Below the nobility we find large numbers of dependent people; modern Chinese scholars call them frequently “slaves” and speak of a “slave society”.  There is no doubt that at least some farmers were “free farmers”; others were what we might call “serfs”:  families in hereditary group dependence upon some noble families and working on land which the noble families regarded as theirs.  Families of artisans and craftsmen also were hereditary servants of noble families—­a type of social organization which has its parallels in ancient Japan and in later India and other parts of the world.  There were also real slaves:  persons who were the personal property of noblemen.  The independent states around the Shang state also had serfs.  When the Shang captured neighbouring states, they re-settled the captured foreign aristocracy by attaching them as a group to their own noblemen.  The captured serfs remained under their masters and shared their fate.  The same system was later practised by the Chou after their conquest of the Shang state.

The conquests of late Shang added more territory to the realm than could be coped with by the primitive communications of the time.  When the last ruler of Shang made his big war which lasted 260 days against the tribes in the south-east, rebellions broke out which lead to the end of the dynasty, about 1028 B.C. according to the new chronology (1122 B.C. old chronology).

ANTIQUITY

Chapter Three

THE CHOU DYNASTY (c. 1028-257 B.C.)

1 Cultural origin of the Chou and end of the Shang dynasty

The Shang culture still lacked certain things that were to become typical of “Chinese” civilization.  The family system was not yet the strong patriarchal system of the later Chinese.  The religion, too, in spite of certain other influences, was still a religion of agrarian fertility.  And although Shang society was strongly stratified and showed some tendencies to develop a feudal system, feudalism was still very primitive.  Although the Shang script was the precursor of later Chinese script, it seemed to have contained many words which later disappeared, and we are not sure whether Shang language was the same as the language of Chou time.  With the Chou period, however, we enter a period in which everything which was later regarded as typically “Chinese” began to emerge.

During the time of the Shang dynasty the Chou formed a small realm in the west, at first in central Shensi, an area which even in much later times was the home of many “non-Chinese” tribes.  Before the beginning of the eleventh century B.C. they must have pushed into eastern Shensi, due to pressures of other tribes which may have belonged to the Turkish ethnic group.  However, it is also possible that their movement was connected with pressures from Indo-European groups.  An analysis of their tribal composition at the time of the conquest seems to indicate that