hello everyone and welcome to a new episode of five minute history or quick chinese history or
whatever the heck i call this series today I'm gonna be talking about the zhou dynasty and the
zhou dynasty is probably its the most important complicated confusing time in Chinese history this
is intended to be an overview so I am probably going to miss a lot of points but I'll try to
cover the essentials okay let's get started the zhou dynasty lasted from about 1046 to 254 BC
that's a long time you guys and it's basically split into two parts the Western zhou in the
Eastern zhou. the zhou dynasty is considered one of the most important if not the most important
Chinese dynasty because of the emergence of a lot of foundational parts of Chinese
culture things like the daodejing the Mandate of Heaven the Analects of Confucius the emergence
of legalism the emergence of a lot of things that are considered fundamental to Chinese civilization
they all came about during this time so it can't be overlooked in a study of China well the zhou
coexisted with and at times were a tributary state to the shang and they're living in what
is now known as Shaanxi province and after they conquered the Shan they set up the new dynasty
the zhou dynasty under King Wu although some people credit it to his father one but you know
well the dynasty started of a dynasty begins kind of rough because after only two or three years of
ruling King Wu has to go and die hurray right and then after he died there's a whole string
of rebellions and revolts from from like all the different regional rulers and all the different
tribes and things like that it's chaos and so a new king is brought into power name was king
cheng but the thing is he's not very experienced so there's a guy there's a Duke the Duke of zhou
who is trying to help him and does things like he comes up with the Mandate of Heaven for when it
comes up with the fengjian system which we'll talk about in a minute and he also starts placated all
these tribal leaders and and like people of the the Shang giving them titles of nobility giving
them land things like that to make them happy and so the revolts and rebellions kind of die a
little bit die down a little bit I mean however there is a problem this territory that the zhou
dynasty are ruling is a little bit too big they have to decentralize it a little bit they have to
break it up a little bit so they establish what is called the fengjian system and the fengjian
system is almost like European feudalism because the Emperor's offer the feng - this land - to the
local Lords and they establish basically order vassal states called jain so we have the fengjian
system it starts out really clearly defined and it is a proper system we can easily keep track of
but it doesn't always stay that way now under this system male Nobles were granted troops and domains
based on their rank within society and eventually the people kind of everyone else are split into
what are called the four occupations now these occupations are eventually developed from
confusion and legalistic philosophers so they're the ones who come up with the four occupations a
little bit later now this all sounds well and good and very European and all that but there is a key
difference between European feudalism and Chinese feudalism the fengjian system and that is people
who are born into a certain class in China like if they were born to the golden class the craftsman
class they don't have to stay in that class forever they can you know change to whatever class
that they want you know based on their desires or their aptitudes things like that so people aren't
necessarily stuck into roles forever so that is a key difference between European feudalism and
chinese feudalism but there are more differences between the two we can get on to them you know on
another day nothing lasts forever and the fengjian system is no exception the local
Lords start competing with each other and there's you know all these rivalries and these rivalries
really overpower the sense of loyalty to the zhou itself so in some of these houses actually we're
able to rival the power and prestige of the joke things are already bad and then the 12th king of
the dynasty King yellow decides to make things even worse by deposing Queen Shen and the crown
prince in favor of you know some other people and so Shen's father who's understandably pissed off
mounts an attack against King you and you gets killed you know boohoo right and the Capitals
moved eastward it's moved from Haojiang to Chengzhou and Haojing was in present-day Xian and
Chengzhou is in what is now Luoyang so that's the beginning of the eastern zhou dynasty the eastern
zhou really marked the decline of the dynasty everything descends into chaos and the after the
capital is moved they really lose a lot of their power and they become a figurehead of basically
all the other states who are doing just basically whatever they want and this period becomes known
as the spring and autumn period which will get its own episode as well as the following period after
that which is the warring States period which is obviously not good even by the sound of the
name right during this spring and autumn period there about a hundred and fifty states that exist
at this time most of them get absorbed into the four big ones which are Qin, Jin, Qi, and Chu,
and this is a really crazy time because we are all like annexing each other there to clean war
against each other there are claims against each other and the power shifting from one person to
the next all the time from one moment to the next and eventually all this fighting leads to what's
known as the Partition of Jin in the warring States period now the warring States period
I think you can guess is a period where we see a lot of war all of these different states that just
mentioned it a couple of others they're fighting in this struggle for hegemony and eventually you
see the victory of the Qin state in the establish the Qin dynasty so hooray fantastic we have a
united China after the end of that however it's not all bad news with all this constant upheaval
and this war and it's fighting and all this stuff it inspires this guy named Sunzi to write a little
book you might have heard of called the art of war and he's not the only one there's a guy named
Confucius you might know him there's a guy named Lao Tzu you might know him there's a guy named
Xiangyang you might not know him there's a guy named mencius who you may or may not know but
all of these people emerged in the same period of time at the same period of time and they laid
the very foundation of what we know as Chinese philosophy and thought and really....classical
China! they lay the foundation of an all within this period the zhou dynasty this bring it on in
period and the warring States period not only continued to be a source of study for a lot of
people they also are a source of continuous creativity I live in China and in China when
you watch TV you see a lot of these oldest or dramas they're set during the zhou dynasty or
they are set during spring and autumn period they are set during the warring States period because
not only is it very interesting to study but it does lay the foundation the very foundation
of this culture and it cannot be overlooked if you say you want to study the history of China
ah okay so I finally rebooted this history series I've made my video about the zhou dynasty and oh
thank god it's about time too right so if you liked the video go ahead and click like on it
if you want to leave comments and we can talk about this really interesting time in Chinese
history if I'm new to you you're not familiar with me I do make China videos every single week so go
ahead and click Subscribe if you're interested in that kind of thing and guess that's about it