The demise of aristocracy is one of the main signs of human society's transition from feudal times to modern society, and any country that retains the tradition of being able to inherit the power from generation to generation and view the identity of others according to their ancestry.
For example, India, which still retains remnants of the caste system in many places, is often regarded as one of the representative countries that is not progressive enough.
However, it is curious that as the world's earliest western Europe to enter the modernization, it still retains far more feudal remnants than China, such as aristocratic titles, bloodlines, monarchies, etc. When entering and leaving high society, people often take pride in having an aristocratic title.
Among them, the United Kingdom is the most representative. Princess Diana is a well-known figure in Europe, and is loved by the British as the "Princess of Commoners".
What most people did not expect was that this commoner princess was also the descendant of a heavy nobleman with a prominent birth and extraordinary ancestral power.
Diana's Spencer family, a rich wool merchant in the Middle Ages of Britain, bought a earl's title by donating money, and had a good influence in British politics, and the family served as minister of the navy, chancellor of the exchequer, governor and other positions.
Diana's father was the Eighth Earl, who had served as a bodyguard under the current Queen of England, and if it were not for this aristocratic status, she would not even have the opportunity to meet prince Charles.
Politically, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Spain still retained hereditary royal families, and the head of state was still the king.
Some of these kings are not mascots as ordinary people think, such as Queen Elizabeth II, who has considerable theoretical power and played a key role in the Brexit process.
In terms of social talent selection, the nobility still has a decisive influence, such as more than 2500 private aristocratic schools in the United Kingdom, accounting for 7% of the number of students accounting for one-third of the country's high school students ("3A" grades).
Even in France, which swept away the feudal remnants and broke out the Great Revolution, the influence of the nobility still lasts to this day, and after the 21st century, tens of thousands of people still make up various genealogies to forge aristocratic identities.
In contrast, although this kind of aristocracy in the Western sense appeared in China very early, with the passage of dynasties, the influence of the nobility has weakened more and more, so that after entering the modern era, the political aristocracy has completely ceased to exist.
The kind of political family that has lasted hundreds of years ago and has been brilliant for generations no longer exists, and the recent Aisin Jueluo family withdrew from the political arena after the Xinhai Revolution, and its descendants are now mainly reduced to the common class.
Why do the Western countries, which first entered modern society, still retain a more serious remnants of aristocratic politics than in China? Is it that the Western revolution was not thorough enough?
(Queen of the United Kingdom speaks to Parliament)
(1) Increasingly perfect centralized power vs. repeatedly failed unification
Aristocratic politics is a common phenomenon in the history of human civilization, from the Xia and Shang Dynasties onwards, China has also appeared similar to the Western Middle Ages aristocratic politics, the most classic of which belongs to the Western Zhou patriarchal feudal system, the power is monopolized in the hands of the nobility, and the commoners have neither the obligation to participate in the government nor to be soldiers.
(Western Zhou Division)
The Zhou kings' rule over various places depended on hereditary princes, which is very similar to the Western Middle Ages. In theory, all princes must be loyal to the King of Zhou, but in reality, the power of the King of Zhou is limited, coupled with backward transportation conditions, and it is impossible to achieve long-arm jurisdiction over the land in law.
Gentleman's Zee, the fifth and cut. As the blood relationship became more and more distant, the relationship between the major princes and the King of Zhou gradually became estranged, and in the Spring and Autumn Period, it finally evolved into an era of small states, just as the power of the Holy Roman Empire was rapidly dispersed.
However, unlike in Western Europe, China's aristocratic political period developed relatively short, and in the Warring States period, there was a clear trend of great unification, and in 221 BC, that is, the barbarian era when most parts of Western Europe were still in the "Germanic forest", China completed the initial unification.
(Qin Shi Huang)
In particular, all the Chinese have benefited greatly so far, and when completing the unification, Qin Shi Huang chose a new county system instead of the traditional aristocratic feudal system.
The county system meant that the position of the ruling body, except for the emperor, would no longer be determined by blood in principle, and the concept of talent, morality rather than blood relations gradually penetrated into the brains of Chinese, which directly caused the aristocracy to be hit by the bottom of the government.
At the same time, due to the drastic transition of local personnel and financial powers to the central government under the county system, the success rate of rebellions set off by local separatist forces has declined rapidly.
That is to say, after the establishment of the county system in 2000, China's aristocratic politics was deprived of the soil of land rule, and it was impossible to form a deep force.
In contrast, the aristocracy of the West maintained a close relationship with the land for quite a long time. Even when Charlemagne unified much of Western Europe, he had to divide the land under his command layer by layer because of technical limitations.
(Charlemagne)
The king was at best a powerful nobleman, and the main help he could receive from the localities was the necessary military assistance for the various princes in wartime (more than 40 days of compulsory military service a year), in addition to which he received income from a piece of royal land.
Any attempt to reclaim the lands of the nobility for centralized power would face strong resistance from the nobility, without which the king himself would become a rootless tree.
(Western European Farms)
Although many ambitious rulers were ready to do the great deeds of Qin Shi Huang, they were basically beaten like Napoleon by the encirclement network formed by the Western European countries, especially the balance of the British as an enemy.
It is impossible to achieve a high degree of centralization, the local aristocratic forces are becoming more and more entrenched, the separatist tendency between the local and the central government has always existed, and once the central government collapses, it is easy to see the disintegration of the state, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a dualistic state that retained a large number of aristocratic privileges, and immediately fell apart after defeat in World War I, forming the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, Hungary and other countries.
(2) Tianjie tramples on the bones of the Secretary of State - the overall war to exterminate the nobility vs the small-scale "village war"
War was both the most important source of aristocrats and the fastest way to eliminate them.
Although the Chinese aristocracy was greatly reduced by the blows of the Qin Shi Huang county system, during the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, they continued to evolve into a family of door valves that monopolized official positions with the nine-pin Zhongzheng system.
"Shangpin no Han, lower Grade No Scholar Clan", whenever the world is chaotic, these warrior clans build bunkers to resist the war, to a certain extent, retaining the seeds of Chinese culture, but also greatly hindering the circulation of classes, even if the Sui and Tang Dynasties implemented the imperial examination system, they failed to completely solve this problem.
Tang Taizong was also quite helpless about this: the four surnames of Cui, Lu, Li, and Zheng in Shandong, although tired of Ye Lingchi, were still arrogant in their old land, and they were called scholars.
(Huangchao Uprising)
Until the end of the Tang Dynasty, a turmoil that swept the whole country allowed China to completely get out of the haze of aristocratic society and move towards the era of civilian landlord power in the Song Dynasty and beyond.
In 881, the Huangchao rebel army entered the heart of the Tang Empire, and at this time, Chang'an Luoyang gathered the vast majority of the country's door valve elite, who, like the ordinary People of Chang'an, became the prey of the Huangchao army to burn and loot at will, and Huangchao himself could not stop it, and could only let the rabble-rousers kill.
A poem depicts it like this: Neiku burns into splendid ashes, and the heavenly street tramples on the bones of the secretary of state.
(Huang Chao into Chang'an)
The family that had accumulated for hundreds of years was almost wiped out in this turmoil, and the classics and treasures that the family had inherited for hundreds of years were lost, and the influence of the Chinese political arena was completely lost.
So that in the subsequent dynasties, the civilian landlord class finally replaced the scholar family as the main part of the Chinese bureaucratic class, and the central power was further strengthened.
The Japanese scholar Nichio Hunan called it the "Tang and Song Dynasty", that is, "politically speaking, it was the decline of aristocratic politics and the rise of monarchy." ”
By the time of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the Chinese aristocracy had repeatedly suffered devastating blows from the previous dynasty and the frenzied retaliation of the peasant rebels at the time of the fall of the dynasty, and it was quite rare to survive to the next dynasty.
So, what about Europe?
Compared with China, the wars of the Western Medieval Period are similar to a kind of "Song Xiang formula" war in the Spring and Autumn Period, although the number of wars is frequent, but the scale of each occurrence is far inferior to the kind of war of more than 100,000 people that people think.
During the famous Hundred Years' War between England and France, France suffered heavy losses of just over 6,000 men at the Battle of Agincourt.
For most countries, being able to mobilize more than 50,000 combat troops far exceeds the upper limit of their national strength, and more often than not, it is a small-scale "village war" of hundreds or even dozens of people.
(Polish Wing Cavalry)
The small scale of the war meant that the losses of the nobles could be replenished in time, and because the nobles were mostly scattered throughout the country, unlike the capital area in the late Tang Dynasty, even if the heart of a country was occupied, the nobles in other parts of the country could still retain their vitality.
So until World War I and World War II, the aristocracy could still retain unparalleled influence in politics, and even a model country like France that experienced the baptism of enlightenment and revolution could not avoid the restoration of the monarchy.
Since the power of the nobility cannot be eradicated, out of social reality, the central government has to enter the modern society in a way that coexists with the nobility rather than eliminating the nobility, and carries out relevant social changes with the cooperation of the nobility, which is one of the reasons why the British aristocracy still reproduces to this day.
However, with the outbreak of World War I and World War II, the nobles of Western Europe ushered in their last brilliant moments in the face of an unprecedentedly cruel overall war, falling one after another in the relentless artillery fire.
According to statistics, in the First World War, the battlefield mortality rate of British soldiers was as high as 12%, while the mortality rate of nobles reached 20%, of which the son of the prime minister alone directly killed 3 people.
(British Army, World War I)
People at the time describe it this way: Even if you win the whole war, you lose a generation.
After the war, the aristocratic power of the Western European countries was no longer what it used to be, and the rise of the civilian class could no longer be stopped, such as the era of the welfare state and popular elections.
It is worth noting that the history of Western countries is generally shorter than that of China, when the Western aristocracy is immersed in a small-scale Spring and Autumn War, the Chinese aristocracy has been washed in blood countless times in the horrors and cruel wars, so naturally the West retains more aristocratic elements.
The prince will have a kind of affection
Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's slogan can be called the representative of the populist spirit engraved in the Chinese thought.
Since ancient times Chinese spiritual world has been filled with a pragmatic, realistic spirit, and the concept of divine right of kings and noble inheritance of blood has been repeatedly scorned, and the heart does not really identify with the false ideological propaganda that serves the nobility.
(Chen Sheng Wu Guang)
Although the nobles of successive dynasties have made countless mythological and religious modifications in order to exaggerate the legitimacy of their position, Chinese only one criterion: if there is a gun, it is the king of grass heads.
From the prince general Xiang and Ning Zhihu to the six hundred million Yao Shun of Shenzhou, no one is an innate nobleman, there is no bloodline that has been passed down through the ages, if a ruler can neither understand the people, obey the mandate of heaven, and lose his force to become a light rod commander, then someone will replace him at any time.
It is not difficult to find throughout the history books that when Westerners cling to the pedantic religious concept of enshrinement of aristocratic blood as sacred and inviolable, Chinese have broken this mold and, in the midst of cruel competition, have driven one unqualified bloodline family after another off the political stage and replaced them with more capable rulers.
epilogue
All in all, because of the lack of China's highly developed centralized system and the intensity of social change that is determined to be violent, the West has certainly retained some valuable political traditions and values.
It even helped consolidate national cohesion and ensure the country's diplomatic strength (such as the Queen of England), but it also paid too much for the remnants of social feudalism, leaving more or less a system of nobility.