In 1045 BC, King Wu of Zhou, who had already been a Merchant of the Zhou Dynasty, began to implement the system of dividing the princes, and then successively sealed many small states. According to the saying in the "Xunzi Confucian Effect", the western Zhou Dynasty ruled that "the Zhou Gong also controlled the world, established seventy-one kingdoms, and the Ji surname lived alone fifty-three people", and the record in the "Lü Shi Chunqiu Guan Shi" was even more exaggerated: "Zhou's seals were more than 400, and the country was more than 800".
We all know that the reason why the Zhou Dynasty perished was because it could not curb the princes whose land was getting wider and wider and their ambitions were more and more inflated; and the Shang Dynasty, as a lesson for the past, had already confirmed this with its own demise, and the Zhou Dynasty was only one of the princes who were enfeoffed by yin shang, so why did the Zhou Dynasty, which overthrew the rule of Yin Shang, learn from the lesson, or set up so many princely states and divide the fiefdoms so large? Is it not good for the Zhou Dynasty to directly control the land directly by itself? It is not that the Zhou royal family does not want to, but they can't do it, and the main reasons for not being able to do it are as follows.
First, the strength of the Zhou Dynasty was weaker than we thought
The rise of the Zhou Dynasty was not a day's work, in the ancient GongGong Father's period, the Zhou people migrated from Feng to Zhou Yuan under the Qishan Mountains, and then the Ji Calendar succeeded to the throne, by encroaching on the territory that Yin Shang did not care about, it expanded rapidly, becoming the strongest Fang state of Yin Shang at that time, and even reached the situation of "two of the three worlds".
But don't look at the vast land occupied by the Zhou tribe at this time, but most of them are remote areas where the strength of the Yin merchants themselves cannot be radiated, and on the hard power, the Zhou tribes are still unable to compete with the Yin merchants, so the King of Zhou Wu first united other tribes before cutting down the silk, forming an allied force, and the Zhou tribe was the leader of the allies, which can be understood as the situation of the Eighteen-Way Princes of the Later Three Kingdoms period.
Relying on the common strength of the rest of the tribes, the Zhou tribe overthrew the rule of Yin Shang, so after the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, Zhou Tianzi was sure to give these other tribes certain benefits, so he divided some princes.
Second, the Zhou Dynasty needed to rely on the strength of the clan to contain it
After the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, the country was not stable, first of all, the remaining tribes mentioned above that overthrew yin shang together were an unstable force for the Zhou royal family; secondly, the old yin merchants, such as Wu Geng, the son of Di Xin, were still imprisoned in Chaoge, which was an extremely unstable force.
In this case, the Zhou royal family can only choose to seal more territory to the clans with the same surname through blood relations, so as to contain those forces that are unstable to the Zhou royal family, and at the same time, they can strengthen the authority of Zhou Tianzi through layers of sealing, so that the status of Zhou Tianzi is firm and stable.
Third, ancient transportation and other underdeveloped, Zhou Tianzi's power radiation scope is limited
Or through the zhou tribe's fortune example. At the beginning, the Zhou tribe was able to occupy such a vast territory, to put it bluntly, these territories were already within the scope of Yin Shang, so at first Yin Shang was not angry, and even during the reign of Ji Li, he was also named a "priest". This priest was not the priest who added blood in the game, but the official who was in charge of the vast lands of the West at that time.
The scope of Yin Shang was not large, north to present-day Beijing, south to the area around Dongting Lake, west to western Shaanxi, east to eastern Shandong, beyond this range, with the level of social development at that time, the central royal family would not be able to control it. For example, if the ghost side located in the northwest of Yin Shang suddenly wants to attack Yin Shang, when Yin Shang receives the news, it may be that the ghost side has already fought, and at this time, it will take a lot of time for Yin Shang to mobilize troops, so it is easy to delay the fighter.
The Zhou royal family learned the lesson of Yin Shang, by dividing the princely states, letting the princely states manage the large and small affairs within their jurisdiction, and then managing the princely states themselves, so that they could speed up the handling of some urgent matters a lot. For example, if inuyasha fights, princely states that are relatively close, such as the Jin dynasty, can first dispatch their own troops to resist.
Some people probably have to ask, if this is the case, then why was the Zhou territory located in the center of the Zhou Dynasty still attacked by Inuyasha during the Zhou Youwang period? What are the northern princely states doing? Many people mention the paragraph "Beacon Theatre Princes", thinking that it is because the praise of the beacon play has angered the princes, so that no one to defend in the inuyasha invasion, but in fact, the inuyasha attack is caused by the Shen state and the united state of Theo, and the rest of the princely states are happy to watch the play.
After the death of King You of Zhou, Marquis Zheng, Marquis of Wei, Marquis of Jin, etc. ran out again, and together they established King Ping of Zhou as the son of heaven, and moved the capital to Luoyi, thus opening up the history of Eastern Zhou. By the way, why did Qin Shi Huang immediately implement the same track after the unification of China, and also build the Qin Straight Road? It is to strengthen national ties.
epilogue
From the above three points, it can be seen that after the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, the reason why Zhou Tianzi divided the feudal states so much was not that he did not want to control it, but under the circumstances at that time, the division of the feudal states was the best choice.