Th e Yellow River people were actually several diff erent cul-
tures when the Shang united them through military conquest.
Th e Shang Dynasty was warlike, and its economy grew in part
because of the booty it acquired through conquest, moving
mostly westward and northward. Th e peasants were the main-
stay of the economy, because agriculture was still the primary
source of wealth, and nearly everyone was a peasant. At fi rst
peasants owned their own land and were expected to give their
loyalty to whoever was king. Almost nothing was recorded of
their lives; their purpose was to serve the nobility. Th ey formed
the bulk of ancient Chinese armies and sometimes were killed
in such huge numbers that the Chinese economy almost cer-
tainly was aff ected by the loss of food production.
Trade with the outside world was limited. Th ere must
have been some, because the techniques for casting bronze
and manufacturing iron came from the west via trade routes
through northern India. Th ere may have been merchants and
shopkeepers, but in the Shang world they were valued even
less than peasants.
ZHOU DYNASTY
In 1027 the king of Zhou in western China overthrew the
Shang king, beginning the Zhou Dynasty (1045–256 b.c.e.).
As in the Shang Dynasty, peasants accounted for nearly all of
China’s population, and growth in the economy was fueled
primarily by conquest. Merchants and shopkeepers counted
for little more than they had during the Shang era, and their
activities were little recorded. Potters and metalworkers seem
to have been important, and they sometimes had homes
nearly as fi ne as those owned by nobles. Depending on the
wishes of the current king and immediate overlord, peasants
alternately owned their lands and had their lands taken from
them.
Th e remains of Zhou arts and craft s indicate that they
developed a strong enough economy that even poor people
could exchange their extra goods for small luxuries. An ex-
cavation of the city of Jin revealed a large bronze-working
complex from about 450 b.c.e. It had smelting furnaces and
30,000 clay-casting molds. At Xinglong in Hebei Province a
36,000-square-yard factory for manufacturing iron farm tools
has been discovered. Th ese sites suggest that some Zhou peo-
ple were able to specialize in the manufacturing of a particu-
lar kind of product and could exchange it for food, clothing,
and housing without actually growing the food, making the
clothes, or constructing the housing themselves. Goods owned
by the small ruling class of royalty and nobles were elaborately
decorated, indicating that there were craft speople who sur-
vived by providing fi nely craft ed products to the wealthy, but
even ordinary pots owned by peasants had some decoration to
make them pleasing to the eye or to endow them with magical
properties. Th is suggests that the peasants lived slightly more
prosperous lives than they had under the Shang.
Th e Zhou monarchs created a feudal society; they ap-
pointed nobles to rule provinces, and the nobles swore loy-
alty to the king. Th is meant that individual provinces could
vary considerably from one another in economic prosperity
and the way in which they treated the people responsible
for keeping the economy running: the peasants and trades-
people. In 770 b.c.e. the Zhou monarch moved his capital
from the city of Xian in the far western province of Qin to
Luoyang in the province of Zhou to be farther away from
marauding barbarians. For this reason, the Zhou Dynasty’s
prestige fell so much that the nobles in the various prov-
inces began vying for control of the country. Eventually the
nation fell into ceaseless war among its provinces. Th is is
oft en called the Warring States Period (4453–221 b.c.e.),
during which the king had little power. At this time coins
circulated widely enough to shift the economy from primar-
ily one in which goods were bartered to one in which most
goods were exchanged for money, resulting in a full-fl edged
cash economy.QIN SHI HUANGDI
In about 228 b.c.e. an especially brutal but clever warlord,
King Zheng of the state of Qin, began a war of conquest
against the other Chinese nobles. He was able to do so in part
because the economy of his province was stronger than else-
where and its food production was high. He called himself
Shi Huangdi. His political philosophy was called legalist, and
it meant that everybody and everything should be governed
by a mercilessly strict rule of law in which anyone could be
punished, no matter what his or her social status. Th e laws
were so numerous and confusing that almost everyone broke
several of them without knowing, and commoners convicted
of even petty crimes were sent to work themselves to death on
the Great Wall in northern China.
He founded the Qin Dynasty (221–207 b.c.e.). Th is dy-
nasty expanded trade with central Asia and India. To boost
the economy of the nation, the Qin Dynasty also standard-
ized China’s currency, which made trade between diff erent
regions easier. In this way the economy became more effi -
cient, which allowed wealth to accumulate faster. In 210 b.c.e.
China’s weights and measures were standardized as well; con-
sumers’ trust grew, and both merchants and the government
could keep track of what goods were selling well and exactly
how much was being paid for goods anywhere in the country.
Th e Qin Dynasty also improved its bureaucracy for collecting
taxes, keeping better records of what was paid. With stan-
dardized weights and coins, paying taxes became simpler, but
the emperor’s high taxes drove peasants and craft speople into
abject poverty.HAN DYNASTY
So deep was the hatred for the Qin Dynasty that when it was
overthrown in 206 b.c.e. every member of the emperor’s
family was murdered. Of the warlords who remained, a par-
ticularly able soldier named Liu Bang defeated his rivals and
established the Han Dynasty. As emperor, he was known as
Gaozu. Perhaps the most immediate eff ect on the economy
came from the lowering of taxes. Taxation had to be fair, ac-356 economy: Asia and the Pacific