power among the competing lords. In the second era, from 643 to 546, the ba system became the dominant mode of interaction. The last phase from 546 to 453 saw the collapse of the ba system into a state or near anarchy that hastened the shift towards the Warring States Period. This section with deal with the first two phases of the Chunqiu period and the following section will deal with the last phase.

It is during this first portion of the Chunqiu period that many of the intellectual foundations of a shifting sovereign principle were laid. The period between the fall of Western Zhou and the life of Confucius (Kung-fu Tzu) between 551 and 479 BC represent an attractive time to attach to the shift in the sovereign principles. The Warring States Period which began in roughly 403 BC is probably reflective both of the practical exigencies of the time as well as the revolution in ideas that had taken place during the Spring and Autumn Period. Pines contention is that the Confucian revolution that took place in the beginning of the Warring States Period was more reflective of the prior intellectual discourse than a new idea of sovereignty sui generis. The variety of innovations that took place during the Warring States Period are more reflective of the sort of competing solutions that characterized early modern Europe. The Spring and Autumn period were the moment when the principle of transborder sovereignty collapsed. The Warring States Period was the period when contending solutions battled it out for supremacy. The growing security subsystem encouraged new contenders to seek new alternative principles of rule, though they would continue to lack the overall power to enforce these new sovereign principles. The centuries following the shift represent the attempt to vie for the power of a unified empire which had only been agreed to in principle prior to that.

After the move to Luoyang, the Zhou kings, who always lacked the logistical ability to enforce peace over great distances, were effectively deposed. Though it could not be blamed on a dissolute corruption, as is often the case in traditional Chinese narratives, the king was weak regardless. His vassals, particularly the Duke of Zheng, Zheng Huan Gong, rose up to claim power in the empire. Though he would not claim the title of King, the deference to the Mandate of Heaven had weakened significantly. Other, less Sinitic states, such as Chu to the south were quicker to do away with the formalities of the kingship; their leaders began to refer to themselves as king despite the hierarchy implied by the mandate. On the one hand this implies that the sovereign principle had failed utterly and completely. On the other hand the contending states were still bound by some recognition of their common bonds and that domination of one another was somehow crucial to the survival of their own state. This suggests that the anarchy which they entered into was structured à priori by their recognition of each other. The resultant conflict over the leadership of the Zhou empire can be understood in this context. At the point when Duke Zheng began to assume hegemony over the whole of the Zhou system, the empire was still only marginally organized. States were small and segmented, and were mostly centered on walled cities. In between the zones of immediate control were numerous non-Zhou peoples. As Pines notes, “The ‘state’ was but a network of several walled cities and townships that were ruled from the capital.” (Pines. pg. 2).

With the move of the capital that network weakened significantly. There are two significant shifts to the ba system that took place during this period. First, in principle the shift from the mandate of heaven weakened the moral underpinnings of the united Zhou state without undermining the general fact of their unity. This presented a fundamental problem of organization. How does one unite the state without being able to use the Mandate of Heaven as a justification? The moves by Duke Zheng and later Duke Huan of Qi began to provide the template for this. Second, the growing states began to assert their control over their territory. The barbarians that forced the Zhou king to move west were in fact closely related to the nomadic people that interpenetrated the Zhou city-states. There was a direct threat to Zhou power in the midst of the numerous Zhou states. The solution borne out, in particular by Duke Huan, was to absorb the smaller city-states and form larger administrative units. Taken together these two problems and their solutions begin to point the way the next revolution in sovereign principles.

Duke Zheng’s innovation vis-à-vis the Mandate of Heaven was to balance between the order provided by heaven and the exigencies of realpolitik. On the one hand he engaged in base politics as needed, conferring and negotiating when necessary, and conquering and pillaging when necessary as well. On the other hand he limited the extent of his actions as he deemed them appropriate. In technical terms he was simultaneously bound by a logic of appropriateness and a logic of consequences. It is perhaps more apt, to reflect on the period as characterized by a logic of argumentation in the sense used by Risse. The justifications for the order and place of Heaven were brought up and debated in a discursive manner. The evolving ideology of this period did not spring from one individual’s mind, but emerged from a meeting of minds.

Duke Huan picked up Zheng’s solution, though it would continue to evolve, and applied it to the organizational problems of the period. The feudal organization in this period was highly inefficient. It was far more structured than France, but it was nonetheless reliant upon a series of demands falling from the king down through each level of subordinates. Duke Huan’s state of Qi revolutionized the structure of this system by forming administrative units divided by function and not by family. In so doing each function could be isolated and called upon for what issues were necessary. In the process of doing so Qi was able to absorb numerous bordering states while also exerting control over the other powerful states that were beginning to emerge. Where the mandate system was organized by the dual principles of regimentation and regulation, the ba system was organized by the principles of competitive centralization and administrative efficiency. The state with the most efficient allocation of resources and hierarchy derived the right through strategic superiority to demand the fealty of the other states. It was not purely a principle of domination through preponderance. It was also a far more impersonal principle than those discussed earlier in the dissertation. As we shall see in subsequent sections, while this principle came to define numerous possible outcomes the guiding principle of a centralizing hegemony was nevertheless constant. Strategies for centralization and efficiency varied, copycatting was prevalent, but the power of one state over others remained a central tenet of the system. This set of principles was delineated in the first phases of the Spring and Autumn Period.

The end of the Chunqiu period was defined almost entirely by the successive hegemonies of Jin and Chu. This section will show how, despite the shifting balance of power the essential sovereign principle remained the same. D. C. Lau points out that in Confucius’ Analects the phrase Heaven’s Mandate (tien ming) is only used twice. (D. C. Lau, The analects (Lun yü) of Confucius, 1979, pg. 27).

Pines, argues convincingly that this is because pragmatic politics had eroded the extent to which people could trust in an understandable esoteric world order, “Reliance on Heaven’s justice was not a convincing way of dealing with acute political problems.” (Pines. pg. 64).

Jin’s rise was predicated upon this newly forming distinction. Situated to the north of the central plain upon which the Empire was based Jin was at once forced to contend with barbarians invasions from the north and brutal Chinese politics to the south. It was nevertheless a superior state in many regards. Its most important innovation occurred under Jin Xian Gong. He sought to eliminate the dominance of aristocracy and kinship linkages in a decidedly non-Confucian way. Xian Gong consolidated power in numerous states by killing or otherwise overthrowing the local elites still tied into the royal lineage.The growing administrative capacities of the states during this period led to numerous wars in which states were eliminated and leaders were assassinated. (Nylan Walker, The five "Confucian" classics, 2001, pp. 262-3).

The Jin ruling class was the best at doing this for nearly 80 years. While this may seem short-lived, given the uncertainty of the times it was impressive regardless. What we find however is that even with this fairly ruthless shift from kinship based aristocracy to bureaucratic expansion the basic principles of rule remained the same. The centrality of the common identity and the pursuit of power over other contending powers continued to hold the international order together. Some speak of the balancing centripetal and centrifugal pressures that define Chinese history, but even in the face of these numerous competing states we ought to be startled at the strength of the centripetal forces at work. Engaged in bloody and ruthless wars, competing for hegemony over the system, not only did the lords continue to accept their essential commonalities, those commonalities spread into the marcher regions of the international order. The speed of assimilation during this period was remarkable.

Eventually the state of Chu began its ascension to a prominent position in the Zhou world order. Chu developed on its own outside of the Zhou dynasty. For a time in the middle to late Chunqiu period became its most powerful state. Chu attempted to take control of the ba during the course of its rise, but it was stymied in numerous circumstances by the other contending states of the time, Qi, Qin, Jin, and later Wu. Chu was far more powerful than any other single state. Jin had, by that time, fallen back into the pack. Together with other states Jin was able to check Chu power. However Chu was still able to introduce its own innovations into the international order. Chief among them was the complete dismissal of the Mandate of Heaven. (Constance A. Cook, The Ideology of the Chu Ruling Class: Ritual Rhetoric. In Defining chu: image and reality in ancient China, edited by J. S. Major and C. A. Cook, 1999, pp. 70-1).

Though unable to fully shoulder the power and responsibilities of the ba, the Chu were nonetheless able to deeply influence the discourse of power at the time. Trade, warfare, and assimilation continued apace of each other, while the ideological scope of the mandate shrank and became less relevant relative to other contending ideologies. The Chu focused the justification for their power on neither a mandate nor destiny, but on the pragmatic facts of their centralization and bureaucratization. Ironically, the instability of the Chunqiu period finally resulted in a stable sovereign principle precisely when no power was able to dominate enough to implement it. Numerous scholars, including Hui, have referred to this period as a multi-state system based upon balance of power politics. Rightly so, the logic of balancing was dominant during this period. However, the immediate practicalities of balance of power politics continued to operate under the umbrella of competing attempts at domination based, in part, on the Chu model of rule—hereditary kingships, centralized bureaucracies, and discredited minor nobility. “Domains were no longer to be divided among the relatives and sons of rulers as fiefs; by the end of the [Chunqiu] period the common practice was to appoint magistrates to govern the districts of a state. Such an administration had long been in effect in Chu. (Cho-yün Hsü, Ancient China in transition: an analysis of social mobility, 722-222 B.C, 1965,pg. 92).

The Warring States Period that followed, as I shall show in the following section, was in some ways inevitable, and inevitably fleeting. The scope of every subsystem was growing beyond any individual state, but the rulers of each were incapable of defeating each other immediately. On the surface of things the Warring States period ushered in a brutal era of war and contestation among the remaining great powers. This is certainly one of the implied consequences of having fewer powers, consolidated states, and continuing competition for dominance. However, as Hsu points out this period actually experienced fewer wars albeit with ten times as many soldiers. (Ibid. pp. 62-8).

It would seem as if the generals of the Warring States period sought larger engagements with more decisive outcomes, this certainly follows from widely accepted strategies as enumerated in the Art of War. On the basis of war frequency the Warring States period is something of a misnomer; on the basis of casualties it is, however, quite apt. Sun Tzu’s strategy relied on equal parts deterrence and deception. He believed in building a large army to discourage battle in the first place, but in the course of battle he believed in value of surprise as a means of minimizing losses. Confucius believed that the regulations of the Mandate of Heaven fell to each individual, not just the elites, and indeed the peasantry and the gentry were absorbed into the warring classes. The dominance of chivalry and chariot warfare was gradually replaced by the more ‘democratic’ strategy of sending hundred of thousands of soldiers in waves against each other. Given the intensity of wars and the nature of the strategies one is tempted to classify it as an example of realist logic. The dominant strategies among the states during the time amounted to variations in bandwagoning and balancing strategies.

There are problems with such an analysis. If we were to accept a defensive version of realism we ought to expect the states to compete for power up to the point where they guaranteed their own security. Alternatively if we were to accept an offensive version of realism the would compete for power up to the point that, as Clausewitz argued, “the establishment of an equilibrium is no longer conceivable” (Carl von Clausewitz, The book of war (Sunzi), Edited by C. Carr, 2000, pg. 923).

States ought to compete for hegemony or domination, and not peace. On the surface the latter certainly seems to be true. Each state dismissed the need to a hegemon, but they each individually sought to assume that role. Because of this balancing techniques were prevalent in the early part of Zhanguo period and continued to be used throughout the period. Contradicting the contention that there was a growing logic of domination s was the fate of all previous domination-seekers Qi, soon experienced a decline in power. And here it is not that logics shifted, but that capacities shifted. The offensive realist position seems to be more descriptive, but even this claim is problematic. It is not at all clear that the Warring States pursued power purely for the sake of power and/or security. Rather it seems more likely that they pursued a similar goal: domination of the Zhou order. The goal of politics, policy, and war then seems to dedicated to an agreed upon norm; each state individually pursued domination over a predefined concept, a Zhou world order, rather than a nebulous concept like power or domination.

After Confucius a great flowering of philosophies took place. We find his disciple Mencius preaching the inherent goodness of people, the Taoists preaching a curious political philosophy of reflection and inaction, and the Legalists preaching the benefits of power politics and order. (Adda B. Bozeman, Politics and culture in international history: from the ancient Near East to the opening of the modern age, 1994, pp. 140-141).

It was the discourse between these schools that was notable. By the end of the Warring States period the Legalists had formed the dominant core of political philosophy, “From the age of Confucius onward, the Chinese people in general and their political thinkers in particular began to think about political matters in terms of the world.” (Youlan Feng and Derk Bodde, A short history of Chinese philosophy, 1948, pg. 181).

While power politics and administrative efficiency became paramount the discursive milieu in which it occurred suggested a common goal for that pursuit of power. Any revolutions that occurred after Confucius and during this period were indeed substantial, but only reinforced trends that had been in place before Confucius during the rise of Qi. During the Zhanguo period a declining Jin state and a rising Chu state were pitted against each other with many of the middle states playing decisive roles in the war between them. Out of these initial battles other states began to rise. The first of these was Wu. The Jin state broke apart during a period of civil strife into three separate states: Han, Wu, and Zhao. Of them Wu remained the most vital. Wu was succeeded by Wei and finally by Qin. Each of these only realized a very brief sort of dominance and nothing resembling the ba system that had existed previously. In each of these states their ascendance was formed in the same way that Qi had realized its dominance: through administrative innovation to improve their ability to rule over a territory that they already recognized as unitary whole. In Wei, for example, large-scale feudal farming was replaced by small-scale farming with lands allocated to households. This allowed for increased production with decreased control which further increased the efficiency of the state. Competing states would quickly copy the innovations of the rising state in order to manage and restrain each other’s ability to dominate. Over a relatively short period of time administrative capacities to manage the various subsystems changed and improved at a remarkable pace. The sovereign principle remained more or less totalizing though: centralize all power, remove challengers, and increase efficiency. Whether proto-Confucian, Confucian, or Legalist all of these philosophies reinforced the pre-existing sovereign principle. It was really a matter of finding the proper set of administrative tools to realize the new efficiency principle embedded in this Qi sovereign principle. In many ways Qin’s rise to dominance was surprising. Where Chu was large and wealthy, Qin was smaller and relatively poor. Where Wu formed a central part of the Chinese core states, Qin languished on the eastern periphery. Where Wei and Qi were contemporary innovators with much greater power and wealth Qin was ignored, under constrant threat and in a strategically inopportune place. All of that began to change around under the ministrations of Shang Yang. Shang Yang was chief minister to the Qin duke Hsiao around 358 BC. (Mark E. Lewis, Warring States Political 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, pg. 635).

While minister he was equally formidable and despicable; he was a leader cut in Machiavellian cloth. It was his internal reforms that allowed Qin to gain the strength and momentum necessary to conquer the whole of the Zhou order even after his execution. We can focus simply and briefly on the three reformations that had the most profound consequences on Qin’s fortunes: agricultural reform, abolishing slave labor, and the creation of a written and stable set of laws. Beginning with last, the Book of Law, which Shang Yang introduced created what Li Yu-Ning has referred to as a principle of collective liability. Anybody associated with a lawbreaker was equally culpable. The draconian punishments ensconced in the law had a profound effect on the relationship between the gentry and the aristocracy, “an important purpose of this [law] was to strike at the resistance of the declining slave owner-aristocrats, in order to safeguard the interests of [the] newly rising landlord class, and thereby consolidate its regime.” Yu-ning Li, Introduction. In Shang Yang's reforms and state control in China, edited by K. u. Yang and Y. Li, 1977). The laws, which threatened death to those that abetted criminals in any way, worked to encourage compliance with the other reforms that Shang Yang undertook. In so doing Shang Yang was able to erode the economic base of aristocratic power. Shang Yang’s agricultural reforms put farms into the hands of peasant farmers and removed them from aristocratic control. In tandem his agricultural and legal reforms encouraged greater production while simultaneously removing levels of governance between the central bureaucracy and the masses. The policy of collective liability was similarly applied to the productive efforts of the masses. Lack of production was grounds for punishment. Feudal tithing was eliminated at the same time that command and control functions of the bureaucracy were extended and deepened. This level of despotism and cruelty would continue to define Qin even after its victory and the establishment of the Qin dynasty. Shang Yang was known as a capable general, but it was primarily after his death that Qin began the process of shifting from a defensive development phase to an offensive consolidation phase. In 316 BC Qin began conquering the states in its immediate vicinity. Besides evidencing the superior strength that was developing in the state of Qin it provided a practical strategic advantage. The local consolidation during this period allowed Qin to remove its immediate geopolitical threats and provide a secure base from which it could strike out at neighboring states. Its new territory was well-protected from most barbarian incursions and had secured an important breadbasket—the states of Shu and Ba that bordered Qin to the south. (Burton Watson, Intro duction. In Han Feizi: basic writings, edited by F. Han and B. Watson, 2003, pg. 4).

This strategic advantage would prove decisive in securing further political advantages. Subsequent rulers would draw heavily upon Shang Yang’s administrative innovations, but would also develop their own methods of conquest and consolidation. Influential in the consolidation process was a Legalist philosopher named Han Feizi. Disregarded in his own state, his teachings were ironically used by the king of Qin, Qin Ying Zheng, who later conquered Han Feizi’s home state. Burton Watson says of Han Feizi, “He is not the inventor of Legalism, buts its perfecter, having left us the final and most readable exposition of its theories.” (Burton Watson, Introduction. In Han Feizi: basic writings, edited by F. Han and B. Watson, 2003, pg. 4).

Inasmuch as it was Qin Ying Zheng who would come to conquer the six other major states and consolidate China under imperial rule we ought to be particularly interested in what Han Feizi had to say about the nature of power, politics, and rule. The core concepts that he supported were deception and control. This was not an overt form of deception, but rather one that poker players might call ‘keeping it close to the vest’. Among ministers, allies, and enemies the chief imperative for the leader was to never reveal what he wanted. Doing so allowed ministers to curry favor and build private cliques and it allowed other states to prepare for one’s advances, diplomatic or otherwise. The core of this idea is that the ruler should act as a unitary ruler. As Han Feizi puts it:…the Way itself is never plural, therefore it is called a unity. For this reason the enlightened ruler prizes solitariness, which is the characteristic of the Way. The ruler and his ministers do not follow the same way. The ministers name their proposals, the ruler holds fast to the name, and the ministers come forward with the results. When names and results match, then superior and inferior will achieve harmony. The way to listen to the words of the ministers is to take the statements that come from them and compare them with the powers that have been invested in them. Therefore you must examine names carefully in order to establish ranks, clarify duties in order to distinguish worth. This is the way to listen to the words of others: be silent as though in a drunken stupor. . . . Let others say their piece, I will gain knowledge thereby. (Fei Han and Burton Watson. Han Feizi: basic writings, Translations from the Asian classics, 2003, pp. 37-8).

This passage espouses a new and final evolution of the prior sovereign principle. Where prior rulers had progressively removed lesser nobility from the offices of power in favor of what some have termed a meritocracy they still allowed too much of what Han Feizi might term a ‘plurality’. Left to their own devices the ministers, while more loyal than the aristocracy, would still plot to gain power, curry favor, and generally improve their standing. By gathering as much information as possible while not revealing any of his own information or preferences, the ruler was thus able to consolidate power within the state and initiate actions surreptitiously outside the state. Subsequent writings by Han Feizi suggest that the ruler ought to build bridges with other states rather than arbitrarily maintain adversarial relationships with powerful opponents and ought to exploit those advantages where necessary. The state had finally become a unitary thing in the minds of rulers and philosophers alike. It was neither ministers, nor rulers who were the state, but the reason of the state, the Way, that represented the state. The ruler was now entreated to make decisions solely on the basis of relative power. The Ten Faults warns against using increased power towards decadent ends.

Outside the state the traditional balancing strategies of lianheng (horizontal balancing similar to bandwagoning) and hezong (vertical balancing similar to balancing) became tools to be used when advantageous and spurned when disadvantageous. While other states debated the superiority of one strategy over the other and only changed reluctantly Qin was notable because of the alacrity and fluidity of its strategy. This manner of administrating the state and interstate relations was aided in large part by Qin Pin Zheng’s ability to comprehend and act upon Han Feizi’s admonitions. In 221 when Qin Ping Zheng became Qin Shi Huangdi (First Emperor of Qin) the Zhou system had finally and fundamentally shifted under the weight and efficiency of this new ascendant sovereign principle; a sovereign principle far closer to modern absolute sovereignty. How were the social subsystems evolving during this period? This is, of course, a central question. It is thus, beneficial to proceed with a brief examination of the state of the subsystems at the beginning of the Western Zhou period.

There is some disagreement regarding the nature and scope of the Western Zhou security subsystem. Without a doubt, it was founded upon the technology of the chariot, but the centrality of the chariot to actual battlefield tactics is somewhat unclear. Lewis contends that chariot warfare was largely ornamental, in much the same way that combat between knights in Europe was during the Middle Ages, but Hsu and Linduff argue that it was the combined superiority of Zhou tactics over broken ground and the ability of the Zhou to use the chariot as a command and control structure that led to their early triumphs over the Shang. (Western Chou civilization. pg. 85).

This difference of opinion suggests that in spite of the technology available at the time certain norms of warfare existed beforehand which limited the organization and extent of warfare. Regardless of whether one believes Lewis or Hsu and Linduff we ought to be struck by both the small size of the armies, usually smaller than 30,000 strong, and the odd centrality of chariots given the plethora of hills, mountains, and rivers. The Zhou superiority in tactics was thus a marginal one. We can infer from this a number of things about the centrality of warfare and the scope of the security subsystem. The most important of these was that there was a concerted effort to limit the art of war to a specific class. This limitation had a profound effect on the ability of the Zhou to exert their power over great distances. The logistical abilities that a larger army provides that were missing from the Western Zhou period. The nature of the chariot, an offensive weapon, and the small size of the armies forced the security subsystem into a secondary role. While one could communicate with one’s neighbors because of the horse one was also unable to exert coercive control over them from a distance.

Zhou territory was vast; from the capital the king was limited in his ability to enforce any peace among his vassals or the barbarians. The Zhou population was not small by any means and we can thus attribute a good deal of this limitation to the structure of the security subsystem. Military honors and battlefield successes were largely reserved for the elites. Foot soldiers were present, but were artificially limited in their unit size and prescribed role during this period. The material for an expansive security subsystem had probably existed from early on in the Zhou dynasty, but during the Western Zhou period this type of expansion did not take place with any regularlity. Over the course of the eight centuries from the rise of Zhou to the rise of Qin the security subsystem underwent remarkable changes. By the time Qin Ping Zheng came to power armies had shifted to massive infantries. The chariot was almost entirely displaced. The aristocratic norm of calling out one’s opponent and engaging in individual combat had been replaced by massive engagements with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sometimes hundreds of thousands of casualties. The new principle of absolute sovereignty accelerated the process of creating new, better, bigger, and faster armies.

We have already earlier presented an overview of the different Chinese dynasties:

From the ascendance of King Wen to the beginning of the Chunqiu period the relative scope of the security subsystem remained the same. It had a central role in aristocratic identity, but a subsidiary role to the control of the dynasty. While wars were rather frequent, engagements were limited, and the art of conquering and occupying territory was even more limited. However, around the time of Sun Tzu we know that armies began to expand rapidly and that the centrality of the chariot to warfare began to decline as well. This shift happened rather close to the period in which the sovereign principle shifted from transborder to absolute. The trade subsystem was limited as well. For example, we know that while more advanced and developed than other early civilizations, because of the prevalence of iron in the area, that the Zhou dynasty did not cultivate land much beyond its network of interlinked cities. The abundance of iron allowed for improvements in agriculture that the west would not experience for quite some time.

However, the feudal system of regulating the farms ensured that the productive capacities of the farmers were arbitrarily limited. China was growing cities and states at a remarkable rate. The growth and dominance of the Zhou dynasty was aided by their agricultural techniques and limited by their inability to profit from it efficiently. The role structure of this trade subsystem was based largely on slavery and serfdom. Free farmers were only small parts of the system during the Western Zhou period. The diffuse network of fiefs meant that the amount of land being tilled was correspondingly small. The serfs and slaves would work near the fief, but much of the intermediate frontiers between the fiefs was left to barbarians and was only mildly integrated into the economic system of the Zhou dynasty. The trade subsystem was limited relative to the ideological subsystem. Near the middle of the Chunqiu period coinage began to appear in the Zhou empire. The first coins to be found throughout the Zhou states were those of Jin.

Jin held the ba from 632 BC to roughly 550 BC. We can attribute this shift in technology and the increasing scope of the trade subsystem to this period. Perhaps coins had originated prior to this period, but they had not found wide circulation in the way that Jin’s coinage had. The use of coinage in place of other alternatives had two profound effects on the trade subsystem. First, it disrupted the linkage between feudal lords and peasants. It was no longer necessary to have a slave class and an overlord class. Control could be exerted through taxation. By releasing the peasants from the control of the aristocracy, and often then forcing them towards small household farming, subsequent rulers were able to vastly increase the size of the land being tilled. Large populations farming small plots close to the city were becoming obsolete. By the time Shang Yang began implementing changes the goal had shifted broadly to cultivating as much as area as possible and directly monitoring and taxing the product of the peasants. The change in the trade and security subsystems is therefore nearly identical. Their relative scopes had always been quite similar to each other, but had been outstripped by the ideological subsystem. During the Chunqiu period both began to shift rapidly outwards. The declining viability of the Mandate of Heaven was foretold by the rising importance of infantry armies and currency based economies. Once Jin began to use coinage widely the mandate was effectively defunct. The state of Qi’s ascendance to hegemon started the process by which these other events began to unfold.

In light of our current investigation it is also notable that during the long period of consolidation no state had to undertake an extensive program of Sinicization in the way that Romans and the French had to undertake nation-building projects. This ought to highlight to us the extent which the Zhou empire during this period was a consolidated state waiting to be realized. This is not to imply a teleological inevitability to the rise of the Qin dynasty, the aristocracy could have responded differently, the barbarian incursions could have had more or less profound consequences, instead it suggests that the ability of one state to dominate the others was informed by an understanding of all the states as inherently linked. Where the security and trade subsystems changed and grew rapidly in the middle of the Chunqiu period, the ideological subsystem seems to have been rather stagnant. China, during this period, did not grow substantially, but its internal unity rapidly increased. The shift from transborder sovereignty to absolute sovereignty was a case of the state catching up to the nation rather than, in the European case, the nation catching up to the state. Mark Lewis noted of this shift that: The new style of polity that appeared in the Warring States period was both an expansion and a contraction of the old Zhou model. It was an expansion in that it developed a full-blown territorial state in place of the city-based state of the Zhou world, but it was a contraction in that it concentrated all power in the court of the single monarch. . . . The foundations of these changes were laid in the Spring and Autumn period, when the pressures of war which had led both rulers and ministerial households to increase their armies through the recruitment of the rural populace. (Lewis, Mark E. Ibid. Warring States Political History. pp. 597-8).

The essential structure of the ideological subsystem at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty was built on a two-fold distinction. One tenet held the centrality of king and the Mandate of Heaven to legitimize his rule. The second tenet held the centrality of law and order variously derived as the overarching legitimating factor for any given ruler. This sounds more beneficent than it actually was, but among elites it provided the justification for both their overthrow of the Shang dynasty and the stability of their rule during the Western Zhou period. Working together the first rule created a center of gravity within the international order while the second rule expanded the scope of the subsystem to new states and new peoples. The moralistic underpinnings of the mandate provided compelling leverage for negotiations with barbarian peoples as the Zhou began to develop the frontiers inside and outside their empire.

After the shift to Luoyang and the formation of the ba system the first tenet of the ideological subsystem, the centrality of the king, began to weaken fundamentally. Without the centralizing force of the king the second part of the ideological subsystem continued to function, but lost much of its coherence. The intellectual milieu that developed during the end of the Chunqiu period reflected much of this problem. Zhou elites were struggling to form a legitimate basis for rule absent a consistently legitimate ruler. The resulting uncertainty caused by this loss of a center caused the ideological subsystem to stagnate. Many of the roles remained the same; the relationship of the states to each other and the hierarchy among nobles remained more or less consistent. Other roles changed significantly. The relationship between feudal lords and royal ministers changed fundamentally after the Legalist philosophies came to dominate the political and social realms. The ideological subsystem stagnated because many of the policies of development were turned inwards on the states themselves. The content of Zhou identity was fairly stable, but the organization, the social hierarchy, that it implied underwent drastic changes. The shift from kinship-based aristocracy to a meritocracy created profound upheavals in Zhou society. The ultimate effect was to increase the density of relationships in a stable area rather than expand that area. The growth of the Zhou order during the period was rather slow. A few states on periphery did come to play a major role in the politics of the time, Chu and Qin, chief among them, however the relative growth of this subsystem slowed substantially during the Eastern Zhou period. It should come as no surprise then that the relatively large size of the ideological subsystem as the beginning of Western Zhou period began to have a smaller and smaller impact on Zhou sovereign principles during the Chunqiu period. Transborder sovereignty evolved because the Zhou king was able to establish a broad kinship network, over a thousand fiefdoms, over the whole of ancient China, and keep those fiefs linked through fealty to the Mandate of Heaven. Even when the number of states had dwindled drastically to around one hundred fifty by the beginning of the Chunqiu period the mandate was still a compelling linkage between the remaining states. The mandate was strong, but the ability to develop and control the internal regions of the state was very limited. Even up through the beginning of the Spring and Autumn period non-Chinese peoples lived in the lands between the fiefs and were outside the immediate control of the feudal lords and largely excluded from the trade patterns that were developing.

During the Chunqiu period Zhou’s policies of expansion turned inwards. Many of the social and technological improvements were focused on growing the individual states. The ideological subsystem became dedicated to the expansion and improvement of the individual states. This allowed for the absorption and expulsion of the non-Chinese peoples and also allowed for a dramatic increase in productive capacity. In so doing the states increased the population from which they could draw troops for the incessant and internecine wars in which they were engaged. Furthermore they increased their capacity to fund those wars and provide the logistical support necessary to sustain the wars over great distances. The inward focus of the ideological subsystem was countered by the expanding importance of the trade and security subsystems. By the time we reach the Zhanguo period the sovereign principle had already shifted to absolute sovereignty. Within the context of the warring states each had realized what was at stake and the basic process by which one might achieve dominance. The rapid and successive improvements in the bureaucracies’ extractive and organizational capacities represent competitive attempts be the first to unite the seven states and to be the first to reclaim the Mandate of Heaven. Sima Qian, the Grand Historian of the Han Dynasty, who compiled much of what we know about ancient China, quotes Qin Ping Zheng’s advisors as saying, “But now Your Majesty had raised troops to punish the evil and remiss, brought peace to the world, made the entire area within the seas into provinces and districts, and insured that laws and rulings shall proceed from a single authority. From highest antiquity to the present, such a thing has never occurred before, nor could the Five Emperors equal it.” (Qian Sima and Burton Watson, Records of the grand historian, Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 42-3).

This implies of course that the seven states considered themselves a bound group, “the world”, and that such a goal had been the aim of prior kings and emperors, “such a thing has never occurred before.” We can therefore accept that absolute sovereignty, as a principle, had existed prior to the first Qin emperor. The shift from transborder sovereignty to absolute sovereignty presents us with a distinctly different story than what we have traditionally accepted. We tend to accept without question the existence of the state before the nation, of the bureaucracy before territoriality, and of a heteronomous feudalism before an ordered and comprehensible anarchy. Instead, ancient China shows us a highly structured feudalism, a territorially bound state that struggled to develop a bureaucracy to govern it, and a nation rich in tradition before a state could grow powerful enough to govern it. These variations on feudalism lead us back to the basic premise of this dissertation. Sovereign principles are more complex, more fluid, and more varied than we tend to realize. Furthermore, it does not seem that technology or war or wealth by themselves dictate the course of this sovereign evolution and instead it seems to reinforce the claim that we have made earlier, that it is the relative scope of the underlying subsystems that dictates the timing and nature of sovereign shifts.

 

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