The Shang Dynasty

"Tigress Holding Man" Vessel

This is the first blog to be written since before Christmas so I must ask the readers to be lenient as I am a little out of practice. In a previous blog I referred to an episode in Chinese history. The piece was about an interesting time period but it was somewhat lacking in context to those who are unfamiliar with Chinese history so I have decided to dedicate a few blog posts over the next few months to putting early Chinese history in perspective. I should point out that I am not a great scholar of Chinese history and, although I have read some primary sources, much of my knowledge comes from fairly easily obtainable secondary sources. In other words, I am not an expert and what I write should be treated (as always) with a certain degree of caution.

During the Neolithic period China had a number of fairly sophisticated cultures mainly along the banks of the Huang He River in the north of China. Notable cultures included the Longshan culture, which flourished in the late centuries of the third millennia BC and produced some extraordinary works of pottery. Other cultures such as the Erlitou, rose to prominence after 2000 BC but unfortunately, despite the obvious sophistication of these cultures, we have no reliable written records concerning them, leaving historian to puzzle over the archaeological evidence and the later traditions that may have been based on these cultures.

Territory controlled by the Shang Dynasty

According to traditional accounts written around 100 BC, the first ruling dynasty of China was the Xia, however these rulers have left no definitive archaeological remains. The first rulers who left translatable documents were the Shang. They rose to power around 1700 BC and reigned until around 1000 BC. Their power base was around the Huang He River in northern China. Later Chinese writers viewed China as effectively a single entity that was ruled by successive dynasties, but the situation may have been more complex, with the Shang (also known as the Yin) probably being a dynasty that overlapped with others. The Erlitou culture has been tentatively identified as the Xia Dynasty but until records are found it must be unconfirmed.

Longshan Culture Vase

The Shang culture was highly adept at using bronze and they left behind some truly extraordinary works of  bronze artwork, particularly ritual tripods, jars and drinking vessels. While there are many exquisite artworks surviving from the period I have always admired the vessel of tigress holding a man as one of the most impressive pieces of bronze art that I have ever seen, although the picture shown here does not do it justice.

Their armies used chariots and were armed with bronze weapons and from the quality of that items discovered, these armies must have been formidable indeed. The political organisation was centralised under the figure of an emperor, although the regional lords held considerable power due to the difficult nature of communication over their large realm. The Shang were involved in almost continual warfare with their neighbours, who were represented as barbarians in the Shang documents but who shared certain cultural similarities with the Shang. The Shang moved capitals frequently and the last capital of the dynasty was at Anyang.

Shang Oracle Bone

Later historians, most notably the famed Sima Qian, wrote about the Shang and provide us with some details of their time but these historians wrote nearly a thousand years after the Shang had fallen so, while useful, these records are far from perfect. The best sources for the Shang are the oracle bones. To predict the future the Shang would inscribe tortoise shells with questions and then apply heat to the bones, shattering the hard surface with heat fractures. The patterns of fracturing through the writing was held to give an indication of the answer to the question and the results and details of the prediction were recorded on the shell. While these are obviously fairly small documents nearly one hundred thousand of them have been discovered and the cumulative details given by these records give an extraordinary insight into the culture of the time.

The Shang emperors and other high ranking members of society were often buried in lavish tombs with an assortment of grave goods. Often a number of humans (who may have been slaves, prisoners of war or soldiers to guard the emperor in the afterlife) were killed and buried in the tomb as well. It has been speculated (speculated being the important word here) that the later terracotta armies of later dynasties were a remnant of this tradition but with terracotta soldiers being used as substitutes for actual people. This practice strikes us today as distasteful but it was not an unknown practice in antiquity (certain Sumerian rulers were known to have practiced it).

Trove of Oracle Bones

Unfortunately for historians most of the royal Shang tombs were looted but one exception has so far been found. Unlike the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt (where a very unimpressive figure left behind an absolute treasure trove) the most impressive Shang tomb found was that of Lady Fu Hao. Lady Fu Hao was a wife of one of the later Shang emperors/ She was both an oracle figure and a noted general and her tomb is a godsend for archaeologists.

The later Shang emperors came under pressure fighting the Xirong people who lived east of Anyang and their vassals, the Zhou, became independent and a threat in their own right. Some archaeologists have speculated that there were volcanic eruptions or climate change in the last years of the Shang dynasty, affecting the harvests and causing starvation and discontent. Very little evidence has been found to prove these beliefs so far.

Tomb of Fu Hao

The last king of the Shang, who is confusingly called Zhou (no relation to the rapidly rising Zhou state that he was in conflict with), is remembered as an archetypal bad ruler in China. He had a consort called Daji, who was hated by the people for her random acts of cruelty and King Zhou himself allegedly neglected the empire to engage in a life of pleasure and torture of innocents. While King Zhou was hated, it should be remembered that, if there is a major food shortage, the ruler of a state may acquire a reputation for gluttony by default (see Vitellius and Louis XVI/Marie Antoinette).

The Zhou state rose up against their Shang overlords and the Shang armies were defeated at the Battle of Muye. While later sources state that large contingents of the Shang army defected to the Zhou they also state that the battle was extremely bloody, suggesting that there were few survivors of the loyal Shang soldiers. The triumphant Zhou armies marched on Anyang and the King Zhou, the last King of the Shang Dynasty, allegedly gathered up his treasures into his palace before setting fire to the building and dying in the conflagration. Thus, in 1046 BC the Shang Dynasty came to a violent and dramatic end and the long-lasting Zhou Dynasty began.


Reconstruction of the Shang Palace at Anyang

Despite the bloody ending ascribed to the Shang Dynasty the entire family was not wiped out. The Zhou allowed the relatives to live on as a minor aristocratic family under the new order. Some legends suggest that disgruntled Shang princes may have fled to Korea to join the burgeoning civilisation there. The Shang Dynasty period saw great advances in bronze working and writing styles and their successors, the Zhou Dynasty, were able to start the mass working of iron. But probably the most lasting legacy of the Shang was not their technical accomplishments but the solidity that they gave to the idea of the "civilised state". This concept gradually evolved and became a pivotal part of Chinese culture.

Related Blog Posts:
Zhou Dynasty and the Warring States

Economic Lessons from ancient China

I was unable to sleep recently and, to combat the boredom, picked a subject (Chinese emperors) on Wikipedia and hopped from article to article pursuing it. This failed to send me to sleep, but made for some interesting reading. Some time back I was fortunate enough to read a Penguin excerpted version of Sima Qian’s account of the First Emperor (not actually the first emperor per se, but an immensely influential ruler. His legacies include the reunification of China after the Warring States, building the one of the first versions of the Great Wall, leaving the Terracotta Army to guard his tomb and the nearly complete destruction of all books of learning in his empire.) I would highly recommend the book.

Anyway, as I was relatively familiar with the period of the First Emperor and the subsequent fall of his dynasty I skipped through to accounts of the rulers who followed him. After his dynasty, the Qin, collapsed in an extremely bloody civil war (that was serious enough to have possibly caused a significant drop in world population) the Chinese empire was taken over by the Han Dynasty. The empire was exhausted from the civil war and so the early Han emperors reigned with a light hand and refrained from the stupendously ambitious building projects that the Qin had attempted.

According to the article, Emperor Wen, the fifth emperor of the Han Dynasty, reduced taxes to miniscule levels. This may have been as a result of a leaning towards Taoism, which advocates doing as little as possible to allow cosmic harmony to be maintained, but may have had other motivations. The taxes were reduced to a rate of around 1.5% to 4%. Government expenditure was curtailed and the tax was a tax on property rather than an income tax. The Chinese government was able to control the prices of basic food commodities at a local and occasionally a national level, but by and large this taxation policy entailed practically no interference in trading whatsoever. It struck me that this deregulated state had similarities to some of the ideas of free-market theorists and that the Taoist ideal could have some similarities to the economic concept of the Invisible Hand. As a striking endorsement of the system the article speaks of overflowing warehouses of grain (although it should be noted that food production was not deregulated, meaning a surplus of agricultural products is not necessarily an example of laissez-faire and that the statement itself lacks citation).

Further down the article I noted that Emperor Wen continued the practice of “heqin”. To the north of China were the Xiongnu, a powerful semi-nomadic state that was able to put capable armies in the field. Internal strife in China had allowed the Xiongnu to flourish and the Great Wall was originally intended to guard against these northern barbarians who could strike at China but whom the Chinese were unable to counterattack against. The Han Dynasty had disbanded the huge armies of the civil war and the emperors were unwilling to spend the amounts of money and manpower needed to maintain the northern fortifications. Instead they pursued a policy of diplomacy. “Heqin” was where the Chinese emperor would send a “princess” (not necessarily an actual daughter of the Emperor, but more often a concubine or distant relative) to be married to the Xiongnu chieftain. This policy, combined with tactful dowries, attempted to placate the northern hordes and protect China. Emperor Wen had to send four separate wedding delegations northwards throughout his reign to maintain peace. To send these delegations was a sign that the Xiongnu were to be treated as equals (possibly more than equals as the Xiongnu seldom returned the favour) and the process could be seen as a sign of military weakness.

Emperor Wen’s grandson, the notable Emperor Wu, grew unhappy with the policy of conciliation and the growth of power of the Xiongnu. While he initially was interested in diplomacy he eventually switched government policy to one of war and embarked on a series of massive military campaigns to deal with the clear and present danger of Xiongnu invasion. The war was a difficult one and Emperor Wu was probably more of a persistent military leader than an inspired one, but despite disasters for the Chinese military, the Xiongnu were forced onto the defensive and after the death of Wu were forced to accept Chinese dominance before settling on a policy of flight from their homeland. Emperor Wu’s reign was marked by military expansion on all fronts, which by and large were successful.

The interesting thing is that the tax policy had changed. The laissez-faire policies of his predecessors were exchanged for tax-burdens heavy enough to provoke frequent peasant revolts. This is interesting because in today’s economic climate many people in the US and around the world are favouring a return to laissez-faire economics and minimal government regulation on trade. This parallels the policies of Emperor Wen. But to make these policies work, the lessons from Chinese history would imply that the minimalist state must not only refrain from military action, but must behave in a conciliatory manner to more warlike states. If one switches to a policy of military action and regional dominance, taxes must be increased to retain solvency.

The current conservative approach to government in the US, with little regulation, low taxes and small government would, on the basis of this historical comparison, seem to be incompatible with large military spending and overseas campaigns.

In closing I have to specify that I am neither an expert on Chinese history nor on economics and I may well have misread the situation. I should also say that this blog will occasionally make comparisons from history to present day situations I really am more interested in history in and of itself. If you have any thoughts or ideas about this piece please leave a comment and let me know what you think.