opportunities of expansion; thus they became more and more powerful.  In the south (that is to say, in the south of the Chou empire, in the present central China) the garrisons that founded feudal states were relatively small and widely separated; consequently their cultural system was largely absorbed into that of the aboriginal population, so that they developed into feudal states with a character of their own.  Three of these attained special importance—­(1) Ch’u, in the neighbourhood of the present Chungking and Hankow; (2) Wu, near the present Nanking; and (3) Yueeh, near the present Hangchow.  In 704 B.C. the feudal prince of Wu proclaimed himself “Wang”.  “Wang”, however was the title of the ruler of the Chou dynasty.  This meant that Wu broke away from the old Chou religion of Heaven, according to which there could be only one ruler (wang) in the world.

At the beginning of the seventh century it became customary for the ruler to unite with the feudal lord who was most powerful at the time.  This feudal lord became a dictator, and had the military power in his hands, like the shoguns in nineteenth-century Japan.  If there was a disturbance of the peace, he settled the matter by military means.  The first of these dictators was the feudal lord of the state of Ch’i, in the present province of Shantung.  This feudal state had grown considerably through the conquest of the outer end of the peninsula of Shantung, which until then had been independent.  Moreover, and this was of the utmost importance, the state of Ch’i was a trade centre.  Much of the bronze, and later all the iron, for use in northern China came from the south by road and in ships that went up the rivers to Ch’i, where it was distributed among the various regions of the north, north-east, and north-west.  In addition to this, through its command of portions of the coast, Ch’i had the means of producing salt, with which it met the needs of great areas of eastern China.  It was also in Ch’i that money was first used.  Thus Ch’i soon became a place of great luxury, far surpassing the court of the Chou, and Ch’i also became the centre of the most developed civilization.

[Illustration:  Map 2:  The principal feudal States in the feudal epoch. (roughly 722-481 B.C.)]

After the feudal lord of Ch’i, supported by the wealth and power of his feudal state, became dictator, he had to struggle not only against other feudal lords, but also many times against risings among the most various parts of the population, and especially against the nomad tribes in the southern part of the present province of Shansi.  In the seventh century not only Ch’i but the other feudal states had expanded.  The regions in which the nomad tribes were able to move had grown steadily smaller, and the feudal lords now set to work to bring the nomads of their country under their direct rule.  The greatest conflict of this period was the attack in 660 B.C. against the feudal state of Wei, in northern Honan.  The