10 China in World History
Mandate of Heaven, and he acted only in the interests of King Wu and
his son, and never tried to seize power for himself. More than any other
offi cial, the Duke of Zhou was the special model of heroic government
service later held up by Confucius and his followers.
While the Zhou texts described the Shang as a large state ruling
“all under Heaven,” so as to claim similar status for the early Zhou,
it is clear that both the Shang and Zhou were actually regional pow-
ers among a variety of competitors. We might call them “soft states,”^2
with permeable boundaries and loose alliances with many different
peoples, and with alliances based more on gifts and ritual exchanges
than on taxes or formal lines of authority. Yet, whatever the degree of
idealization in early Zhou sources, their very abundance and the rever-
ence surrounding them have assured that the cultural values associated
with Kings Wen and Wu and the Duke of Zhou were central to the
ideals that came to dominate Chinese political culture for more than
2,000 years.
In many aspects of culture and technology, the Zhou had already
assimilated much from the Shang by the time of the conquest, includ-
ing the use of chariot warfare, writing, and bronze. Like the Shang, the
Zhou rulers presided over a sharply hierarchical society, and established
a decentralized political system in which regional overlords and vassals
(usually relatives by blood or marriage) ruled outer territories on behalf
of the Zhou kings and received Zhou protection in return for regular
contributions of crops, money, and soldiers to the Zhou court.
In some ways, the Zhou made signifi cant advances over the Shang.
Human and animal sacrifi ces gradually disappeared, and written texts
in the Zhou became much longer and more sophisticated than any sur-
viving writing from the Shang. Consultation of oracle bones gave way
to a more sophisticated system of divination based on an ancient text
called the Book of Changes (I Ching or Yijing). As with the tortoise
shell diviners, one approached the Book of Changes with a question
already in mind. This type of divination incorporated a whole phi-
losophy of change in human affairs and in the cosmos, assuming that
change is inevitable in all situations of life, that change occurs accord-
ing to unchanging principles, and that human beings have freedom to
act, but only within the constraints of particular given situations and
contexts. The Book of Changes is not simply about maximizing one’s
power, wealth, or infl uence; it urges ethical behavior in every situation
on the assumption that moral behavior brings good results and immoral
behavior will only hurt others and oneself. The Chinese have long seen
the work as one of the most profound in their tradition.