According to the familiar five-stage theory of social formation, the Western Zhou Dynasty was once considered a slave society, and later it was considered a feudal society similar to the European Middle Ages. However, recent studies in European historiography have shown that the legitimacy of feudalism as an academic category has been destroyed. Professor Li Feng of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University has studied early Chinese history and archaeology for many years, and his books "The Fall of the Western Zhou" and "The Political System of the Western Zhou" have been published in Chinese in China, in which he points out that due to the fatal flaw of feudalism, the subversion of the concept of feudalism is also imperative.
In your book "The Political System of the Western Zhou Dynasty", you made a fierce criticism of the "Western Zhou Feudalism Theory", and we noticed that you pointed out that in the Western historiography circles, the foundation of the so-called "feudalism" in the European Middle Ages has been completely shaken, is this the cause of your criticism of the "Western Zhou Feudalism Theory"?
Li Feng: You can say that. First, however, I would like to clarify the issue of expression. The word "feudal" was created by thinkers during the Warring States Period, which refers to the so-called "feudal relatives, with the feudal Ping Zhou" ("Zuo Chuan" language) in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, thus forming the basic state system of the Western Zhou Dynasty. Of course, the words "feng" and "jian" both appear in the Jin literature materials of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and their semantics are basically the same as those used by Warring States thinkers. This concept of "feudalism" has been passed down in traditional Chinese historiography, such as Liu Zongyuan in the Tang Dynasty who wrote his famous work "On Feudalism". If it is said that it is the "feudal theory of the Western Zhou Dynasty" in this sense, then I have no objection. What I object to is the so-called "Western Zhou Feudalism" translated by Japanese scholars as "feudalism". After this translation and the widespread adoption of Chinese scholars, "feudalism" has become a new theoretical construct in modern Chinese historiography, rather than the meaning of "feudal relatives" in traditional historiography. Furthermore, the "Western Zhou Feudalism" in modern historiography also has two different meanings: the "Western Zhou Feudalism" referred to by Western scholars refers to the political system of the Western Zhou Dynasty (most scholars emphasize the political system aspect) similar to the so-called feudalism in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, and the main political relationship of the Western Zhou state is a feudal relationship. In contrast, the "Western Zhou Feudalism" referred to by Chinese scholars in the past refers to one of the five social forms, emphasizing the economic relations formed between landlords and peasants through land rent exploitation, but it is also the feudalism of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Therefore, it can be said that these two "Western Zhou feudal theories" in modern historiography have the same origin and different currents, but they are different from the "feudalism" mentioned in traditional historiography.
In the Western historiographical tradition, the concept of feudalism was established through a complex process, and its etymology is the French feu, feud, or feudum, which refers to a specific form of land tenure in the Middle Frankish kingdom. The term feudalism appeared around the middle of the nineteenth century, and of course it is also a theoretical construct in modern Western historiography, which in turn is added to medieval history. However, this concept was developed by Marc Bloch and F. Ganshov l.Ganshof) and other famous historians, which became a key concept that dominated the study of the Middle Ages in Europe. However, with the progress of Western historiography, the defects of the theoretical construction of feudalism were gradually exposed after the seventies of the twentieth century. The first to attack was Elizabeth A. Brown r.Brown), whose 1974 book The Concept: Feudalism and the European Medieval Historian reveals the inherent contradictions of this concept. Another heavy cannon against feudalism is Susan Reynolds' 1994 book Domains and Vassals: Reinterpreting the Evidence About the Middle Ages. In this book, Reynolds carefully analyzes the complex process by which the fief (domain) and vassal (vassal) systems, the two major elements of so-called feudalism, were formed independently in Europe, arguing that the real union of these two institutions is the formation of the so-called "fief-vassalic institutions;".This is Reynolds's formulation, which is generally used in the plural, instead of feudalism) was not completed until the eleventh or twelfth century, and the situation varied throughout Europe. In other words, the concept of feudalism does not encompass the entire history of the European Middle Ages, nor does it reflect the peculiar phenomena of different parts of Europe. On the contrary, it only prevents humanity from seeing these particular phenomena and understanding the complexities of European medieval history. Although the term is still used in Western historiography (especially in some works written for the general public), most scholars believe that the legitimacy of feudalism as an academic category has been destroyed. Even scholars who still use the concept tend to redefine it as etymology, i.e., as merely a system of rewarding fiefs (territories) (excluding the meaning of vassals).
In recent years, Chinese scholars have also criticized the concept of "feudalism" and its use in the study of Chinese history, but these criticisms have basically been carried out in the academic category of the five social forms. My own critique of this concept is a critique of its origins, and a critique based on different academic traditions (i.e., the Western historiographical tradition, including the Sinological tradition as historiography). If it is clear that feudalism has long been described in Western academia as a false construction, then it has become a false chain reaction to develop a model that generalizes social forms (the so-called "feudal society") and then applies this model to ancient Chinese society. This is a problem not only for Western non-Marxist historiography, but also for Marxist historiography (including modern Chinese historiography), which also has its roots in the nineteenth-century academic tradition in Europe. Because, it is imperative that we subvert this concept now.
What are the differences between the feudal system or the "domain-vassal system" in Western Europe under the new definition and the system actually implemented in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and are these differences fundamental?
Li Feng: Let me ask your question in another way, that is, what is the difference between the European medieval society and the actual system of the Western Zhou Dynasty?This issue can be divided into two different levels: appearance and substance. Appearances are phenomena that we can directly observe in historical sources, while essence is related to the different origins of the two societies, which can help us understand the deeper causes behind the appearances. First of all, the so-called vassalage is an exclusive private "marriage" between two free men. Its essence is a contractual unequal relationship based on legal equality and mutual responsibility (the key word here is "contractual", that is, the English contractual). However, the relationship between the king of Zhou and the princes was not like this, but a relationship between a monarch and a vassal, an absolutely unequal relationship between ruling and being ruled. It is not conceivable that a prince of the Western Zhou Dynasty could take the king of Zhou to court or propose to break off his vassal relationship with the king of Zhou. But the vassals of the European Middle Ages could do so. Second, the European Medieval Territory (FIEF) was not a type of full property;Rather, it is a piece of land that is received from the liege, whose rights are specified in the contract between the vassal and the liege. Fundamentally, the territory is a subsistence subsidy, it does not carry judicial power;Sometimes the judicial power of a piece of land belongs neither to a vassal nor to a lord, but to a third person. In this sense, the fiefdom is only one of the many different forms of land tenure or possession in the European Middle Ages, and is therefore not sufficient to summarize the land system of the European Middle Ages.
In contrast, the feudal state of the Western Zhou Dynasty was a concrete embodiment of the state power of the Western Zhou DynastyWhen the princes received the land, they also received a large population and the power to exercise political and judicial rule over the land. Thus, each fiefdom was a political entity with civil, economic, judicial, and military powers, which was completely different from the fief (fief) of the European Middle Ages. Thirdly, in terms of military affairs, one of the main purposes of the domain-vassal system in the Middle Ages in Europe was to reduce the burden on the lord to equip his warriors, so after the implementation of the domain-vassal system, the kings of Europe generally did not have a standing army, but only called their vassals to fight in wartime, and the vassals would bring their own knights (of course, this was not the only way for the king to organize an army). After the vassals enlisted, the custom in Europe was that they served only forty days, which was provided for by their contract for free service. After forty days they could leave at any time, and the lord had no right to require them to serve beyond the time limit without compensation. Regarding the military system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, we can be sure that the King of Zhou had a large standing army at hand, which is the Western Sixth Division and the Eighth Division of the Cheng Zhou Dynasty that are often mentioned in the Jin Wen. This is a completely different set of military systems from the domain-vassal system.
There are two other misconceptions that must be cleared up. First of all, many scholars, such as Herrlee G., the main advocate of the "feudalism of the Western Zhou Dynasty" in Western SinologyCreel used to mistake feudalism for a form of organization, and he believed that the Western Zhou Dynasty was organized in this way. But in reality, the fiefdom-vassal system is not a form of organization, but a way to ensure the effective functioning of the vassal system by constructing a new personal relationship between the king and his vassals (the lord-vassal relationship). Second, in the past, some scholars often compared the so-called "fifth-class lord" of the Western Zhou Dynasty with the title of nobility in the European Middle Ages, which is also a misunderstanding. The European titles of knighthood existed long before the advent of the fiefdom-vassal system, and they represented the basic political system of the Merovingian (5th-8th century) and Carolingian (8th-9th centuries AD) states, and were not part of the so-called feudalism. The so-called "fifth-class lord" is also not the system of the Western Zhou Dynasty. As I recently argued, the so-called "fifth-class" title series may actually be a system that arose in conjunction with the system of "hegemony" during the Spring and Autumn Period.
In essence, the emergence of the fiefdom-vassal system in Europe has its deep social background, and it is a special system formed under specific historical conditions. This system emerged in the European Middle Ages, mainly because Germanic society was still in a state of tribal organization, and its main social relations were expressed as a kind of private dependence of the warriors on their chiefs, and the lack of the sense of public power that had long been cultivated in the Latin peoples. On the other hand, after the occupation of the Roman Empire, the Germanic peoples accepted the legal concepts and even systems of the Latin peoples, especially the contract system. Therefore, in the case of the weakening of the ** regime, they fixed this private dependency relationship in the form of a legal contract and gradually promoted it, which played a positive role in promoting the reconstruction of political rights of the Franks during the Capetians. In other words, it is a way to ensure the proper functioning of ** by constructing a new contractual personal relationship between the king and his subjects, and it is a system that is attached to (or without) the original ** organization. It was essentially a way to strengthen royal power, not a form of organization that weakened it.
The Western Zhou state was the product of two crusades, and the process of its state formation and the logic of the organization of political power were fundamentally different from those of the Germanic states of the European Middle Ages. The essence of the Western Zhou state was to directly transform the kinship relationship between the Zhou king and his children into a form of state organization. Therefore, what the Zhou people used to maintain their authority over the local area was the blood bond and the marriage relationship between the Ji surname and the non-Ji clan, and the entire Western Zhou society could be said to be a large net woven by blood and marriage ties. There was no need or opportunity for the Zhou people to enforce a de jure contractual relationship and to strengthen political power. We are not saying that the Zhou people did not have a private contractual relationship;I know from the golden text that of course they have. However, the introduction of such a private contractual relationship into political relations and the formation of a recombination of political power may not have to be until the oath system of the Spring and Autumn Period. However, this is a product of the decline of the power of the Zhou people and the weakening of the blood clan system, which is a later change, not the system of the Western Zhou Dynasty.
My own discussion of the issue of "feudalism" first appeared in the Harvard Journal of Asian Studies in 2003, and was further discussed in the 2008 issue of The Political System of the Western Zhou Dynasty, with the aim of opposing the "Western Zhou Feudalism" that was popular in Western Sinology. It should be mentioned that in 2005, Professor Tin-bor Victoria Hui published her War and State Formation: A Comparison of Ancient China and Early Modern Europe, which is also an example of a comparative study of Chinese and Western history. Obviously, Xu Tianbo did not see my criticism of the "feudalism of the Western Zhou Dynasty", but compared it with the early modern history of Western Europe based on the feudalism of Zhou society. I recently had the pleasure of reading a long (unpublished) review of Xu Tianbo's comparative research by Professor Jrgen Mler of Aarhus University in Denmark. In this book review, Professor Mohler re-examines the foundations of Xushu's comparative historical research, citing my critique of feudalism at length. There are two points that are particularly noteworthy in Mohler's argument, and I agree with them: first, the society of the Zhou dynasty lacked a tradition of legal contractualism compared to the European Middle Ages;Second, in the Middle Ages in Europe, there were many privileged powers that were institutionally protected independent of secular royal power, such as independent cities and their citizens, churches and their clergy, etc., while in China, the secular royal power in the Zhou Dynasty was always strong and lacked those independent social groups. Therefore, the social environment of China in the Zhou Dynasty was very different from that of Europe in the Middle Ages and even in the early modern period. This may be seen as a feedback from our discussion of the "Western Zhou Feudalism" to the study of European history. It is hoped that this review of Professor Moller will be published as soon as possible for more readers.
Since the Western Zhou Dynasty was so different from the medieval European system, if we can only abandon the definition of "feudal", how do you think the political system of the Western Zhou Dynasty should be described?
Li Feng: First of all, what we need to give up is not the word "feudal", but the academic category of "feudal system" and even "feudal society" as a translation of feudalism. But what we need to describe a political system is not just a word, but a logical description of what is called thickness. At the same time, this description should make sense. We cannot look at the system of the Western Zhou Dynasty in isolation, but we must also examine the various forms of political systems that have existed in human history and their development and changes. After years of thinking, I think the best description of the political system of the Western Zhou Dynasty is that it was a state with a network of "yi" as its basic form of existence, that is, a "yi state". It is different from both the so-called "city-state", which centers on a megacity, and the so-called "territorial state", which aims at the actual control of the territory. Furthermore, the control of yi, which was the basic function of the Western Zhou state, was carried out through the structural system of the clans, that is, the "yi", as the basic unit of geopolitics, was distributed along the structure of the Zhou royal clan organization and was actually possessed and controlled by the clans. Once the branches of the clans (mainly the Ji clan) were divided into the east, they formed vassal states, and their descendants multiplied according to the clan structure and received residences. In terms of political power, the Zhou people believed that the fundamental power of the Western Zhou state, that is, the legitimacy, came from heaven, and it was given to the creator of the Zhou dynasty, King Wen (after the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty, King Wu joined the ranks of those who received the mandate of heaven);The reigning king of Zhou relied on the power of a successor to King Wen of Zhou. In turn, the reigning king of Zhou delegated this power to the princes he sent to various places, who directly ruled the local clans and realized the management of thousands of yi through the clans. Therefore, we say that the Western Zhou state is a "delegatory kin-ordered settlement state", although this statement is a little longer, but it summarizes the basic characteristics of the Western Zhou state in three aspects: geographical structure, social organization and political rights.
Chinese historiography, including our history textbooks, has long adopted the division of five social forms. For a long time, historiography has discussed whether the feudal theory of the Western Zhou Dynasty or the feudal theory of the Warring States period or the feudal theory of the Wei and Jin dynasties. In recent years, this division itself has been questioned a lot, do you think it is necessary to continue with this division now?
Li Feng: That's a long question. The original intention of periodizing history is good, and in the case of Chinese history, the original motive of the periodization study is to prove that the development of Chinese history is not outside the torrent of world civilization, but follows the general rules of the development of world civilization (or just European civilization). This is a refutation of the theory of stagnation of East Asian civilization that has prevailed in the West since the nineteenth century. However, the discussion of periodization is mainly carried out in the context of the five-stage theory of social formation, and it is a discussion of how to conform the history of a region to the so-called "general principles". In his writings, Marx explicitly wrote about the four social formations of Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern capitalism, deliberately indicating that this was a continuous and universal process of development, but he also sometimes saw the first three as three different ways for human beings to move out of nomadic life and into settled life. Even if Marx once argued that European society went through the four stages of development that he enumerated, this development can only be regarded as historical, that is, not inevitable. In other words, slavery itself did not require the development of an intrinsic element of feudalism;The reason for the development of Europe in this way is entirely due to the special historical circumstances of Europe, that is, there was a Germanic society after the Roman Empire, but this is accidental, and this is not necessarily the case in other parts of the world. However, when it came to the Soviet theorists, the so-called "five social forms" of primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society, and communist society became the five social stages that human society must pass through one after another, and became a general principle of social development. Chinese scholars, on the other hand, inherited this theory of the so-called "five stages of social development" from the Soviet Union, especially Stalin, and have long worked the question of how to divide Chinese history according to this theory.
It should be pointed out that dividing China's history according to the theory of "five social forms" or "five stages of social development" is not only an academic topic, but also has a very practical significance in China's modern history, which is related to the characterization of China's modern society and the object and purpose of the Chinese revolution. This is the so-called "great controversy of social history" that appeared in China in the thirties of the last century. For the left wing of the Kuomintang, China in the twenties and thirties of the last century was still in a long feudal society, so the object of the Chinese revolution was imperialism and feudalism. But for the Communist Party of China, Chinese society has stepped out of the typical feudal society and entered a semi-feudal and semi-capitalist state. Therefore, the task of the Chinese revolution is not only to overthrow the rule of imperialism and feudalism, but also to overthrow the oppression of modern bureaucratic capitalism, that is, the so-called "three mountains" that weigh on the people. This mission was explicitly written in the early constitution of the Communist Party of China. This is the biggest difference and the most fundamental contradiction between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang in terms of ideology (the so-called "bureaucratic capitalism" is inextricably linked with the upper echelons of the Kuomintang, which the Communist Party wants to overthrow), which is why although the Kuomintang and the Communist Party can cooperate in the goal of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, the difference in their perception of modern Chinese society will eventually lead the two parties to the road of complete success after the First Civil Revolutionary War.
As to when exactly China's "feudal society" began, this involves its definition in the five social forms system. Marx, of course, did not see the complexity of the European Middle Ages, as revealed by contemporary scholars, but saw feudalism as an all-encompassing system of the European Middle Ages. Stalin, on the other hand, emphasized another aspect of the European Middle Ages, namely the exploitation of land rent by landlords over peasants as the main feature of so-called feudalism. China, on the other hand, inherited Stalin's definition, and for more than half a century, it formed a situation of so-called three-theory melee of "Western Zhou feudalism", "Warring States feudalism" and "Wei and Jin feudalism", and there is still no conclusion. Moreover, "feudalism" has become synonymous with all reactionary, backward and dark old societies, which is in fact a political abuse of academic vocabulary;This, of course, is also a by-product of the Chinese revolution, which has lasted for more than half a century. It now seems that it is not only problematic to use the term feudalism to summarize the European Middle Ages in itself, but also to develop a social model (i.e., "feudal society") from it, and even more problematic to apply it to other societies, not to mention that it was reinvented by Stalin for unknown reasons. From this point of view, the debate in Chinese historiography circles for more than half a century about whether feudal society began in the Western Zhou Dynasty or in the Warring States Period is unnecessary!
Similarly, there is something problematic about using slavery to cover the classical period of Europe. To put it simply, slavery did exist in classical Europe, just as slavery existed in the United States after the seventeenth century, but there was no so-called "slave society". As Moses I. Fenri, a giant in the study of ancient social and economic history in the modern WestFinley) points out that the emergence of this archetypal slavery was historical (not inevitable), that is, it was the result of the conquest of the Roman Empire. In the rest of the conquered parts of the Roman Empire outside of Italy, especially in the East, the main mode of production of society was not slavery, but the use of vassal labor. Even in Italy, slavery had weakened since the fourth century AD, mainly because with the end of the conquest, the depletion of slaves** and the long-distance transport of slaves*** As far as ancient Western societies as a whole are concerned, societies like Athens and Italy that had a typical slavery system actually deviated from the "normal" of social development roads and a particular mode of production (largely due to its particular history of conquest) could have been normal in a society like Egypt, which was based on a large number of unfree peasants.
This is a basic understanding of the social history of ancient Europe that has been obtained by the Western historiography circles. Therefore, it is in itself a mistake to summarize the ancient societies of Greece and Rome as "slave societies" in terms of the typical slavery systems of Athens and Italy, let alone to see such societies as a necessary stage in the development of human society. Slavery may have existed during the Shang and Western Zhou dynasties in China, as well as in the Qin and Han dynasties and even during the Wei and Jin dynasties. But it is a different matter to speak of a "slave society", which requires that the slave mode of production become the most regular and large-scale mode of economic activity of a society and the basis on which it depends. The Han Dynasty in Chinese history, because it had a period of great expansion similar to that of the Roman Empire, was probably the most well-positioned to form a developed slavery system similar to that of Italy. However, because a large number of Xiongnu people it conquered came from a completely different natural ecosystem, and were not accustomed to farming and the life of an agricultural society (that is, the value as slaves was not high), most of them were arranged by the Han Dynasty ** in the border areas and lived together as before. Therefore, the main component of slaves in the Han Dynasty was still Han Chinese, which limited the further development of slavery. In short, according to the current data, there is no period in Chinese history that can be confirmed to be a "slave society". In short, China's so-called "slave society" is a hypothesis that has not been proven or even necessary.
In short, the theory of "five stages of social development", even if it is reduced to the category of ancient European history, cannot correctly reflect the process of European historical development, but can only simplify the complex historical process, and even misunderstand the fundamental characteristics of ancient European society. Its application in Chinese history not only fails to bring effective research results, but on the contrary, can only hinder the development and real modernization of Chinese historiography. It is time for the fallacy to stop at the wise.
Max Weber once put forward the theory of ideal type, and accordingly proposed three modes of rule: charismatic type, traditional authority type and legal type, although the history of the world may not have a unified law, but is it possible to find a suitable ideal type to describe various different modes of rule?
Li Feng: Why do we carry out historical periodization?The development of history is inherently distinct from time to time, manifested in the rise and fall of dynasties or the change of rulers. Historical periodization is generally a long-term, fundamental social change and the deep reasons behind social development, and it is generally slower than dynastic change. When we say that the theory of "five stages of social development" cannot be applied to Chinese history, we do not mean that the development of human history is completely chaotic and has no laws to follow. We are saying that the theory of the "five stages of social development" is based on examples of European history, and even if all five stages existed, they could only be historical accidents, not logical necessity. Of course, we cannot apply these five stages to other societies. Weber's theory describes the development and change of forms of political authority and leadership from the perspective of jurisprudence and political science, and it is too narrow to use it as a historical theory that summarizes the past development of mankind.
Another of the more commonly used periodization methods is the so-called "tour-clan-chiefdom-state" four-stage theory. This model of development was developed mainly in the field of anthropology in the early sixties of the last century, and the theoretical soil on which it arose was, of course, neo-evolutionism. This model of development, which focuses on the organization and evolution of early human societies, is easier to grasp in the practice of research than Weber's, and is therefore widely accepted by archaeologists and social historians, although some are now beginning to criticize the theory. For historians, although this periodization theory has a relatively strong generalization power on the early social development of human beings (which is the main concern of anthropology and archaeology), it does not provide insights into the development of human society after entering the form of "state", which historians are mainly concerned about, so it is congenitally deficient as a historical theory. Some historians have also put forward the division between "early states" and "empires", but this is still a very broad line, especially since the history of human beings after the creation of empires is also very long, and the form of empires is very different in different regions and different periods, and cannot be simply summarized by the word "empire".
In the study of Chinese history, Western sinologists generally use the early empire (referring to the Qin and Han dynasties, which coincide with the concept of "early China", which also includes the history of China before the Warring States period), the middle empire (mainly the Tang and Song dynasties), and the late empire (Ming and Qing). In short, what kind of periodization system can be accepted by most historians in different regions is still a question being explored. Historians generally lack confidence in the "general principles" of human historical development (except for Marxist historians) because of their own research habits, that is to say, they mostly work in specific regions and specific language environments, and the so-called "global history" is only a new thing in recent decades. On the other hand, the study of comparative history allows historians to see that the historical development of different regions has gone through similar stages, so the periodization theory still has its value in historical research, but the models used may be plural and have their own scope of application. In short, the primary purpose of historians' research is not to prove the "general principles" of human historical development invented by social scientists, but to look for similarities between historical developments in different regions and explore the underlying reasons behind such similarities by establishing patterns. As for the extent to which a model can be applied, this is what they need to understand through research, and this is the true meaning of historical research. Instead of first identifying a "general rule" of the development of human society created by "classic writers", and then making every effort to incorporate the historical development of different parts of the world.