Autumn and Spring
The five centuries prior of unification of China were divided into two periods, traditionally called the Spring and Autumn period (named after the Spring and Autumn Annals complied by Confucius, an aristocrat who lived toward its end) and the Warring-states period. In terms of technology, economic development, and political organization, China in the Spring and Autumn period lagged far behind that of the early Roman Republic. It caught up during the Warring-states period, when Legalist reformers prepared the institutional foundations of the imperial China.
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China in the Spring and Autumn period was still in the late bronze age. Its main weapon was the chariot, which was monopolized by aristocrats. Its economic and political organizations were "feudal". Private landed property right was unknown; land ownership was undifferentiated from fiefdom and political sovereignty. People lived their lives in communal farms and collectively worked the seigniorial fields without compensation. Individual families used allotted plots for subsistence but did not own them; the plots were rotated among families for fairness. There was no market for land. The more than a thousand fully independent tiny states were descendants of fiefdoms erected in the eleventh century BCE by the king of Zhou. Their rulers, mostly distant relatives, still retained the title of lords and paid lip service to the now powerless king. Each lord in turn parceled out his realm into fiefs for vassals, who also served as his ministers. The hereditary ministers owed loyalty to their lord only, not to the king. Thus although the king had notional authority over the world, substantive authority was distributed among feudal aristocrats, the lords and their ministers. The state was undifferentiated from the ruling family. All ministries were hereditary, many held their own fiefs, and most were relatives to the ruler. Qinqin, the love of relatives, was the prime political principle. Aristocrats punished offenders, but had no published laws to regulate the application of punishments. They deemed their personal discretion sufficed because of their superior status and virtue.
The big achievement of the Spring and Autumn was high culture. Centuries of easy life had bred polished aristocrats who quoted poetry in banquets and political discourses. Their texts would become Confucian Canons, which would provide a moral gloss of their rituals and standards. The precociousness of high culture relative to political and economic developments enabled bronze-age ideals to be frozen into the tenets of Confucianism and sway imperial China for more than two millennia. The rule of man and family values would continue to be the center of political principles.
The big achievement of the Spring and Autumn was high culture. Centuries of easy life had bred polished aristocrats who quoted poetry in banquets and political discourses. Their texts would become Confucian Canons, which would provide a moral gloss of their rituals and standards. The precociousness of high culture relative to political and economic developments enabled bronze-age ideals to be frozen into the tenets of Confucianism and sway imperial China for more than two millennia. The rule of man and family values would continue to be the center of political principles.
Questions:
- Why are these two periods call the Spring and the Autumn?
- What was life like in China during these two periods?
- What was the impact of "high culture" during this time?