Zhou

周

ZHOU

The Zhou Dynasty was founded by a feudal lord, Xībǎi, the Lord of the West, who revolted against the corrupt Shang and captured the western half of their empire. The actual founding of the new dynasty was left to his son, Wǔ-wáng. Both he and his immediate successors, who were based at Fēng, were sage rulers under whom the country enjoyed great prosperity. This period is called the Western Zhou and it marks the first time that the Chinese historical record becomes sufficiently trustworthy, detailed and accurate to assign dates to events (The first of these being the deposition of Lì-wáng and establishment of the Gònghé Regency in 842 BC).

This prosperous time came to an end in the reign of Yōu-wáng, who ignored the defence of the empire and dishonoured his wife, the daughter of an important feudal lord, leading to a noble uprising and nomadic invasion which sacked the capital in 771.

The Zhou survived this setback, relocating the capital further east to the city of Luoyang, beginning the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, but royal authority was fatally undermined. The feudal lords grew ever more powerful, and consolidated their domains into States, on which the Emperor was at first reliant and, later, dependant. These states began to compete among themselves for control of the whole empire and China descended into civil war.

Rather than deal with this problem, Zhou itself became ever more occupied by succession disputes, which made it easy for outside powers, especially the State of Qin in the west, to set up puppet Emperors wholly beholden to them. This could have evolved into some sort of Zhou-Qin symbiosis, were it not for the temporary collapse of Qin in 469, which saw several small states established as buffers between Zhou and Qin. While this Spring and Autumn Period was a time of decline for central control, it marked a great flowering of culture and intellectual thought; both Confucianism and Daoism were founded at this time.

This ushered in the Warring States period, during which the civil war between the feudal states intensified and Zhou declined further. The small territory still under exclusive Zhou control was, critically, divided into two states under the control of relatives of the Emperor rather than the Emperor himself. Zhou became so weak that it was a ripe target for attack even from second-tier states like Han, let alone major powers like Chu and the resurgent Qin. From the 320s, the other states ceased to recognise even the nominal overlordship of the Zhou, and Zhou was reduced to increasingly desperate convoluted diplomatic intrigues merely to maintain its existence. In 256 the last of these failed and Zhou was forced into a farcically one-sided war with the State of Qin, and after over seven hundred years of rule the Zhou dynasty finally came to an end.