The period following that of the Chou dictatorships is known as that of the Contending States.  Out of over a thousand states, fourteen remained, of which, in the period that now followed, one after another disappeared, until only one remained.  This period is the fullest, or one of the fullest, of strife in all Chinese history.  The various feudal states had lost all sense of allegiance to the ruler, and acted in entire independence.  It is a pure fiction to speak of a Chinese State in this period; the emperor had no more power than the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in the late medieval period of Europe, and the so-called “feudal states” of China can be directly compared with the developing national states of Europe.  A comparison of this period with late medieval Europe is, indeed, of highest interest.  If we adopt a political system of periodization, we might say that around 500 B.C. the unified feudal state of the first period of Antiquity came to an end and the second, a period of the national states began, although formally, the feudal system continued and the national states still retained many feudal traits.

As none of these states was strong enough to control and subjugate the rest, alliances were formed.  The most favoured union was the north-south axis; it struggled against an east-west league.  The alliances were not stable but broke up again and again through bribery or intrigue, which produced new combinations.  We must confine ourselves to mentioning the most important of the events that took place behind this military facade.

Through the continual struggles more and more feudal lords lost their lands; and not only they, but the families of the nobles dependent on them, who had received so-called sub-fiefs.  Some of the landless nobles perished; some offered their services to the remaining feudal lords as soldiers or advisers.  Thus in this period we meet with a large number of migratory politicians who became competitors of the wandering scholars.  Both these groups recommended to their lord ways and means of gaining victory over the other feudal lords, so as to become sole ruler.  In order to carry out their plans the advisers claimed the rank of a Minister or Chancellor.

Realistic though these advisers and their lords were in their thinking, they did not dare to trample openly on the old tradition.  The emperor might in practice be a completely powerless figurehead, but he belonged nevertheless, according to tradition, to a family of divine origin, which had obtained its office not merely by the exercise of force but through a “divine mandate”.  Accordingly, if one of the feudal lords thought of putting forward a claim to the imperial throne, he felt compelled to demonstrate that his family was just as much of divine origin as the emperor’s, and perhaps of remoter origin.  In this matter the travelling “scholars” rendered valuable service as manufacturers of genealogical trees.  Each of the old noble families already had its family