Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Collapse
Fall of Western Zhou
Chinese dynasty (c.1046-c,771 BCE)
- 771 BCE
- Fenghao
- East Asia
Collapse
Chinese dynasty (c.1046-c,771 BCE)
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
The Western Zhou (Chinese: 西周; pinyin: Xīzhōu; c. 1046 – 771 BC) was a period of Chinese history corresponding roughly to the first half of the Zhou dynasty. It began in 1046 BC when King Wu of Zhou overthrew the Shang dynasty and ended in 771 BC when Quanrong mercenaries hired by the rebel Marquis of Shen sacked the Zhou capital Fenghao (which consisted of the twin cities Fengjing and Haojing) and killed King You of Zhou. The "Western" label for the period is a retronym referring to the relative location of the ruined Fenghao in the Wei River valley (near present-day Xi'an, Shaanxi province), which is about 340 km (210 miles) west of the subsequent new capital Luoyi (also known as Chengzhou, present-day Luoyang, Henan province) at the Lower Luo River valley, which had previously served as Zhou's secondary capital.
After exploiting the opportunity of the Shang dynasty's main forces being away on an expedition against the Dongyi, the earlier Zhou state under Ji Fa allied with other ancient Chinese states and rebelled against King Zhòu of Shang, defeating King Zhòu's hastily conscripted army of slaves and penal troops (who defected immediately) at the Battle of Muye. The Zhou state then became ascendant as the new universal suzerain of the Huaxia federacy for about 70 years until the disastrous Zhou–Chu War in 977 BC; thereafter, the Zhou court gradually declined in power and lost authority over its vassal states, which culminated in an aristocrat insurgency in 841 BC that forced King Li into exile and subsequently began a 14-year period of regency by nobles. The Zhou dynasty had a brief resurgence under King Li's son King Xuan, who scored a series of successful campaigns against the Four Barbarians, but suffered crushing defeats against the Xirong, particularly in 789 BC against the western Shen state (not to be confused with similarly named Shen state, which was a cadet state established in 821 BC at present-day Nanyang, Henan, also known as the "Southern Shen") where King Xuan's priced "southern division" was annihilated. To pacify the Shen state, King Xuan's son King You married the daughter of Marquis of Shen and named their son Yijiu as the crown prince. However, King You later favored a different consort Bao Si and attempted to replace Yijiu with Bao Si's son Bofu as the heir apparent. That enraged the Marquis of Shen, who rebelled in collaboration with another state Zeng and the Quanrong barbarians and defeated King You's royal forces at the Battle of Mount Li in 771 BC, killing King You in the process. The rebels then sieged and sacked the Zhou capital Fenghao, killing Bofu and Situ Duke Huan of Zheng and abducting Bao Si, thus ending the Western Zhou dynasty.
With the old capital ruined and the crown lands overrun by Quanrong invaders, the Zhou court under Yijiu (who became King Ping but was nothing more than a puppet ruler under his maternal grandfather) was forced to evacuate the Wei River valley and relocate east to Luoyi. This marked the beginning of the Eastern Zhou period, wherein central authority had been irreversibly eroded and Zhou politics became dominated by the ambitions of the now-autonomous vassals.
The valley of the Wei River was the homeland of the Zhou before their conquest of the Shang, and remained the political centre and directly-ruled royal domain throughout the Western Zhou period. It also contains the vast majority of archaeological finds from the period.
The valley is a graben formed in the Cenozoic era as part of the Fen–Wei Rift System. It is bounded on the south by the Qinling Mountains and on the west by the Liupan Mountains. To the north lies the Loess Plateau, into which the northern tributaries of the Wei have carved deep valleys. The valley is broad, with fertile soil, abundant rainfall and ground water from the Loess Plateau and Qinling Mountains. The areas to the west and north are much drier and less suited to agriculture.
The valley was known historically as the Guanzhong, or 'land within the passes'. To the east, a long and difficult road through the Hangu Pass, Sanmenxia and eastern extensions of the Qinling Mountains leads to the Luo River basin, which opens into the North China Plain. The route to the interior follows the Jing River to Xiao Pass on an eastern spur of the Liupan range and thence down the valley of the Qingshui River to the upper reaches of the Yellow River. This route would later be part of the Silk Road, and was used by armies throughout history. To the west, the Wei River passes through a deep gorge. The main route to the upper Wei valley followed the Qian River to Long Pass, and was still very difficult.
The origins of the Zhou are obscure. The archaeology of pre-conquest Wei valley is varied and complex, but no material culture comparable to the dynastic Zhou has been found. Archaeologists searching for the predynastic Zhou have focused on the Zhouyuan ('plain of Zhou'), a key ritual centre of the Western Zhou south of Qishan ('Mount Qi'), because Qishan is mentioned in the Odes. Two different pottery types are found in this area, and archaeologists differ on whether the people who produced one or the other, or both, were the ancestors of the Zhou. It is likely that several groups from across Shaanxi banded together to conquer the Shang.
The sequence of Western Zhou kings given by the Han historian Sima Qian is matched (except for a few minor character variants) by the list inscribed on the excavated Lai pan. Inscriptions and received texts hint at some irregularities in the succession, but these had apparently been smoothed out in the official narrative by the time of the Lai pan. Most scholars divide the Western Zhou into early, middle and late periods, which also correspond roughly to stylistic changes in bronze vessels.
Sima Qian felt unable to extend his chronological table beyond 841 BC, the first year of the Gonghe Regency, and there is still no accepted chronology of Chinese history before that point. The Cambridge History of Ancient China used dates determined by Edward L. Shaughnessy from the "current text" Bamboo Annals and bronze inscriptions. In 2000, the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project produced a schedule of dates based on received texts, bronze inscriptions, radiocarbon dating and astronomical events. However, several bronze inscriptions discovered since then are inconsistent with the project's dates.
The conquest is reflected in the material record by the sudden appearance throughout the Wei River basin of burials in the Shang style and sophisticated bronze vessels of all the types produced by the Shang, from whom the Zhou had evidently acquired skilled craftsmen, scribes and abundant resources. They also expanded the Late Shang practice of inscribing bronze vessels to create lengthy texts recording the accomplishments of their owners and honours bestowed on them by the king. The inscriptions also show that the Zhou had adopted Shang ancestor rituals. This adoption of Shang practices suggests an effort to legitimate Zhou rule. However, the Zhou did not adopt human sacrifice, which was so extensive in the Late Shang, or even mention it in any of their texts.
The Shi Qiang pan, part of a family cache found in western Shaanxi, was cast in the reign of King Gong by the latest in a family of scribes descended from a scribe brought to Shaanxi after the conquest. The lengthy inscription, summarizing the history of the Zhou and that of the Wei (微) family, begins:
Accordant with antiquity was King Wen! (He) first brought harmony to government. The Lord on High sent down fine virtue and great security. Extending to the high and low, he joined the ten thousand states.
Capturing and controlling was King Wu! (He) proceeded and campaigned through the four quarters, piercing Yin [= Shang] and governing its people. Eternally unfearful of the Di (Distant Ones), oh, he attacked the Yi minions.
Longer accounts are found in later sources. Both the Historical Records and the Bamboo Annals describe campaigns by King Wen in southern Shanxi. They state that King Wen moved the Zhou capital from Qiyi to Feng, and his son, King Wu, made a further move to Hao across the Feng River. King Wu is said to have expanded his father's campaigns to the Shang, defeating them in the decisive Battle of Muye, which is also described in the "Great brightness" song of the Classic of Poetry.
The 33-character inscription on the Li gui gives a brief contemporaneous account of the conquest, confirming the sexagenary date given by received sources:
When King Wu rectified [= conquered] Shang, it was jiazi (day 1) morning. ... On xinwei (day 8), the king was at Jian encampment and gave officer Li metal, used to cast for my honoured ancestor Zhan this precious ritual vessel.
According to the Yi Zhou Shu, the Zhou army spent two months in the area mopping up resistance before returning to the Wei valley. The received texts relate that King Wen left two or three of his brothers (depending on the source) to oversee the former Shang domains, nominally ruled by Wu Geng, the son of the last Shang king.
King Wu died two or three years after the conquest, triggering a crisis of the young state. According to the traditional histories, one of King Wu's brothers, the Duke of Zhou declared himself regent for King Wu's son, the future King Cheng. Later Confucian scholars, who glorified the Duke of Zhou, described the young king as a babe in his mother's arms, but other evidence indicates that he was a young man at the time. Some authors suggest that the Duke appointed himself king, and in the "Announcement to Kang" chapter of the Book of Documents he seems to speak as a king.
Wu Geng then rebelled against the new regime. The Shiji says that the brothers of King Wu tasked with supervising him conspired in the rebellion, but the Xinian in the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips says they were its first victims. The Duke of Zhou and his half-brother, the Duke of Shao, organized another eastern campaign. After three years they had regained the lost areas and expanded their domain over an area stretching into Shandong.
The victorious triumvirate of the Duke of Zhou, Duke of Shao and King Cheng then consolidated their control over this expanded territory. They built an eastern capital at Chengzhou (modern day Luoyang) and began founding colonies or states at strategic points in their domain. The most important were placed under members of the ruling family. These colonies are listed in the Zuozhuan, and some have been confirmed by archaeological finds. The inscription on the Mai zun narrates the ceremony in which King Cheng appointed a son of the Duke of Zhou to rule Xing.
Kings Cheng and Kang mounted numerous military campaigns to expand their domains. The Xiao Yu ding relates a victory over the Guifang, presumably in the Ordos region, late in the reign of King Kang. Several bronze inscriptions record a successful southern campaign in the Han River region, in the 16th year of King Zhao's reign. A second campaign in the same area three years later ended with King Zhao losing his armies and his own life, bringing the phase of expansion to a close.
During the reign of King Mu, the Zhou state shifted to the defensive, particularly in the east. The Bamboo Annals records a campaign against the Xu Rong, who had to be driven back from the eastern capital. The inscription on the Dong gui celebrates a defeat inflicted by the Zhou on the Dongyi near Ying, a colony set up by one of King Cheng's brothers to guard the southern approaches to the capital.
With the passing of generations, the family relationships between the king and the rulers of the colonies had also become more distant. Instead, the Zhou state developed a bureaucracy and formalized relations between the elites. There were reforms of the military, official titles and the distribution of land. A drastic shift in the style and types of bronze ritual vessels, formerly based on Late Shang models, also suggests a change in ritual practice at this time.
Very little historical information is available for the reigns of the next four kings, Gong, Yih, Xiao and Yi. Western Zhou kings were customarily succeeded by their oldest sons, but Sima Qian states, without explanation, that King Yih was succeeded by his uncle, who became King Xiao, and that on Xiao's death "the many lords restored" King Yih's son, King Yi. Bronze inscriptions of the time use two different royal calendars, and the Bamboo Annals mentions King Yih moving out of the capital. Some authors suggest that King Yih was forced out by his uncle, and the two were rivals for a time, but whatever happened is now obscure. The succession was already presented as a linear sequence of kings in the Lai pan, cast in the reign of King Yi's grandson.
Both Sima Qian and the Bamboo Annals state that King Yi boiled the Duke of Qi (in eastern Shandong) in a cauldron. A bronze inscription confirms a Zhou attack on Qi at this time. This incident, in a state originally founded by one of King Wu's generals, indicates the waning authority of the Zhou king. Soon afterwards, the Zhou were attacked by Chu, who reached as far as the Luo River before being driven off in a counterattack described in the Yu ding and Yu gui.
King Li embarked on defensive campaigns in the east and northwest. The received texts all present him in a negative light, and record that he was driven out of the capital into exile in the Fen River valley. Sources disagree on whether this was a revolt of the peasantry or the nobility, but agree that the king's infant son was barely saved from a mob. The Bamboo Annals, confirmed by bronze inscriptions, relate that control of the state passed to Lord He, instituting the Gonghe Regency. Sima Qian's belief that it was a co-regency was based on a misinterpretation of the name.
When King Li died in exile, his son became King Xuan. Both received texts and bronze inscriptions suggest that King Xuan acted quickly to secure the state. In his 5th year, he ordered a campaign against the Xianyun in the west, and then appointed the successful general to command the eastern territories. According to the Bamboo Annals, in the following year he ordered a campaign against the Huaiyi in the southeast. Bronze inscriptions record victories in this campaign and others against the Xianyun. He reinforced the south by relocating settlements from the Wei valley to the Nanyang basin and sought to improve relations with distant Zhou states in the northeast and east. At the same time, the king also had to contend with succession struggles in some of the old Zhou states.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Western Zhou”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.