More ‘segmented’ than ‘state’, then, Shang rule depended heavily on the energy of the sovereign. Judging by their divinations, the late Shang kings well appreciated this. As well as fulfilling their hectic ritual schedule, they ‘went out’, as the bones put it, repeatedly – to hunt, to fight, to oversee agriculture and to inspect their subordinate domains. They also removed their ‘capital’ (or cult centre) whenever it was thought to have become inauspicious, usually by reason of an enemy threat or some natural visitation. How often it moved is unclear since the site of the ‘capital’ was always called just ‘this place’ or ‘Shang’ (and latterly ‘Yin’) regardless of its location. Later texts mention seven removals, of which the Anyang site was certainly not the first but possibly the last. In fact Shang kingship has been well described as ‘peripatetic’.22
For all the lineage boasting, for all the mortuary consumption, the technological precocity, the ritual rectitude and the despotic power, the late Shang kingdom was but a local proto-state and one among many. It may have enjoyed greater dominion prior to 1200 BC but not thereafter. In no way did it anticipate the great unitary empire of ten centuries later. Yet by 1045 BC, the currently preferred date for Shang’s defeat by the Zhou, it had demonstrated many of the cultural traits that have come to be seen as typically, even peculiarly, Chinese; and it may well have been for this reason that later textual tradition selected the Shang for inclusion in that apostolic succession of dynasties.
The emphasis on kinship and lineage, on ancestor-worship, ritual observance and a calendrical system based on these, is obvious. Keightley also notes in the Shang’s ritual dealings what he calls ‘a characteristic this-worldliness’ that would colour later Chinese philosophy and religion.23 The ancestors and the gods had a practical part to play in human affairs; they were not so removed and transcendent as to be credited with impossible responsibilities like the creation of the world or the imposition of moral ‘commandments’; they were there, in and about their tombs and temple-tablets, to be consulted, activated and used – for their example, their wisdom and their considerable influence.
Shang bronze-casting and its astounding artistic achievements provide early evidence of China’s technological genius and aesthetic sophistication; but as is now clear, these skills and sensitivities were not exclusive to the Shang. Writing, on the other hand, may have been. It is remarkable enough that over three thousand years ago the Shang used a script that is recognisably Chinese today; that this script must have had a long pre-Anyang history is even more remarkable; and the use the Shang made of it is especially relevant. From the first, literacy was put to bureaucratic purpose. It was used to record official transactions and so, in effect, to produce historical documentation. Into the new era of textual record in the first millennium BC, literacy, authority and history went hand in hand.
c. 1050 BC – c. 250 BC.
FOOTPRINTS OF ZHOU
THIRD AND LAST OF THE PRE-IMPERIAL ‘Three Dynasties’ (Xia, Shang, Zhou), the Zhou supplanted the Shang as the supreme power in the lower Yellow River basin in c. 1045 BC. They would still be there nearly 800 years later. In the course of this dynastic marathon some thirty-nine kings followed one another, mostly in orderly father-to-son succession. None of China’s subsequent ruling lineages would last more than half as long; in fact the Zhou probably hold the world record for dynastic longevity.
Yet eight centuries – even BC ones – under a single dynasty could scarcely elapse without witnessing fundamental change. During this long haul the Zhou presided over an explosion in intellectual and artistic creativity that saw the composition of China’s first classic texts and a transformation in society, government, statecraft and warfare. History finally clambers out of the dark burial chambers and the bone-filled sacrificial pits into the fitfully documented light of day. Dates cease to be approximate, territories cease to be disjointed; battle sites can be located and the fortunes of war discerned. Coinage appears; so do public works such as defensive walls and schemes for irrigation and flood control. Horizons expand. New cities are created and more land is brought under cultivation. From the often laconic texts, there emerge recognisable personalities pursuing intelligible careers. Kinship and lineage are no longer the essential requisites for office; professional strategists and diplomats tout their services and tilt the scales of power. From the court, bureaucratic practices spread throughout the civil and military administration. Ritual undergoes what has been called a revolution. Subordinate jurisdictions emerge to parody and humble the mighty Zhou while competing aggressively with one another. State-formation proves, if anything, rather too successful.
In this catalogue of achievement nothing so became the Zhou themselves as their beginning. The early kings would be seen as epitomising ideals of just and virtuous rule, and their conduct would be the most closely studied and frequently cited of any in Chinese history. The later Zhou kings, on the other hand, would be more notable for the calibre of their contemporaries. Theirs was the age of Confucius and other sages, the birth era of Chinese philosophy, and the most fertile in terms of speculative enquiry and rational analysis. The long Zhou centuries, paralleling those of ancient Greece, combine both a heroic age and a classical age. In terms of China’s civilisation, they are seminal times.
Yet they get short shrift in some history books. One substantial and respected work manages to hurdle the Zhou’s eight centuries in as many pages, most of these being devoted to an explanation of the Chinese script and an excursion into world history.1 The Zhou deserve better, although it has to be admitted that their story is poorly served by the surviving texts. ‘These are but the dim footprints of ancient kings,’ declared Laozi, the personification of Daoist (Taoist) teaching, during a supposed conversation with Confucius recorded in the fourth-century BC Zhuangzi. ‘They tell us nothing of the force that guided their [i.e. the ancient kings’] steps…They are made by shoes but they are far from being shoes.’2
Nor is this forensic challenge the only problem facing the historian. Come the texts, come the Chinese penchant for naming names – then renaming (‘rectifying’) them while reappropriating the originals for other purposes. Non-Chinese readers will be appalled by the swarm of same-sounding people, places and titles lying in wait for them. Like those readers wedded to the idea of China’s manifest destiny as a unitary empire, they will be impatient to escape the enigmatic Zhou for their nemesis at the hands of Qin and for the triumphalism of Qin Shi Huangdi, ‘the First Emperor’.
To be fair, Zhou rule, though long, was not often glorious. Initiative deserted all but a handful of kings; their defeats outnumbered their victories, and retraction soon overwhelmed expansion. Arguably Zhou’s eight centuries comprised one of assertion followed by seven of reversion. Stripped progressively of territories, manpower, resources and relevance, they were eventually left with nothing but their legitimacy; had their kingdom been an empire, its protracted decline and fall would have rivalled that of Rome. Perhaps China needed the chaos of Zhou’s last centuries to appreciate the order, and accept the sacrifices, that the Qin experiment in integration would involve. Or perhaps the Zhou centuries tell a different and more controversial story. Their combination of dynastic longevity, intellectual activity and, for the most part, low-level strife, far from demonstrating the necessity of unification, could suggest the vitality of more restricted allegiances and more local cultural traditions. Perhaps it was empire, not multi-state competition, which was the aberration.
Ironically the Zhou themselves, in justifying their initial success, provided a rationale for their eventual downfall. Their origins are disputed, but by the twelfth century BC they had established a jurisdiction in the valley of the Wei, a Yellow River tributary whose corridor of cultivation and passage (the