Introduction: The State of Chu has implemented a system of division since the founding of the state, similar to the Western Zhou system of division and sealing, why it is only constrained but not divided, from the perspective of the division system of the State of Chu, success or failure is a system of division
As one of the five hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period, the State of Chu, one of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States, has always been one of the great powers in the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, and in its heyday, the region is the most vast, the population is large, and it is a veritable country with a vast land and vast resources, and the State of Chu is the second country in addition to the State of Qin to have the strength to unify the Central Plains, so why did the State of Chu not unify the world? The Chu state did not split in the end?
Of course, there are many reasons, the Chu State did not change the law thoroughly, and the Wu Qi Change Law was declared aborted after the death of King Chu Mo; the talent system of the Chu State was unreasonable and caused the brain drain; the Chu State policy was not continuous, and there was no "Yu Lie of the Sixth Dynasty" like the Qin State; the Chu State frequently made mistakes in its foreign strategy, missed good opportunities, and so on, but the author believes that the Chu State's partition system is one of the most critical reasons why it cannot unify the world and there is no division, so let's first understand the division system.
The Western Zhou Dynasty's feudal system
We all know that the standard political system implemented in the Western Zhou Dynasty was the sub-feudal system, and the sub-feudal system has a very famous feature, that is, the division of classes is very clear, and the princes under the major governments under Zhou Tianzi have great autonomy, and under the blessing of such autonomy, the princes can call the wind and rain in their fiefdoms, basically within their own fiefs, he is like Zhou Tianzi.
Especially in the late Zhou Dynasty, that is, the Warring States Era, the Sons of Heaven have become a virtual co-lord of the world, and the princes have also crossed the Zhou Tianzi and began to claim the throne, and the power of the princely states is more powerful than before, so the sub-feudal system actually has a big drawback.
This drawback is fatal if it is not careful, that is, in the case of the princes having great autonomy, a dynasty that was originally a whole is easy to fall apart, after all, power is like poison, once the container cracks appear, then the poison is easy to spread, so in the power struggle, the princes of the various princes have succeeded before and after, so in the middle of the Warring States period, the Qin Wu King of the Qin State destroyed the Zhou Dynasty in one fell swoop, and from then on the entire Central Plains region became almost all the domain of the seven princely states.
It can be said that the rule of the Western Zhou Dynasty was divided into victories and defeats. In addition to the Western Zhou, there is also a country among the Seven Heroes of the Warring States, and the basic political system it implements is very similar to the division system of the Western Zhou, that is, the division system of the Chu State, but there is a very interesting historical phenomenon here, that is, the implementation of the division system in the Western Zhou Dynasty finally ended with the division of the dynasty.
However, the State of Chu did not move towards division, even if the power between the major forces in the country expanded, even if there was no matter how intolerable they were, the State of Chu eventually only stayed at the level of restraint and did not move towards division, so why did the extremely similar political systems finally achieve different endings?
Today, we will focus on analyzing why the Chu state practiced division and rule from the beginning of the founding of the state, just as the Western Zhou Dynasty implemented the system of division and feudalism from the beginning of the founding of the state, but why did not the most prominent situation of division in the Zhou Dynasty. To understand this question, we must first look at the basic characteristics of these two political systems.
The basic characteristics of the sub-sealing system
Regarding the basic characteristics of the sub-feudal system, the author has already mentioned above, it should be noted that the sub-feudal system not only gives the princes a great degree of autonomy, but more importantly, these princes only need to pay taxes to Zhou Tianzi and maintain the safety of Zhou Tianzi in times of war.
After the Central Plains region was pacified by the Zhou Dynasty, wars did not occur frequently, in fact, almost all the battles we later knew came from within the Zhou Dynasty, so in that case, the princes did not need to regularly use their own armies, they only needed to pay taxes to the Zhou Tianzi.
However, in the late Zhou Dynasty, Zhou Tianzi gradually lost control of the princes, and such taxes also existed in name only, so in the absence of obligations, the power in the hands of the princes was more likely to expand, and although they belonged to the domination of a co-lord like Zhou Tianzi, there was not much connection between them, after dividing up the land, after obtaining the title, many of their benefits did not need to be given by Zhou Tianzi. To a large extent, they could obtain practical benefits through some of their own operations in the country, which made the princes relatively less connected.
That is to say, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, although Zhou Tianzi maintained a relatively close relationship with the major princes, the major princes were a relatively independent individual, in addition, zhou Tianzi divided most of the power to the princes, and his control over the central part of the Zhou Dynasty alone was not enough to resist all emergencies.
At the same time, if you want the strong development of the Zhou Dynasty, it is inseparable from the interests created by the princes, from this point of view, the dependence of Zhou Tianzi on the princes is higher than that of the princes on the Zhou Tianzi. In this way, over time, this kind of tianzi's dependence on the princes would become the handle in the hands of the princes, so that in later times, although Zhou Tianzi was very angry about the behavior of some princely states, he was more than willing to recruit them but insufficient.
For example, the State of Chu established itself as king, at that time it was the Spring and Autumn Period, Zhou Tianzi's control over the major princes had not yet weakened to the extreme, but with Zhou Tianzi itself, he could not launch any attack, he could only rely on the major princes under his rule, but in that historical period, no prince was willing to pay his own efforts for the interests of Zhou Tianzi, so Zhou Tianzi could only bear to look at the Chu State as king.
Therefore, under the sub-feudal system, it not only has to face the drawbacks of division, but more importantly, it has no way to deal with this division, which leads to its inevitable eventual split.
The partition system of the Chu state was very different from that of the Western Zhou Dynasty
The division system of the Chu state was very different from the characteristics of the western Zhou system of division and feudalism. The partition system is mainly divided into two points, the first point is to give the nobles born in their own country since the founding of the Chu state with strong power, these nobles can be said to be the old clans born and raised in the Chu land, have a high status in the Chu state, and they also enjoy a lot of power.
The second point is to give the small princes who were wiped out by the Chu state the hat of a royal branch, let them become members of the Chu royal family, and retain some of their original strength, while allowing them to serve the Chu royal family with a dead heart.
From this we can see that in fact, although the division system of the Chu State is very similar in form to the system of sub-feudalism, in fact it is not an instinctive sub-feudalism, that is to say, he did not divide the state power, did not divide the state's land, it only recognized the status of certain forces to a certain extent.
For example, the old clans we mentioned above, because their status in the Chu state is very lofty, they themselves have power that other forces do not have, which is a natural result, rather than the Western Zhou, because of the establishment of a dynasty and actively assign the power of the state to a certain part of the people.
To give a not very appropriate example, for example, in the Eastern Han Dynasty, we know that the Eastern Han Dynasty was the most important dynasty in the development of ancient Chinese history, and the change of each empress and each empress dowager will lead to the rise of a family. For example, after Deng Sui became empress, the Deng family rose with it, and after Wang Zhengjun became the empress, the Wang family also rose, Xu Pingjun was sincere with Emperor Xuan of Han, and the Xu family also enjoyed a very high status in the Eastern Han Dynasty... So it's a natural result.
Because some of the family held important positions in the imperial court, under such an operational situation, the family could easily rise. The reason why the old clans of the Chu State were able to have such a high status and so much power is similar to these situations in the Eastern Han Dynasty that we mentioned above. Therefore, the power in the hands of these old clans actually depends on the King of Chu, although they have a very high degree of autonomy, just like the Xiang clan in Jiangdong, they can even form their own army, but their own honor and disgrace are inseparable from the King of Chu.
The struggle between imperial power and xiang power, in the end, the imperial power defeated the xiang power
To give another example, the gap between the old clan and the princes is like the gap between the prime minister and the cabinet in the development of later generations. We all know that in the development process of ancient Chinese history, xiangquan and imperial power have always been fighting, and finally the imperial power has won the victory, and the system of xiangxiang was directly abolished during the Ming Dynasty, and then the cabinet appeared.
In fact, the role of the cabinet is not much different from that of the chancellor, but it has an essential difference in the system with the chancellor; the chancellor is a hierarchy of state management established by a political system, and it is not directly influenced by the emperor, so the imperial power and the xiang power will appear in ancient history for so long.
However, the cabinet system is not the same, it does not have a clear system to bless, that is to say, there is no explicit provision for someone to serve as the first assistant of the cabinet, it is only to ensure the efficiency of the monarch in handling things and add such an institution, in layman's terms, how much power the cabinet has depends largely on the mood of the emperor, and the same is true of the old clans under the chu division system, they do not have a clear system to make a convention, the land in their hands, the autonomy they have, most of them depend on the king of Chu.
However, the princes under the feudal system are different, they have a clear hierarchy of the state established by the feudal system, perhaps the princes have been changing, but the princely states must exist. But as far as the old clan is concerned, the masters of this family may be wiped out at any time like this family, so their source of interests depends on the king of Chu, and if they are separated from the Chu state, then they will be nothing, so these old clans cannot and do not dare to break away from the Chu state.
This is one reason why the Chu State can still erupt into a strong combat ability in the later stages, because their own honor and disgrace are one with the honor and disgrace of the Chu State, and the princely states in the later period, because some of their own development and operation have been out of the control of Zhou Tianzi, whether the Zhou Dynasty exists or not has little impact on them, so when the Qin State destroys the Zhou Dynasty, no one is willing to help, and the Chu State as a princely state, if this powerful carrier is gone, Every member of the country that naturally made up the country did not exist.
Therefore, even if the power struggle between these nobles is so repeated, and their usual constraints are extremely serious, when there is a life-and-death crisis in the chu state, they still need to unite and resist foreign enemies together, otherwise when the chu state collapses, the status of these nobles will no longer be recognized.
Although the power of the Chu state was divided, it was unwilling to split
Secondly, there is another reason that is not very important, that is, the State of Chu as a princely state, although we say that it is vast and rich, but the evaluation of this kind of land and wealth is relative to the land area and natural resources of other princely states, it is actually not comparable to a dynasty like Western Zhou, which as the hegemon of the Central Plains in that period, it itself has a vast territory and rich natural resources.
Therefore, on this basis, the princely states it divided into had a certain basic strength, and only then could they develop on their own under the condition of establishing themselves as kings, under the condition of separating from the support of Western Zhou, and still be able to form a good development cycle in the country.
However, the State of Chu itself is a vassal state, and if it continues to divide within the country, then the resources that each separatist force can occupy are very few, and it is difficult to survive in the historical period of the great world strife under such a situation of having very few natural resources.
After all, at that time, it can be said that it was surrounded by great powers, and a force that could not occupy a lot of natural resources could not develop for a long time, so under the influence of the historical environment at that time, the small forces of the Chu State could only develop by close to the mountain of the Chu State.
In other words, although they divided up the power of the Chu State, only the Chu State was still there to ensure that their status was still there, so even if in the end their constraints were already very serious, no family was willing to split from the Chu State, because for those families, splitting was equivalent to destruction.
Review
The author believes that the reason why the Chu state did not end up in a divided situation like the Western Zhou Dynasty is very important to the characteristics of its own system and the nature of the state. In fact, for the Western Zhou Dynasty, it was cheng and defeat and division, and for the Chu state, it was also divided into defeat and division.
The reason why the State of Chu established the system of division and rule was because the political system that could be studied by the self-proclaimed king in the Spring and Autumn Period was only the division of the Western Zhou Dynasty, so as an individual independent of the Western Zhou Dynasty, under the influence of the political environment of the Western Zhou Dynasty, it would establish the system of division and rule, and embarked on a path that was extremely difficult to improve, which is why the State of Chu had never changed the law in the process of development.
The Western Zhou Dynasty, which established the system of division of feudalism, had no way to carry out reforms, and in the end it could only divide, and the State of Chu, which also established a system of division and rule, could only embark on the road of restraint in the end.
In fact, to put it bluntly, the constraint is a relatively low-level split, although it is not as great as the split, but the reason why the Chu State will perish is also because of the constraints between the major families, in the last period of the Chu State's resistance to the Qin State, it is actually possible to defeat the Qin Army, just like the previous victory over Li Xin.
However, under the premise that Wang Qi chose to avoid war, the Chu state was slackened because of the constraints! The old clans that had temporarily stopped the restraints and united had once again returned to the original strife situation, which allowed the Qin state to seize the handle and eventually destroy the Chu state in one fell swoop, so although the chu state did not embark on the road of division, it never avoided the constraint.
References: Warring States Policy, Zuo Zhuan, Shi Ji, Book of Han, etc