of the periphery.  The feudal lords of the inner territories were already rather less subordinated than at the centre, and those at a greater distance scarcely at all; at a still greater distance were territories whose chieftains regarded themselves as independent, subject only in certain respects to Chinese overlordship.  In such a system it is difficult to speak of frontiers.  In practice there was, of course, a sort of frontier, where the influence of the outer feudal lords ceased to exist.  The development of the original feudal towns into feudal states with actual dominion over their territories proceeded, of course, not only in the interior of China but also on its borders, where the feudal territories had the advantage of more unrestricted opportunities of expansion; thus they became more and more powerful.  In the south (that is to say, in the south of the Chou empire, in the present central China) the garrisons that founded feudal states were relatively small and widely separated; consequently their cultural system was largely absorbed into that of the aboriginal population, so that they developed into feudal states with a character of their own.  Three of these attained special importance—­(1) Ch’u, in the neighbourhood of the present Chungking and Hankow; (2) Wu, near the present Nanking; and (3) Yueeh, near the present Hangchow.  In 704 B.C. the feudal prince of Wu proclaimed himself “Wang”.  “Wang”, however was the title of the ruler of the Chou dynasty.  This meant that Wu broke away from the old Chou religion of Heaven, according to which there could be only one ruler (wang) in the world.

At the beginning of the seventh century it became customary for the ruler to unite with the feudal lord who was most powerful at the time.  This feudal lord became a dictator, and had the military power in his hands, like the shoguns in nineteenth-century Japan.  If there was a disturbance of the peace, he settled the matter by military means.  The first of these dictators was the feudal lord of the state of Ch’i, in the present province of Shantung.  This feudal state had grown considerably through the conquest of the outer end of the peninsula of Shantung, which until then had been independent.  Moreover, and this was of the utmost importance, the state of Ch’i was a trade centre.  Much of the bronze, and later all the iron, for use in northern China came from the south by road and in ships that went up the rivers to Ch’i, where it was distributed among the various regions of the north, north-east, and north-west.  In addition to this, through its command of portions of the coast, Ch’i had the means of producing salt, with which it met the needs of great areas of eastern China.  It was also in Ch’i that money was first used.  Thus Ch’i soon became a place of great luxury, far surpassing the court of the Chou, and Ch’i also became the centre of the most developed civilization.

[Illustration:  Map 2:  The principal feudal States in the feudal epoch. (roughly 722-481 B.C.)]