1. The reign of the Zhou dynasty in ancient China (from the 12th century BC to 221 BC) is divided into three main periods:

• Western Zhou period - 1122 - 742 BC e.;
• Eastern Zhou period - 770 - 403 BC e.;
• the period of Zhangguo ("seven warring kingdoms") - 403 - 221 years. BC e.

2. During the Western Zhou period (1122 - 742 BC), the slave-owning state was strengthened, its structure became more complicated. Society is characterized by a higher level of development of the productive forces, an increase in the number of slaves, and the development of large-scale land ownership. The supreme power belonged to the hereditary king (wang), but a centralized state was not created during the entire Zhou period. Wang directly controlled only the metropolitan area, and the rest of the country was divided into principalities, which were ruled by sovereign princes (zhuhou). The territories of the principalities were subdivided into smaller administrative units that developed on the basis of the former tribal division. The lowest administrative-territorial unit was the rural community.

The state apparatus, which was led by the highest dignitary (xiang), consisted of close personal servants of the van and trusted slaves. Xiang was the head of the administrative apparatus and the Wang's closest assistant in governing the country.

In the Zhou kingdom, there was a palace management system: palace employees were at the same time officials. It included a large number of officials with diverse competencies. Senior officials (dafu) were divided into three classes - senior, middle, junior.

At the top of the social ladder was the slave-owning aristocracy, which consisted of the Zhou hereditary and military nobility, as well as the Yin aristocracy that had partly survived after the conquest.

In this period, large-scale land ownership is intensively developing, there is a tendency to turn possessions into private land ownership. Formally, the king was considered the owner of the land, but the slave-owning aristocracy could freely dispose of their possessions. Over time, the right of large slave owners to own land turns into the right to own land. Communal land use during the Western Zhou period continued to play a prominent role. The situation of the farmers (nongfu) was generally difficult. Many went bankrupt and became landless tenants. The number of slaves was replenished during this period due to:

• prisoners of war;
• conquered civilians;
• state criminals.

The army in the Zhou kingdom was only partly permanent, being made up of small cadre detachments and the militia that joined them during the war.

In the middle of the VIII century. BC e. there was a collapse of the Western Zhou due to the weakening of ties between the central government and the rulers of dependent principalities, as well as unsuccessful wars with nomads. When the country broke up into a number of independent states, the Zhou kings turned into the rulers of a small domain - Eastern Zhou.

3. The economic and political life of the country during the Eastern Zhou period (770 - 403 BC) is characterized by the following changes:

• the development of crafts and trade, which led to an increase in the role of the merchants in public life;
• the decline of hereditary landownership of the tribal aristocracy. Her lands are gradually transferred to the service nobility.

Significant land holdings are concentrated in the hands of military leaders, service people, and merchants. The private ownership of land by slave owners is being strengthened.

4. During the period "Warring States" - Zhangguo(403 - 221 BC) the development of large land ownership continues. It is accompanied by the destruction of the old type of land tenure - communal. With the introduction of the land tax, when instead of cultivating communal fields, farmers were obliged to pay tax from their land, one of the first blows was dealt to communal land ownership.

(service sector, and occasionally military affairs). The main thing was that a slave is not his own, but someone else's, and precisely because of this he is powerless, that is, he cannot claim that amount of rights, that amount of social guarantees that are an inalienable property of all his own people simply because they are their own. .

Over time, in many ancient Eastern societies, along with full-fledged - their own

and disenfranchised - slaves appeared and an intermediate layer of incomplete type mushkenums from the laws of Hammurabi. These included both the descendants of slaves assimilated in a foreign land, who acquired a family here, some property, acquired a profession, and even a land allotment and some rights associated with it, as well as people from the lower strata of the local population, outcasts and vagabonds, illegitimate (if you have mean strict varno-caste norms), etc. The tendency of the social dynamics of these inferiors - whether they were muskenums or shudras - by no means led, as was sometimes portrayed in historical writings and especially in textbooks, to their rapprochement with slaves. On the contrary, it led to a further gradual rise in their status, as can be seen in the example of the Shudras. It is worth noting in this connection that a tendency of the same kind was also characteristic of slaves in general, whose status rose with time, as has just been said. That is why, in particular, the number of slaves almost did not grow, it increased practically only due to a new influx of foreign captives, and only during periods of active foreign policy, after which the described processes of adaptation of the disenfranchised and deprived of rights led to a gradual reduction in the number of those

and others.

On the two listed systems - early ethnogenic ties and legal inequality of the ethnically heterogeneous population of a given social community - over time, another, third, was superimposed. We are talking about a system of property inequality, but not that of official inequality, when wealth was a function of the position20, but inequality that was a function of the privatization process. After the emergence of institutions such as private contract rent, wage labor, debt bondage, and even slavery of the full (legally and socially always different from the slavery of disenfranchised foreigners), a new scale of important social differences arises in society: each of the traditional strata, including those without rights in the recent the past of foreign slaves, had its rich and poor, its debt slaves, tenants, mercenaries, etc. Of course, wealth was more typical for full-fledged than for disenfranchised, and poverty was for commoners. Nevertheless, both were encountered at all levels of the socio-legal ladder. Brahmins also accidentally fell into bondage slavery (though, in relation to them, the owner was obliged to show outward signs of respect), and commoners sometimes turned out to be richer than the ancient Chinese aristocrats, even princes. As for the slaves, some of them, as in Babylon, were the owners of rich trade and credit offices and turned over, as they say, millions, while remaining slaves of their masters and paying them a regular and very high quitrent-peculia.

So, the traditional social stratum, formal legal status and real property status not only did not coincide, but, on the contrary, formed a rather intricate network of a complex social structure. But what was the main thing here - in particular, from the point of view of the class analysis so familiar to us? In other words, how did things stand with classes in ancient Eastern society? Were they at all? And if they were, what was their specificity? And in general, what kind of classes can we talk about here?

The state and the problem of classes

20 Inequality of this type is recorded by archaeologists in very ancient burials, and on this basis, hasty conclusions are often drawn about precisely the stratification of property and almost the existence of private property and antagonistic classes, while one should only say that the elder or leader was always buried. more magnificent than ordinary community members

The Marxist thesis that the state arose on the basis of the division of society into classes has been rejected by modern science. This thesis can be taken into account only in relation to ancient Europe, and even then with reservations. As you know, the ancient city-state (polis) arose as a result of the fact that society split into full-fledged citizens and everyone else, including completely disenfranchised slaves, and it was precisely to keep these others in obedience (although by no means only for this) that a civil policy arose, i.e., an early form of the state. However, it should be recalled that this was by no means the first state in the ancient world; it was preceded by other types of proto-states, well known, in particular, from the Homeric epic, not to mention mythology. Kings such as Odysseus, Oedipus or the main heroes of the Trojan War had nothing to do with later policies, but were already the rulers of states - the very ones where there were no antagonistic classes. This means that the first states did not arise on the basis of the division of society into antagonistic classes. They were formed, as already mentioned in sufficient detail, otherwise. The earliest types of social ties in the primary proto-states were reduced to two systems: ethnogenic social and ethnically heterogeneous legal. These ties were based on the reciprocal interchange habitual for the primitive community, now expanded to the level of the exchange of socially useful activities: producers, administrators, warriors, priests, even slave servants - all contributed to ensuring the normal and stable existence of an increasingly complex society with a division of labor and social functions. The collection of rent-tax, the implementation of labor duties and the redistribution of the surplus product among those segments of the population that were not employed in the production of food - these are the main socio-economic functions that fell in this structure to the share of the state, represented by the apparatus of power in the widest possible sense. sense of the word (administrators, priests, warriors, as well as artisans and slave servants who served, first of all, the needs of the apparatus of power).

With regard to early societies and proto-states built on a similar basis, we can speak, as already mentioned, of a mutually beneficial exchange of activities vital for the survival and stable existence of a structure that has become more complex compared to the primitive. But at the same time, there is social inequality, and property privileges of the higher (although they can still be considered the equivalent of labor inequality, a form of compensation for a higher quality of work), and political and legal inequality of statuses. In other words, essential foundations have been laid for the transformation of the structure.

A noticeable transformation begins with the process of privatization and the growth of upscale consumption of the upper classes. The individual enrichment of those in power and the desire for ever greater enrichment, which in the new conditions is relatively easy to implement with the help of the market, commodity-money relations and other accessories of a privately owned form of farming, dramatically changes the usual picture. The property gap between the bottom producers and the top managers is widening, and the latter's appropriation of an increasing share of the increasing volume of surplus product now obviously exceeds the fair norms of compensation for the quality of labor in the system of mutually beneficial exchange of activities. There is a phenomenon of non-equivalent exchange well-known to specialists. To put it simply, producers contribute much more to the treasury than they receive from the state (in the form of protection against external intrusions, organization of management, creation of a system of spiritual comfort, etc.), and this difference is precisely evidence of exploitation by the ruling elites organized in state, producers, obliged to taxes and duties, primarily communal peasants. The rent-tax, a significant part of it, becomes a material manifestation of this exploitation, and in a number of cases (official allotments of officials, priests, warriors, aristocrats) the transformation of relations becomes very obvious: the owner

of the lands granted to him lives at the expense of taxes and duties of the population. It is worth paying special attention to the fact that everything described is not private property exploitation, because all connections here are still mediated by relations of centralized redistribution. However, the absence of private property relations in the described sphere does not change in any way the fact that it already shows the use of the labor of some for the privileged and even luxurious existence of others, that is, for the exploitation of some by others.

Thus, the existence of exploitation is beyond doubt. But what about classes then? It is customary to imagine exploitation as the result of class oppression based on economic inequality (the owner of the tools and means of production exploits the propertyless, deprived of these tools and means, having no property). But if we are talking about the sphere of relations not based on private property, then what is the economic basis of exploitation? And what is the state in this case? The social elites involved in power, united in the state, are indeed not private owners - at least within the framework of the sphere of relations in question. But at the same time, they are owners insofar as they have power (the phenomenon of power-property), that is, they represent a well-organized social stratum that performs the functions of the ruling class, but is not a class in the proper sense of the word. In other words, those involved in power are the owners and the class insofar as they are the state. Outside the state, none of them has anything to do with power, property, or the function of the ruling class.

Now about another area of ​​relations - about the very one that is closely connected with the process of privatization, private property and the new form of economic management that arose in connection with this. Here was created the economic basis for the emergence of classes according to Marx - private ownership of tools and means of production. Are there classes? And what?

First of all, one must resolutely reject the outdated idea that the class barrier in Eastern antiquity was the one that separated the slave and the slave owner. Of course, with the development of private property, as already mentioned, private slavery, bonded and debt slavery also appeared. But it was not and never became the basis of a privately owned economy and the corresponding form of economic management. The slave has always and everywhere been a very expensive and rather unprofitable producer. More often he was an important element of the prestige of his master - if it was a question of a private slave. In any case, it is absolutely certain that the prosperous private owners did not grow rich due to its exploitation. Having grown rich on trading operations and usury, these owners usually opened their own business - a workshop, office, mine, etc., using hired labor, as well as slaves, including bonded ones. In addition, they willingly bought land from impoverished peasants, although this was not easy, because the community strictly guarded its traditional rights and sought to surround any such purchase with a palisade of reservations and restrictions, which sometimes not only made it difficult, but made it impossible to sell communal land to a stranger. But as soon as these difficulties were overcome and the private owner became a landowner, and also in those frequent cases when this owner turned out to be his own communal peasant who bought land from an impoverished neighbor without any formalities, the lands acquired by him were most often leased to the impoverished and land-poor on contractual basis. beginnings. The difference between the payment of rent-tax to the treasury and the rent remained to the owner. So, the source of private enrichment was private contractual rent, hired labor, bonded labor and - much less often - slave labor in the full sense of the word.

From the foregoing, it is clear that in the sphere of private property relations and in the corresponding forms of economic management, seemingly class interrelations and antagonisms appeared in our usual perception: on one side of the class barrier was

the owner, on the other - the poor and the disadvantaged. But what is characteristic: if the owners can still be somehow conditionally united into a single class, although by origin and position they included very different people, up to slaves, as already mentioned, then there are many more difficult. What kind of class is this, which includes both peasants who have rented a piece of land of a neighbor in order to earn money, say, for wedding expenses, and highly esteemed brahmins who have fallen into debt bondage, and rampant mercenaries, and disenfranchised slaves? And if this is not a class, then what is it ?!

A paradoxical - but paradoxical only from the point of view of an observer accustomed to Marxist political economy - picture is being created. On the one hand, in society there is a clearly defined layer of persons who perform the economic and political functions of the ruling class, but who are not a class of private owners. On the other hand, there is a socially very diverse group that could economically be considered a class of proprietors, if it had political functions, according to the letter of Marxism, arising from economic domination. But the group of proprietors in question has no power based on the power of its wealth. Moreover, wealth, not involved in power, was generally little appreciated in the East, on the contrary, it usually aroused envy and anger on the part of those in power. As for those who seem to be on the other side of the class barrier, there is also a lot of obscurity here. Almost everyone has always belonged to the number of taxpayers, except for those themselves involved in power. This means that the state acted as an exploiter both in relation to ordinary communal farmers, and even more so in relation to large landowners, whose share of rent-tax was, of course, more significant. Thus, the private owner was exploited to the same extent as the small producers, but at the same time he acted as an exploiter, benefiting from his wealth.

State and society

According to the social structure, the relationship between the state and society as a whole has developed. If in Europe from antiquity the state contributed to the prosperity of the ruling class, the owners, if there society in the person of private owners always clearly dominated the state, and the state was the servant of society and, accordingly, all its institutions were built, then outside Europe, in the East, the situation was different. The state here has never been, to use the usual Marxist terminology, a superstructure on the socio-economic relations that have developed outside of it and in addition to it. The state, represented by the social elites involved in power, not only performed the functions of the ruling class (“state-class”), but was also the leading element in the basic structure of society. To put it more harshly, it absolutely dominated society, subordinating it to itself. Correspondingly, the institutions of such a state and the whole system of ideas and institutions serving it were formed.

The society subordinated to the state in various eastern structures looked different. In Egypt, for example, there was almost no society at all: it was practically dissolved in the institutions of an omnipotent state. In China, his voice was heard - both in the form of ideas and in the form of certain organizations. In Sumer and Babylonia, society as a whole and individuals as part of it managed to defend even some of the formal rights reflected in the system of laws. Finally, in India, society in the form of varnas and castes, in the form of a classical Indian community, even came to the fore in a sense, which has already been partly discussed and which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. But did this state deny and question its unconditional dominance over society? Not at all. The state everywhere absolutely dominated society, including India - we just need to make a reservation that we are not talking about this particular state, strong or weak, but about the state as a system of institutions and supreme power, as the leading

element in the existing system of relations.

In the early period, when no signs of private property yet existed, this dominance was not noticeable due to the fact that the state and society were then practically not dismembered: the state was a form of organization of society; those in power who had grown up on the basis of public positions and were organized in the apparatus of power quite sincerely considered themselves and were really in the service of society organized in the state. With the growth of prestigious consumption and the success of the privatization process, the change in the general situation was manifested, in particular, in the fact that the state, represented by the apparatus of power, separated from society and opposed itself to it, at the same time subordinating it to itself.

Left in a sense to itself (albeit to a small extent, because the state still remained a system of institutions that arose in the name of the self-preservation of society, its traditional structure), society began to take care of creating some kind of system of social corporations, which were called upon as anew to organize its members in a new, more fractional form, and to resist external pressure from the authorities, the arbitrariness of those in power. In part, these corporations have become forms that have existed since ancient times - families, clans, communities, and in part new ones have arisen - castes, workshops, sects. Some of the new forms not only reproduced the old relations of dependence of the younger and weak on the older and strong (patron-client relations, clientele relations), but also gave them a new essence, setting the client connection mentioned and going into deep history (remember the Papuan big men) as if on a new basis of property dependence on a prosperous private owner, whether it be a rich aristocrat involved in power or a wealthy landowner influential in the community.

It is worth noting that social corporations were in the interests of not only the society that created and strengthened their significance, but also the state, because they were a convenient lever for managing an overgrown socio-political structure. The official did not need to delve into the internal affairs of each village, caste, workshop or sect - it was enough for him to establish contact with the head of the corporation and manage it through him. In relation to society as a whole and to the state, each of the corporations (and there were many of them, their spheres of influence could intersect and coincide, and a person could belong in parallel to several of them - a clan, a community, a sect) was an autonomous cell with a certain self-government .

The system of corporations, which was formed as an element of the metastructure of Eastern societies, harmoniously fit into it and in many respects determined the lines of general ties and contradictions characteristic of the civilizations of the East. In India, the leading form was castes and communities, in China - families, clans, fraternities and sects, in the Middle East - communities, families, clans. Social corporations were also known in Europe. But there they played a somewhat different role, because personal interests came to the fore, which was associated with the dominance of private property relations. In the East, in the absence of conditions for the flourishing of the individualism of a private owner, the horizontal connections of potential class allies were more than overlapped by vertical, corporate, and client connections. Members of a caste, community, sect, clan, guild-guild, or simply a group of clients dependent on an influential and wealthy person usually rallied into a single, well-organized corporation, sometimes having not only a recognized leadership, but also a charter, a disciplinary code, a system mandatory rules of conduct. The poor and the rich, the disenfranchised and the full-fledged, producers and administrators, warriors and priests - all found their place on the hierarchical ladder within the corporation, and for the outside world, all of them together, despite the inequality that separated them, usually acted as a single cohesive team, reflecting the ultimate account - and quite realistically, in deed, and not just in words or in the form of slogans - the interests of all its members, personified by the position and actions of its

leaders. The corporation was often like a microstate, and in this regard it is useful to recall the thesis of Confucius that the state is ultimately just a big family.

Only in the ranks of a corporation could an individual feel relatively safe, which was felt primarily by the owners, who were not saved from expropriations and harassment, sometimes even by strong corporate ties and the support of numerous clients. Therefore, in the absence of civil society for the vast majority of the population, the corporation was a certain guarantee against arbitrariness, the protection of a normal existence. Without it, outside of it, the individual usually turned into a social zero and most often rolled down to the bottom of society, replenishing the ranks of the deprived and disenfranchised.

It is known that in the East, despite sometimes the existence of codes of laws, or rather, collections of government regulations, there has never been a system of private law that has played such an important role in Europe since antiquity, and the corresponding private law guarantees of the owner, especially the citizen (citizens in this East did not know the meaning at all). Laws have always been written on behalf of the state and in the name of its interests. Of course, this does not mean that the laws did not at all protect the property and rights of subjects. But a system of guarantees that would allow anyone to consider themselves a social unit, and even more so freely, without fear for the future, to engage in entrepreneurial activities like an ancient citizen or a medieval merchant in a feudal European city, such a system did not exist. The control functions of an official, who always stood guard over the interests of the treasury and was well aware that that part of the excess product that fell into the pocket of the owner can be considered, as it were, taken out of the treasury, at the expense of which he himself lived, made this owner dependent on the authorities. a situation that sometimes reached arbitrariness, extortion, direct expropriations.

The absence of a system of private law guarantees led to the fact that only involvement in power provided a person with a more or less high and relatively independent (he always depended on his superiors) status. Wealth could help achieve such a position: one could buy rank, achieve a position, enter into family relations with those in power through marital ties. Nobility, belonging to a certain caste, spiritual titles and priestly functions also played a role. Finally, a case could help out - this was especially true of military or successful servants. But only and precisely the involvement in power achieved as a result of all this, as well as in any other way, could give the individual a high and generally recognized social position, including broad opportunities to acquire property, become a large landowner, and even turn out to be a prosperous private owner.

The fact is that there has never been an insurmountable line between the two spheres and forms of economic management described above - we are forced to draw this line only in the interests of theoretical analysis. In real life, all the rich, and perhaps first of all those in power, starting with the ruler himself, quite actively used their privileged position and their generous shares in the redistribution system to acquire private property. In Middle Eastern texts, in particular, one can find documents about the acquisition by the ruler from any of the communities subordinate to him of a certain piece of land to own it on the basis of private property rights - a circumstance that in no way casts doubt on the high official status of this ruler as the highest subject of power-property in this state. As for the representatives of the lower ranks of the administration, this was even more typical for them: many of them sought to use their position to enrich themselves in this way. But what is characteristic and very important: private property for each of those involved in power has always been and remained an optional matter, as it were, nothing more.

Zhou dynasty

In the XI century. BC e. conquerors belonging to the Zhou tribe came to Yin territory from the west. From this moment, Chinese historiography begins the countdown of the period of the Zhou dynasty. The Zhou people were close in language to the creators of the Yin civilization and very quickly mastered their culture: bronze casting, hieroglyphic writing, and the use of light war chariots.

Ancient Chinese thinkers strongly idealized the order that developed during the early Zhou Dynasty (XI-VIII centuries BC). In ancient times, they were looking for such a state structure that would correspond to their socio-political preferences. According to their descriptions, a strict system of social ranks was established under the Zhou. Only one person - the Zhou wang - had the highest rank, and he passed it on by inheritance to his eldest son. Formally, all the land in the state (i.e., all the power in the country) belonged to the van. His younger sons received a lower rank of nobility: they were considered "rulers of hereditary possessions." Land (and power over subjects) was distributed among these princes. Only the eldest sons of the princes inherited the rank of their father and the privileges, posts and incomes associated with them, while the younger ones fell even lower, being the leaders of large clans (the same scheme was in effect). They were followed by the heads of large patriarchal families. Finally, numerous commoners belonged to the last rank.

Belonging to one or another rank of nobility strictly regulated the external life of a person and his family: clothes; the size and decoration of the house, the forms of mutual greetings between seniors and juniors in position, even the number of trees that should be planted on the grave.

In this sense, the Zhou ranks were similar to the Indian castes, for which clothing, food, ritual ceremonies also had to exactly correspond to a person's place in the social hierarchy.

However, belonging to the rank was determined not just by birth in a particular family, but by “genealogical relationship”. The descendants of the van in the younger lines descended in rank with each generation and eventually became commoners, since there was no one lower. Ideally, the entire state was presented to the Chinese as a huge patriarchal family, the head and ancestor of which was Wang himself. One can doubt how accurately this information conveys social reality. But for the ideology and psychology of the Chinese, the identification of orders in the family and in the state has always been very important.

Zhou society was strictly aristocratic. The nobility sharply separated themselves from the people, being proud not only of their genealogy, but also of hereditary traditions, culture, and it was very difficult to get into this social stratum. Craft and trade were considered service labor, and those who were engaged in it were considered commoners. Even if a person managed to get rich commercially, this could not affect his social position, which remained not prestigious.

The common people were united into territorial communities. The land was considered to be in common ownership and was subject to regular redistribution between families. As a rule, these families were large, that is, adult sons remained under the patriarchal authority of their father (and sometimes family property was not divided even after his death).

Fundamental changes took place already in the 8th century. BC e., when, under pressure from the western neighbors, the capital of the state had to be moved to the east. The period of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty began, lasting formally until the 3rd century. BC e. But in fact, the Zhou van already from the end of the 8th century. BC e. retained only nominal power over the princes. Therefore, even ancient Chinese historiography calls the end of the 8th-6th centuries. BC e. period of "many kingdoms". We are talking about about one and a half hundred tiny independent or semi-independent destinies.

This time coincided with significant changes in the economy: the "Iron Age" begins in East Asia. With the help of iron tools, hard soils on the Great Chinese Plain were developed, extensive irrigation work was carried out. The population grew rapidly and, apparently, even then numbered in the millions. There was an assimilation of local peoples, there was a process of formation of a single ancient Chinese culture, the Chinese ethnic group.

The nature of social relations also changed. Urban craft and trade between different regions of China developed, and a coin appeared. In the ancient Chinese states, the coins had a peculiar shape: in some - a bronze hoe, in others - a sword, in others - round with a square hole in the middle (it was convenient to wear them in bundles). Some of the representatives of that layer, which was traditionally classified as commoners, were enriched, and, naturally, their former social status no longer suited them.

Community ties in the countryside weakened, land plots were no longer redistributed, but were inherited: private ownership of land appeared, the inevitable consequence of which was the stratification of farmers into rich and poor. Wealthy people were not averse to making a service career, but the system of hereditary ranks of nobility blocked their way to the top. Meanwhile, the possession of the rank of nobility provided not only honor and privileges (for example, in the nature of punishments for misconduct), but also - most importantly - a certain level of income, since it gave power and the right to collect taxes from a certain territory.

As a result of endless internecine wars, some noble families became impoverished and completely disappeared from the historical stage. But there was an opportunity to excel new people. But the old, aristocratic system of holding public office did not allow a talented and courageous person to take the place in the state that belonged to him by right.

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The reign of the Zhou dynasty is divided into three periods: the period of Western Zhou (1122-742 BC), Eastern Zhou (770-403 BC), the period of "warring states" (403-221 BC). ).
The Western Zhou period was marked by a higher level of development of productive forces, an increase in the number of slaves, and the development of large land ownership. The slave-owning state is being strengthened, its structure is becoming more complex.
Social system. The dominant position in society was occupied by the slave-owning aristocracy, which included the Zhou hereditary and military nobility, part of the Yin slave-owning aristocracy that survived the conquest.
The king (van) was still the owner of the land. He disposed of the land, granting and taking it away. A large landowner developed
nie. The slave-owning aristocracy freely disposed of their possessions - judging by the available data, the land could be alienated, leased, mortgaged. During this period, there is a tendency to turn possessions into private landed property, although formally, land ownership remains dependent on the will of the king. Later, with the weakening of the power of the Chou kings, the right of large slave owners to own land was transformed into the right to own land.
Communal land use continued to play an important role in the Western Zhou period. The system of "well fields" mentioned above has been preserved. In general, farmers (nongfu) eked out a miserable existence. Many of them became landless tenants.
At the very bottom of the social ladder were slaves, whose number increased due to prisoners of war, conquered civilians, and state criminals. At the same time, the number of private slaves increased. Slave labor was widely used in various sectors of the economy.
Political system. The supreme power was in the hands of the hereditary king (van).
In the Zhou kingdom, there was a palace management system: palace employees were at the same time officials. It included a large number of officials with the most diverse competences: an official in charge of the van's stables, a scribe, the head of the royal archive, the keeper of the royal treasury, an official supervising the ritual, etc.
The state apparatus consisted of close personal servants of the van, and sometimes trusted slaves. The highest dignitary (xiang) headed the state apparatus. Xiang was the head of the administrative apparatus and the Wang's closest assistant in governing the country. Senior officials (dafu) were divided into three categories: senior, middle, junior.
According to legend, King Cheng Wang (1115-1079 BC) organized and strengthened the state apparatus. The main advisers of the king were the "three gunas": "great mentor", "great teacher" and "great patron" (the xiang was appointed from among them). In addition, three rulers played a significant role in the state: one was in charge of the cult, the other headed the public works department (it was in charge of the land fund and the irrigation system), the third (“the great head of the horses”) managed the military department. A prominent role in the Western Zhou was played by priests and fortune-tellers. There were positions of high priest and "great fortune teller".

The army was not completely permanent. It consisted of two parts: small cadre detachments and militia, assembled during the war.
There was no centralized state during the entire Zhou period, and only the metropolitan area was under the direct control of the van. The rest of the country was ruled by sovereign princes - Zhuhou. During this period, the hierarchical system of princely titles, created back in the Yin era, was finally established, which consisted of five categories: gong, hou, bo, ji, yinan. The rulers received their territory from the hands of the Zhou king and were required to appear at the court at certain times. This emphasized their dependence on the king.
The territory of the principality was divided into smaller administrative units, formed on the basis of the former tribal division. The lowest administrative-territorial unit was the rural community. Judging by the available data, the structure of rural communities was not the same in different principalities. The most typical was the following: five families made up a neighboring community - lin, five such communities made up a village - li, four li formed a "clan" zu, five zu formed a group - dan, five dan constituted a district - zhou, five zhou formed xiang. At the head of the xiang was the ruler - qing. The lowest was the administrative position of the headman of the rural community.
In the ninth century BC. ties between the central government and the rulers of dependent principalities are weakened. The rulers of the principalities stop their visits to the court, do not send tribute. The intensification of exploitation entails the discontent of the masses. Unsuccessful wars with nomads contribute to the collapse of the Western Zhou. The country breaks up into a number of independent states. Zhou kings turned into rulers of a small domain - Eastern Zhou.
The Eastern Zhou period is characterized by major changes in the economic and political life of the country. The development of crafts and trade causes an increase in the role of the merchants in public life. There is a loss of hereditary slave-owning nobility of their ancestral land holdings, which pass into the hands of military leaders, service people, merchants. This leads to the decline of the hereditary land ownership of the tribal aristocracy and the strengthening of the private ownership of land by slave owners. Significant land holdings are concentrated in the hands of the service nobility. Large-scale landownership is formed not only through awards for permanent service and special merits, but also through violent seizures by the strong from the weaker.

The development of large landownership also marked the next period in the history of China - the period of Zhangguo ("warring states"). At the same time, the communal land tenure of the old type (the system of "well fields") is being destroyed. One of the first blows to communal landownership came with the introduction of a land tax: instead of cultivating communal fields, farmers had to pay tax on their land.
Since the destruction of the Western Zhou monarchy, a single state has not existed. The country broke up into many independent states, which waged a fierce struggle among themselves; in the process, weaker states were absorbed by stronger ones. In the IV century. BC. there is a strengthening of the kingdom of Qin, which emerges victorious from the struggle with other kingdoms in the 3rd century. BC. founds a new Qin kingdom.

The union of "cities" Shang was surrounded by hostile tribes, with whom he waged constant wars. The aggressiveness of the Shants caused the response of the tribes. Protracted wars with them weakened the trenches and eventually became one of the reasons for their death. According to the orthodox written tradition, at the end of the XII century. BC. (1122 BC), the Shants were subjugated by the Chou people, who had long threatened them from the west, probably related to them, who had an intensive process of state formation - obviously, not without the influence of the Yin civilization.

The early history of the Chou people, according to tradition, is associated with lands in the basin of the river. Weihe (a tributary of the Yellow River), although it seems that the Zhou tribes came here from more western regions. Here they are in the first half of the II millennium BC. engaged in cattle breeding and early forms of agriculture. According to some data, it can be assumed that in the second half of the II millennium BC. the Zhou people were familiar with bronze casting, and possibly with writing of local origin.

The process of forming the ethnic composition of the Chou was very complex. Although they subsequently merged into the general Chinese ethnos, some believe that they originally belonged to the Tibeto-Burmese in terms of language.

Apparently, from the middle of the II millennium BC. there was a slow seepage of the Chou people to the east, in particular, into the territory subject to the trenches.

The Zhou people were sometimes in friendly, sometimes in hostile relations with the Shchans, from whom they paid off "tribute" by people. Having led the anti-Shan military alliance, the Chou people utterly defeated the troops of the Yin coalition in the famous battle of Mue (in Henan) and soon subjugated a vast territory in the basin of the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River. The capital of the conquerors was the city of Hao in the lower reaches of the river. Weihe (in Shaanxi).

Period from 1122 to 770 BC Chinese historical tradition dates back to the time of the ancient Chinese state of Western Zhou. Unlike the wars of the Shang-Yin era, which were in the nature of armed raids, the campaigns of the Chou people from the very beginning were aimed at capturing new territories, pumping labor from them. The appeal to the troops before the battle in Mue by the Zhou leader, who later became the first Western Zhou monarch under the name of Wu-wang ("Militant King"): "Forward, brave warriors! Do not kill those who surrender, let them work in our western fields!" ("Shujing"). The pathos of great power sounds in the stanzas of the early Zhou ode from the "Book of Songs" ("Shijing"):

"The sky stretches far and wide around, but there is not an inch of non-royal land under the sky. On the entire coast that the seas wash around, everywhere on this earth there are only the servants of the king!"

After the defeat of the Shang-Yin association (the exact date of the Zhou conquest has not been established. Scientists date this event in the range from 1137 to 911 BC. The chronology of further events in the state of Western Zhou until 841 BC is also conditional. ) the Chou people sent part of the "obstinate Yin people" to the construction of their second capital city of Chengchhou (near Luoyang, in Henan), where they later, apparently, were used as forced laborers in urban construction and in the royal economy. The thirteen most noble Yin clans were enslaved and granted to the closest relatives of Wu-wang.

The structure of Western Zhou was a very loose and ethnically variegated state formation, in which local rulers owed tribute and military assistance to the supreme Zhou ruler, but autonomously controlled the areas allocated to him. The territories captured by the Zhou were either given over to the (go) members of the ruling Zhou house, or left under the control of the former rulers, placed under the supervision of the "observers" of the Zhou wang. The title of won was inherited by the supreme kings of Zhou from the Shang.

Tradition counts tens and hundreds of local rulers (zhuhou) subject to the western house of Zhou (there is even a version of Wang Chun about 1973), 71 of their possessions (go) were assigned to members of the Zhou royal family. The participation of each of the Hou in the campaigns of conquest against the Shants was documented by a special entry on a ritual vessel cast in honor of this event.

The Zhuhou had their own apparatus of power, exercised administrative control over the subject population, but Wang jurisdiction extended to their possessions and authorized wang monitored the withdrawal of part of their income (especially grain) in favor of the treasury. Judging by the epigraphic data, the Zhou van often replaced the zhuhou, obviously considering them as representatives of the royal administrative power. To analyze their cases and lawsuits and apply punitive measures to them, a special official was appointed. Such an order was also formalized with an inscription on a bronze vessel. However, gradually, with the transfer of ownership by inheritance, the Zhuhou turned into the actual holders of the highest territorial power in the field.

The land grants of the Zhou van were not connected with the ruler's right of supreme ownership of the land, but were the realization of his right of state sovereignty in the country.

At the same time, from the tsar's own land fund, the van distributed to private individuals belonging to the administrative apparatus lands that were considered belonging to their positions. Acts on the transfer of land to them were formalized as "donations". This did not mean that the granted territory became their property. She was not considered to have retired from the royal (state, government) fund. Only the rights to income from these lands were transferred, and when a new ruler came to the throne, these acts were to be renewed.

Official lands gradually became hereditary, but in any case, their transfer required formal approval by the van. Bronze vessels with the text of letters of commendation cast on them served as a legal document. Moreover, land donations to one person could be geographically scattered.

Both with land (at the same time, but not together with it), and without land, "royal people" could be given. The inscriptions on bronze vessels testify to the "grants" of people to the van and his wife, both by hundreds of families, and individually - up to a thousand or more people at the same time. These forced laborers were undoubtedly used in "production, since the donations list various categories of working personnel. Thus, the inscription on the Dayuydin vessel states that 569 workers were granted to the van: "from grooms to farmers." All of them belonged to the van's house and did not possess their own means of production. However, not all "royal people" were slaves. In particular, among them there could be high-ranking officials, but in the eyes of contemporaries they were in an equally subordinate position in relation to the van, and therefore were not people, "Two hundred barefoot families in red sacks (a symbol of shameful punishment)" are mentioned in a dedicatory inscription on one of the vessels. This type of state slavery appears for the first time, but immediately becomes widespread. However, the main source slavery remained the capture of prisoners of war. the van himself ordered, distributing them among the participants in military campaigns.

Within the lands of the state-tsarist fund (outside the communal lands proper), large complex tsarist farms - field crops, cattle breeding, handicrafts, managed by special officials: "overseers of the lands", "overseers of artisans", etc. where Wang led the cult of Houji (the communal-tribal cult of Houji (Lord of Millet), the progenitor of the Chou people, began to turn into a state-wide one with the formation of the Western Zhou kingdom) and performed the sacred rite of conducting the "first furrow". Although the free communal population was also involved in these farms in order to perform the duty of zu in favor of the temple, the constant contingent of the labor force of these farms was made up of batches of forced people (in these large farms, the private law functions of the Western Zhou wang as the owner were still inextricably linked with his publicly - legal functions as the ruler of the state - a feature characteristic of the initial stage of the formation of statehood in other civilizations of the ancient East.). Among them were those sentenced to slavery for crimes. Indirectly, this can be evidenced by the data of "Shujing", reflected in the speech attributed to the mythical ruler Qi, but, in all likelihood, related to the early Zhou time: "Whoever fulfills [my] orders will be rewarded [in the temple] of the ancestors, whoever does not, will be executed at the altar of the spirit of the Earth, I will turn your wives and children into slavery .. "But there were especially many slaves from prisoners of war. They were captured by the thousands, counted with an accuracy of one person. The horror of enslavement is imbued with the early Zhou songs of the "Shijing": "Oh, all our people! Without guilt, they will be turned into slaves." Prisoners of war were in charge of shi ("military chiefs", "commanders"). In general, the army, as an instrument of state violence, also performed the function of forcing enslaved prisoners of war to work. Therefore, the "military ranks" also had special production duties related to the organization of the labor of forced laborers on huge royal farms; they were also in charge of the supply - military capture - of this labor force. Wang had his own chariot and auxiliary foot army, which was equipped and maintained at the expense of the integrated royal economy.

At this time, the climate in Northern China becomes much colder and drier. For the expansion of arable land, instead of drainage work to dry the swamps, artificial irrigation began to be required. The importance of cattle breeding has decreased. An important indicator of the development of productive forces is the improvement in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. bronze casting technology. Cutting down and uprooting forests and shrubs in order to raise virgin soil has become a less laborious process due to the wider use of bronze tools in the manufacturing sector, primarily such a universal tool as a celt, which served as both an ax and an earth-moving tool. If in the Shang-Yin era bronze was used mainly in the non-manufacturing sector (even with the high technology of bronze casting inherent in that time), then starting from the Western Zhou era, bronze began to be increasingly used for the manufacture of tools of a fairly wide profile, so oh really developed Bronze Age in China, we can speak specifically in relation to the Zhou era. Urban-type settlements spread over a wide zone of East China - from the northern steppes to the Yangtze basin. They were created along the rivers and surrounded by walls of rammed earth (a traditional technique of ancient Chinese fortification since the Neolithic), protecting from raids by surrounding tribes and from floods. The perimeter of the walls did not exceed 1000 m, usually in plan they were a square or rectangle oriented to the cardinal points, with a gate in the middle of each of the four fortress walls.

Judging by the "Book of Songs", a territorial large-family community was preserved, according to later data - with collective self-government bodies, the lands of which were divided into cultivated for the benefit of the state (guntian) and private (sytian), i.e., apparently cultivated by communities in their favor . The term sytian here cannot be understood as individual lands. The free members of the territorial communities constituted the bulk of the population, who were obliged by natural deliveries and physical labor in favor of the state. Actually, the Zhou population of baixing ("one hundred clans") was in a privileged position compared to the rest of the free, having, in particular, the right to free distribution of food products, in particular, regular distribution of pork, and to the reduction of duties and supplies (for example, from them , obviously, did not collect the duty of jizhu - people, cowries and silk, which was due to the population conquered by the Chou people (in particular, the Huai-i in the east of the country).To a certain extent, the fact that a permanent irrigation system, with which these redistributions are difficult, has not yet become widespread in field cultivation. The community continued to be the collective owner of the land, representing the communal-private sector, which existed in parallel with the state. The so-called system of "well fields" ( jingtian), recorded in the treatise of philosophy fa Mengzi (372-289 BC) BC.). According to Mengzi's ideal scheme, in each community (normatively consisting of eight families), all arable land was divided into nine equal squares (one in the center, eight along the edges); their internal boundary boundaries, as it were, formed a relief pattern similar to the hieroglyph "jing" ("well"). The inner square of this complex was cultivated by the community members together, the eight outer squares - separately by each of the eight families. Despite the undoubted predetermined and utopian nature of the Mengzi scheme, according to scientists, it reflected the remnants of ideas about communal land ownership and the equal size of family plots in the community, which could only be achieved with a periodic redistribution of fields.

By the end of the period, apparently, land holdings that are not part of the communities begin to appear. Among the isolated information about transactions with land is a deed of sale, fixed on a vessel at the turn of the 10th-9th centuries, about the exchange of a horse team for 30 fields. The main labor force in such farms could be workers of various categories and names, who were in a slave position or close to it and not in all cases completely deprived of personal rights, which was a reflection of the early stage in the development of slavery. Private slavery is evidenced by the excavations of cemeteries of this period with the accompanying burial of several slaves in each of them. The state took care of the return of runaway slaves to their masters, possessing the apparatus of coercion necessary for this in the form of the army of the van. Such a case is reflected in the inscription on the Yugui vessel of the beginning of the 9th century. Gradually, the right of private ownership of slaves was strengthened. Authorized vans tried property litigations between private individuals, including those involving slaves. So, for example, on the Hudin vessel, the case of the exchange and sale of five slaves for a horse and a skein of silk is described as under the jurisdiction of the van. Slaves become an important object of barter trade under the pre-monetary form of circulation dominance in Western Zhou society. Usually a slave was valued at 20 skeins of silk. Considering the monthly distributions of silk to royal servants (from 5 to 30 skeins-rolls), it can be assumed that one of them could own slaves. Transactions with slaves, as well as with other property, were formalized by casting the corresponding document on a ritual bronze vessel; this gave the legal act a sacred meaning at the same time, which testifies to the relative underdevelopment of the institution of private property in Western Zhou society.

In the Western Zhou, regular mass sacrifices and ritual burials of slaves, so characteristic of the Shang era, cease. The struggle against human sacrifice will continue for a long time and with varying success in ancient China, but it is significant that history connects the first protest against this bloody custom with the conqueror of the Shangs and the founder of the Zhou statehood, Zhougun, whose spirit - as tradition says - "did not accept human sacrifices ".

The truly authentic written sources of the Western Zhou era are epigraphic monuments, primarily inscriptions on bronze. Thirty such texts date back to Cheng-wang alone. Among them are directly related to the conquest of the Shang: "[Cheng-wang] took possession of [the country] Shang and fortified himself in Chengzhou"; "Cheng-wang punished the city of Shang and granted Kang-hou [Wu-wang's brother] Feng shants and lands in Wei." As for the last award, it is known from the chronicle "Zozhuan" that at the same time Cheng-wang handed over "seven noble Yin clans" to Kang-hou. But monuments of this kind, containing factual data, are an exception; as a rule, they do not provide information on the political history of the Western Zhou, so that it (as well as the political history of the previous Shang-yin period) cannot yet be traced from reliable sources. Some scholars even believe that the only reliably dated historical fact of the Western Zhou period refers to its fall in 771 BC.