The same is the division, why did it usher in a different result? As the saying goes: "My honey, the other arsenic", it seems that the same system, if placed in different times, by different people to implement, the results will naturally be different.
In ancient times, the administrative system, whether it was divided into feudals or counties, did not have any distinction between high and low; there was no king who did not love power, and the starting point of all systems was exactly the same: in order to maintain rule more effectively. Specifically how to implement, one looks at the objective conditions, and the other looks at the subjective will.
"Objective conditions" are easy to understand, an emperor wants to exercise direct control over all his territories, at least have the matching transportation and information transmission conditions, the more developed the road, the more convenient the means of transportation, the more no obstacles to the information communication between the central and local governments, the more feasible the flat management mode of the county system; on the contrary, the implementation of the sub-feudal system, giving certain autonomy to each region, is more efficient.
Regarding "subjective will", it does not refer to the preferences and preferences of rulers, after all, all emperors with normal brains have similar career pursuits - consolidating power and maintaining rule. Therefore, when we say willingness, we mainly refer to the choice of the most appropriate way of ruling based on the judgment of the situation. Among them, the learning of the lessons of previous generations is particularly important.
This is why, for thousands of years in ancient China, the tradition of compiling the history of the later dynasties has been continued, and its main purpose is to facilitate the rulers to learn lessons and punish the former and the latter. This lesson is particularly evident in the question of counties and sub-feudal systems.
For the sub-feudal system, the ancient Chinese historians as a whole held a positive attitude, "since the ancient emperors came to the world, they all wanted to spread the tree and the domain, and chonggu Weicheng", and for the Zhou Dynasty, the master of this system, people were even more praised: "The Zhou Room, the Cantonese are considerable, the feudal relatives are sages, and the nations are nations." When it was xingye, Zhou Zhao praised its ascension to peace; and its decline, Huan Wen supplemented its danger. Therefore, the Zuo Kechang of the Bu Shi, the Ji Wei Yong of the Bu Nian". (Book of Jin)
This passage is explained without words, and it focuses on the great role of the sub-feudal system in consolidating the king's power: during the rise of the dynasty, the princes played an auxiliary role (listing the Zhou Zhaogong); in the period of decline, they stepped forward and supported the country (the Duke of Qi Huan who honored the king and the Duke wen of Jin, who supported the Zhou royal family).
However, the Zhou Dynasty's ability to become the founder of the sub-feudal system and the greatest integrator was determined by the unique conditions at that time.
First of all, the lesson of the demise of the Shang Dynasty told the Zhou people that the mode of rule of only controlling the central government and letting the surrounding areas flow was problematic, after all, the rise of the Zhou people was a typical "local encirclement of the central government"; but the backward productive forces and transportation technology at that time doomed the Zhou Dynasty to be unable to achieve direct control over the vast territory, so they explored a way in the continuous run-in: sending clans and heroes to the localities as princes, and Zhou Tianzi was in the middle as the co-lord of the world, forming an interdependent relationship of "branches and branches".
Second, why did the Zhou Dynasty's sub-feudal system last for hundreds of years? Or the problem of productivity. At first, the annexation interval between the princes was limited to the scope that technology could reach, and if it was large, it could not be controlled, so that there would be a situation where the powers stood side by side, and no one could take anything from each other, and Zhou Tianzi's co-lord status was extremely valuable, and the great powers all needed to "hold the son of heaven to make the princes", so as to occupy the initiative at the political level.
This is why the Zhou Dynasty's feudal system appeared to be extremely vital: under the conditions of productivity at that time, this was the most reasonable and widely recognized system.
However, with the development of the times, it gradually became possible to achieve direct control over the wider territory, and the game between the princes rose to the merger between the great powers. At this time, strength became the only factor that could influence the direction of history, and zhou Tianzi's "tool man" value gradually faded, and had to be reduced to dispensable, and the sub-sealing system had to completely collapse.
The facts of the Qin Dynasty's destruction of the Six Kingdoms proved that the production technology and institutional system at that time could already satisfy the increasing desire of the emperor to rule; at the same time, the lessons of the previous generation were vividly remembered, and they also had a direct impact on their governing thinking.
Therefore, after unifying the world by force, when Wang Qi, the Chancellor of Qi, and others proposed to divide the crown princes to consolidate their rule on the grounds that Yan, Qi, and Chu were remote, Qin Shi Huang expressed deep hatred: "The world fights endlessly, so that there is a prince..." So he resolutely implemented a thorough county system, and in order to achieve rapid troop delivery, he also carried out huge projects such as the Qin Straight Road.
However, when Qin Shi Huang died, with the misdeeds of Qin II, the central government of the Qin court soon lost control of the distant land. "The branches and leaves are weak, the sect is lonely and dangerous, there is no minister of the inner society, and the help of the outer que clan is the help." Chen Xiang exhaled, the sea boiled, fell in Wangyi, tied his neck to Xuandao. If things do not learn from the ancients, the second generation will perish", and it was the Chu land that Wang Xi and others specifically reminded at the beginning" who took the lead in starting the incident and finally overthrew the Qin Dynasty with the main force.
Therefore, "the Qin Dynasty died without dividing the princes" became a profound lesson for the subsequent dynasties. After Liu Bang established the Western Han Dynasty, he adopted a parallel system of counties and states, and in the northeast, east, southeast and other areas far away from Guanzhong, he wantonly divided the sons of the same surname as the kings of the domain.
Obviously, this kind of measure is almost completely in line with the original Qin Xiang Wang Qi and others' propositions: to establish a domain king in areas that are difficult to directly control, such as Yan, Qi, and Chu; and to eliminate the kings with different surnames and replace them with benzong is to learn from the experience of the original Zhou Dynasty.
In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, in view of the poverty of the dynasty, the central imperial court and the local princes united to jointly promote the art of Huang Lao, and used the technique of inaction to ensure recuperation and development of production.
Objectively speaking, the princes did play a positive role in spreading and implementing the rule of the Han Dynasty. However, the recovery rate of productivity at that time far exceeded that of the pre-Qin period, and with the restoration of order, people's recognition of the Han Dynasty rose and the Great Unification Dynasty gradually became popular.
In this way, the position of the local clan king in the eyes of the central rulers was no longer so important; on the contrary, the relatively independent power of the local government became more and more like a thorn in the eye of the central court, so in the Wen and Jing periods, cutting the clan gradually became the consensus of the central ruling class. In the early days of the Han Jing Emperor, Chao Que eagerly carried out a large-scale reduction of the domain, which eventually triggered the "Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms".
However, at this time, unlike the Spring and Autumn Warring States, the balance of strength between the central and local governments was too large, and the Western Han Court was full of military and political talents, and the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms was quickly put down, and the Western Han Dynasty, which had achieved self-breakthroughs, soon entered a comprehensive prosperity.
Later, after emperor Wu of Han's "Tui En Order", the king of the clan could no longer pose a threat to the central imperial court, but throughout the Western Han Dynasty, the sub-feudal system still existed. The difference is that at that time, the number of "princes" was large and the strength of individuals was weak, that is, what later generations called "building princes and being weak".
This model objectively helped the Liu dynasty. In the last years of the Western Han Dynasty, after Wang Mang usurped the Han Dynasty, the "kings" of the Han Dynasty, who had become small landlords, Liu Xiu and Liu Xiu, took advantage of the situation and raised the banner of restoring the Han Dynasty, and finally succeeded in recreating the Great Han. In this sense, the sub-sealing system does prove its positive effect.
Perhaps influenced by this experience, in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the division of clans basically continued the practice of the middle and late Western Han Dynasty. However, with the rise of the bureaucracy of the alien family and the expansion of the power of the local assassin shizhou pastoral, the political influence of the clan became increasingly marginalized. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, in order to suppress the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the imperial court ordered the localities to recruit their own troops to suppress it, relying on the officials of the shi family clan, such as Zhou Mu, Assassin Shi, and Taishou, who took the opportunity to sit on the throne, although there were also some clan members (Liu Yan, Liu Biao, Liu Yu) who gradually grasped local power, but the balance of power had deviated more and more from the Liu royal family.
Therefore, in the Three Kingdoms period, due to the loss of the protection of absolute power, the restoration of the Han Dynasty gradually became a pure slogan. After Cao Wei occupied the Central Plains, he roughly inherited the system of the Eastern Han Dynasty, adopting a three-level system of prefectures, counties, and counties, with the prefecture setting up assassin history and state pastor, the county setting up Taishou, and the large county setting up orders and the small ones placing chiefs. Perhaps because of the bad experience of the original struggle with Cao Zhi, Cao Pi adopted a harsh system of confinement for cao's clan, called arranging to a fiefdom, but in fact it was tantamount to imprisonment, and his son Cao Rui continued this practice.
The drama is that later, it was precisely because of the lack of actual political and military power of the princes that Cao Wei contributed to the situation of Sima Shi's unauthorized power to a certain extent, and later historians criticized Cao Wei: "Meritorious heroes have no place to stand, disciples and princes do not make others, they divide the Mao Society, the real legend is false, the root has no shade, and then it is three leaves and dies."
This is undoubtedly a profound historical lesson for Sima Yan, the founder of the Western Jin Dynasty. Therefore, after the establishment of the Western Jin Dynasty, the kings were divided; moreover, the Western Jin Dynasty sub-feudal system was also combined with the system of governors in the Cao Wei period, resulting in some feudal kings holding the posts of governor of the army, supervising the army, and supervising the army, and controlling the local military power.
However, this kind of change that learns from the lessons of the previous generation has become the catalyst for the Western Jin Dynasty. Compared with the original Western Han Dynasty, the Western Jin Dynasty had a big problem: although the same county state was parallel, the central imperial court was not strong enough to form a strength suppression of the local feudal kings, and it had become an embarrassing situation in which the feudal state was stronger than the central government.
In the end, the combination of the Western Jin Dynasty's feudal system and the governor system quickly formed a situation in which the politics of the Western Jin Dynasty fell into chaos, and the powerful but ambitious feudal kings launched a continuous turmoil for central power under the lust of the powerful but ambitious feudal lords, which lasted for a total of sixteen years. It caused great damage to the society of the time, and the rule of the Western Jin Dynasty quickly collapsed.
But this does not mean that the sub-sealing system is useless. If sima Yan had followed the principle of "building princes and being weak" and leaving behind a successor of wisdom and divine martial arts, the fate of the Western Jin Dynasty might have been completely different.