2 Feudalism in the new empire

A natural result of the situation thus produced was the turning of the country into a feudal state.  The conquerors were an alien minority, so that they had to march out and spread over the whole country.  Moreover, the allied tribal chieftains expected to be rewarded.  The territory to be governed was enormous, but the communications in northern China at that time were similar to those still existing not long ago in southern China—­narrow footpaths from one settlement to another.  It is very difficult to build roads in the loess of northern China; and the war-chariots that required roads had only just been introduced.  Under such conditions, the simplest way of administering the empire was to establish garrisons of the invading tribes in the various parts of the country under the command of their chieftains.  Thus separate regions of the country were distributed as fiefs.  If a former subject of the Shang surrendered betimes with the territory under his rule, or if there was one who could not be overcome by force, the Chou recognized him as a feudal lord.

We find in the early Chou time the typical signs of true feudalism:  fiefs were given in a ceremony in which symbolically a piece of earth was handed over to the new fiefholder, and his instalment, his rights and obligations were inscribed in a “charter”.  Most of the fiefholders were members of the Chou ruling family or members of the clan to which this family belonged; other fiefs were given to heads of the allied tribes.  The fiefholder (feudal lord) regarded the land of his fief, as far as he and his clan actually used it, as “clan” land; parts of this land he gave to members of his own branch-clan for their use without transferring rights of property, thus creating new sub-fiefs and sub-lords.  In much later times the concept of landed property of a family developed, and the whole concept of “clan” disappeared.  By 500 B.C., most feudal lords had retained only a dim memory that they originally belonged to the Chi clan of the Chou or to one of the few other original clans, and their so-called sub-lords felt themselves as members of independent noble families.  Slowly, then, the family names of later China began to develop, but it took many centuries until, at the time of the Han Dynasty, all citizens (slaves excluded) had accepted family names.  Then, reversely, families grew again into new clans.

Thus we have this picture of the early Chou state:  the imperial central power established in Shensi, near the present Sian; over a thousand feudal states, great and small, often consisting only of a small garrison, or sometimes a more considerable one, with the former chieftain as feudal lord over it.  Around these garrisons the old population lived on, in the north the Shang population, farther east and south various other peoples and cultures.  The conquerors’ garrisons were like islands in a sea.  Most of them formed new towns, walled, with a rectangular plan and central crossroads, similar to the European towns subsequently formed out of Roman encampments.  This town plan has been preserved to the present day.