Why was China a feudal country before? Great gods, help!

The origin of the concept of feudalism in China The feudalism in ancient China is actually the abbreviation of "feudal civil service system" and "feudal country and founding". The fact of large-scale "feudalism" occurred in the early years of the founding of the Western Zhou Dynasty. After the "merchants of Dayi" were destroyed, how did the Zhou family in the western border rule this vast land, so the enfeoffment system came into being. The purpose of enfeoffment is to let the relatives and children of the royal family lead the clansmen to establish armed strongholds in various places, and control various areas on this basis, thus forming a situation of guarding the Zhou Dynasty. Feudal vassals have hereditary sovereignty in feudal countries. Zhou is the "main" vassal state. As a "minor" vassal state, it must obey orders, pay tribute regularly and provide military service. Obviously, "feudalism" in the pre-Qin period has two meanings: one is to formally establish armed strongholds to solve the vast national security problems, and the defense targets are mainly races with different surnames; Second, the principle of sealing the country is blood relationship, and the purpose is to maintain the rule of a royal family. Sima Qian called it "praising relatives, making flesh and blood, respecting ancestors" (1), so-called "pro-country". During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the feudal system gradually disintegrated. After the reunification of Qin, the county system was fully implemented. In fact, the word "feudalism" was rarely used in the late Qin dynasty; However, after the Qin and Han dynasties, the county system was the opposite, which highlighted the characteristics of "feudalism" and the frequency of the word also increased. The debate about which is better or worse has never stopped since the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the enfeoffment system has not disappeared, just drifting away and no longer occupying the mainstream. The concept of "feudalism" has also undergone some changes. Since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the system of treating the people by honoring them has also followed the name of "feudalism". During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Li Fang and others compiled "Peaceful Magnolia" and set up a five-volume "Feudal Department". Subsequently, Ma Duanlin wrote a General Examination of Literature with eighteen volumes of Feudal Examination, which on the one hand traced the feudalism from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Yellow Emperor era, and on the other hand covered the knighthood system from Qin and Han Dynasties to Tang and Song Dynasties. The latter can be called "escape from feudalism". In short, until the end of the Qing Dynasty, people's understanding of the word "feudalism" did not change much, regardless of the feudalism in the Western Zhou Dynasty or the feudalism that escaped later. If anything, the main focus later was the distribution of power between the central and local governments. Even at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, the word "feudalism" was still used in the debate on federalism or provincial autonomy. But in any case, China's feudalism has nothing to do with feudalism at this time. Most people in China don't know what manors or manors there are in western Europe, and those who know it don't think it's the same thing, so they associate it with it. So the original sinologists never translated China's "feudalism" into feudalism. For example, in the19th century, the British sinologist Li Jacob translated many classic works of China, but the word "feudalism" was never translated into feudalism. For example, the phrase "a feudal relative with a fan screen" in Zuo Zhuan is translated as: raised by the deceased, lived by the deceased, lived by the deceased, lived by others, and died by the deceased. Another example is "Poetry-Ode to Business-Yanwu", "Life in neighboring countries, feudalism is blessed"; In Zuo Zhuan, "there is no brother, so it is feudal"; Both "feudal relatives" and "feudal brothers" are translated in a similar way. (3) The Chinese translation and introduction of the word "feudalism" by Li Jacob and others all started from the original meaning, that is, grasping the essence of establishing a vassal state by royal blood relatives. Obviously, in the eyes of westerners, China's "feudal state" in the Western Zhou Dynasty is not the same as feudalism, which was widely implemented on the basis of manor system in medieval western Europe. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (1) Historical Records-Three Wangs' Family. (2) For example, when Li Dazhao talked about the provincial system in 19 16, he traced it back to the feudal county theory. If there is, then those who value the outside light the cloud are enough to centralize power; Those who value the outside and despise the inside cloud are enough to decentralize. So those who are concentrated by the Rightists eulogize counties; Right-handers should be feudal. The dispute between feudalism and counties is still unsolved. "Collected Works of Li Dazhao", People's Publishing House, 1999, page 2 14-230) (3) "Not like brothers, so feudalism" is translated or said that we are qualitobrothers. "Feudal relatives" is translated into Toraiserelavieves of royal housesse to rules of states; "feudal brothers" is translated into to advance brothers to ruis of states. China scholars did not simply translate them at first. Yan Fu translated feudalism into Chinese for the first time. 190 1 year, Yan Fu's important translation Fu Yuan came out. In this translation, feudalism is translated as "Foot Zhi Zhi". Probably Yan Fu found that feudalism in western Europe was unfamiliar with the history of China, and there was no suitable China vocabulary for it, so he adopted transliteration. Yan Fu clearly explained his understanding of "Fute" in his comments: "Taking care of the land and dividing the people has the custom of Fute ... A country's land is divided into several Futes, each with its own owner. If Qi Min accepts and cultivates it, he will have his due service to his master, but it should be transferred to the army. With the crackdown system, people often know that there is a Lord but not a king. Wang Li is not enough for people in the old place. "It can be seen that Yan Fu has a certain observation depth on the manor system in Western Europe, and thinks that the style of Western Europe is different from China's classical feudalism, so' the establishment of People's Republic of China (PRC) is the beginning, and there must be the image of China'. (1)1In June, 903, Yan Fu translated Mill's On the Boundaries of Group Rights, which still transliterated feudalism. The problem lies in another translation published by Yan Fu soon after, Social General Solution. Yan Fu translated the book with a sense of urgency. Edward Jencks's General Social Interpretation was published in 1900, translated and published by Yan Fu in 1904. (2) In this book, he translated feudalism into "feudalism" or "feudalism" for the first time, thus completely corresponding feudalism in western Europe with the traditional society in China. The traditional society in China includes not only the pre-Qin Dynasty, but also the Qin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. Not only the changes in translation, but also the impact of western thoughts and words, Yan Fu's thoughts are also in a fierce shock. From the preface of this translation, we can see that Yan Fu was deeply influenced by Jencks's social evolution schema. Jencks put forward three stages of the evolution of human society: totem society, patriarchal society and national society. In Jencks's view, this is a common process of the development of human society from low to high, and it is also an evolutionary sequence that every nation must experience. Just as the sky has four seasons, people have childhood, adolescence and prime of life. " What class is feudalism in society? "? Yan Fu asked himself and answered: "Fute feudalism" is a transitional stage between patriarchal society and modern society. (4) Obviously, Jencks regards feudalism as Western Europe and the world, which all other nationalities have to experience. Originally, it was said that feudalism in western Europe was universal, but Yan Fuyi translated it into "feudalism" and the word "feudalism" in Chinese became universal, which shows the wonderful power of semantics. Yan Fu fully accepted Jencks's concept of social development organism. He added a long note to the translation, and described and divided the history of China accordingly. He said that "the period from Tang Yu to Zhou was more than two thousand years, which was a feudal era" and was a typical male-dominated society. Later, "it has been more than two thousand years since Qin Dynasty". How to treat this period of history made Yan Fu hesitate, because he fell into Jencks. Therefore, even according to Jencks's point of view, the huge differences between Chinese and western feudal societies are puzzling. China's "feudal society" was built for 4,000 years, but it was more than enough. It originated in the feudal era of Britain and France during the Tang and Song Dynasties in China, but it was only a thousand years. "How sharp? "Yan Fu puzzled. Although he comforted himself with the idea that "this is the extreme reversal of things, and here it starts late and ends suddenly, and here it starts late and ends late, knowing the natural principles and taking ten thousand periods as a moment", it is still difficult to hide his deep confusion: "However, the difference between the two cannot be the result of no cause" and "it is already clear that we cannot but be interested in today's groups. When translating, I don't know how many times I "threw too many pipes" and "ran around the room"! ⑤ Yan Fu's painful state of longing for new knowledge, but unable to justify himself, is vividly on the paper! _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ① Smith: Fu Yuan, Volume I, translated by Yan Fu, The Commercial Press 198 1 year, pp. 335-336. ② 1904 Published by Commercial Press. According to Zhou's research, feudalism was translated from Japan. The Chinese-English dictionary compiled by foreigners did not translate feudalism into English. Feudalism until 19 16. ④ Jencks: General Interpretation of Society, translated by Yan Fu, Commercial Press, 198 1, p. 75. ⑤ Jencks: A general interpretation of society. Yan Fu's pain is specious pain; More specifically, it is the pain of cutting the foot and fitting the shoes! Unfortunately, Yan Fu's pain is rarely known to later generations, but his method of decomposing China history with imported social evolution schema and translating feudalism with "feudalism" was generally accepted by later China scholars. Around the beginning of the 20th century, Yan Fu's ideological tendency was not isolated. For example, as early as 1899, Liang Qichao pointed out that the state system of China and Europe had experienced the family era, the chieftain era and the feudal era in turn, from which the Jencks-style social evolution schema was clearly revealed. This concept is of progressive significance for breaking China's traditional theory of historical cycle, but if it becomes a unified model covering the history of all countries, including China, it will be full of loopholes. Liang's conclusion is that China's Western Zhou Dynasty is most similar to the Greek state system, both of which broke away from aristocratic politics and other countries in feudal times. Today, it seems that such a judgment is far-fetched. It can be seen that even if Liang Qichao is clever, once he falls into a popular and rigid social evolution schema, it will be greatly reduced. For another example, Xia Cengyou's newly compiled middle school China history textbook at the beginning of the 20th century holds that human beings always enter the nomadic society from the fishing and hunting society, and then enter the farming society from the nomadic society. After entering the farming society, patriarchal clan system and feudal system were generally implemented: "All countries in the world have their own level of evolution." Xia Cengyou's statement is exactly the same as Jencks's social evolution schema of "totem-patriarchal clan system-feudal-modern country", which shows that the academic circles in China were deeply influenced by it at that time. In order to further explain the social ideological trend and historical background at that time, it is necessary for us to leave this topic for a while and briefly review the connotation and influence of western social evolution theory. When Darwin crossed the Pacific Islands to observe the species changes in nature, he probably never thought that sociologists would be familiar with the development process of human society with his natural theory decades later. This is the theory of social Darwinism advocated by Huxley and Spencer. As far as the view of history is concerned, social Darwinism emphasizes the inevitability and monotonicity of historical development. Almost at the same time, anthropological evolution appeared. There are two kinds of evolutionism in anthropology: one is classical evolutionism, and the other is new evolutionism. Classical evolution, or "single-line evolution" and "linear evolution", arose in the middle and late19th century. Bastia, a German anthropologist, first put forward the basic theories and concepts of evolution in Man in History, and then the works of Taylor, Morgan, Fraser and others came out one after another, forming the school of evolution. Although the scope and content of their discussion are different, they all think that culture is an evolutionary process from low level to high level and from simple to complex. All nationalities in the world have developed along the same line, and each nationality has gone through the same stage. For example, in his book Primitive Culture, Taylor put the cultures of European nationalities at the top and Australian indigenous cultures at the bottom, and then arranged the cultures of all nationalities in the world between the two extremes in terms of height and simplicity. Morgan's Ancient Society divides the development of human society and culture into three stages: ignorance, barbarism and civilization, and each stage is divided into three sub-stages: low stage, middle stage and high stage. 19 The classical theory of evolution dominated the western academic circles from 1960s to the end of 1990s, and has been questioned and criticized more and more since then. When it was introduced to China in the early 20th century, it was a spent force in the west. Later, classical evolution was gradually replaced by new evolution, one of which was multiline evolution. This is another story. If you know something about the prevailing social thoughts at that time, you will have more understanding and tolerance for Yan Fu and others. It is inevitable that China people will not recognize western ideas for the first time. Under the background that the schema of social evolution cannot be subverted, Yan Fu translated feudalism into feudalism, which is equivalent to equating Western Europe in the Middle Ages with traditional China society. The familiarity and description of the latter only borrowed the shell of the word "feudalism" in Chinese. In fact, he put the history of China into the western model and interpreted it according to the logic of western Europe, flaunting it as the universality of human society. Obviously, since the beginning of the 20th century, the word "feudalism" has appeared in China's written and spoken language with unprecedented frequency, which is not a simple continuation of China's traditional discourse, but has some other reasons and contents. To be exact, "feudalism" is no longer the abbreviation of "establishing the country by sealing the country" in the pre-Qin period, nor did it escape from the feudal system of "conferring titles but not treating the people" later, but it originated from Spanish feudalism, which has universal significance and human beings entered modern times. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ① Liang Qichao: On the similarities and differences between China and European countries, a clear discussion, volume 17, volume 26. If Yan Fu hesitated at that time, almost all the descendants of Yan Fu thought about this issue, and thought that it was natural for every nation, including China, to experience the "feudal society" in Western Europe, without doubt. From the debate on China's social history in 1930s to the discussion on the division of China's historical and social forms in 1950s and 1970s, the question of "feudal society" is not whether there is a problem, but when it existed, came into being and collapsed in China's history. But there are also different voices, such as Hu Shi's Outline of China's Philosophical History, Zheng Zhenduo's Illustrated History of China Literature, Jiang and Jiang Zuyi's Classics and Classics, China's Historical Outline, and Hou Wailu's General History of China's Ideological History. They still insist that feudalism is a specific concept in China's Western Zhou Dynasty, and it can't be confused with the feud in Western Europe. In Chen Yinque's collected works, it is not found that he called the China society after Qin Shihuang's "abolishing the seal and establishing the county" a "feudal society" anywhere. Zhang Yinlin's Outline of China History is a high school history textbook published in the early 1940s. The chapter "Feudal Society of the Western Zhou Dynasty" clearly stated the "feudal social elements" of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and immediately concluded: "According to this definition, the society of the Zhou Dynasty is undoubtedly a feudal society. Moreover, in the history of China, only the society of the Zhou Dynasty can be said to be a feudal society. ..... From this loose feudal empire to the unified county empire after the Han Dynasty, ... is one of the central issues in China's social history. " ⑤ In the Outline of National History published by 1940, Qian Mu also disagreed that China society since the Zhou and Qin Dynasties was a "feudal society". He said: "In the political system, since the Qin Dynasty, China has been the Central Unification Bureau, and its subordinate counties have been handed over to each other, and there is no hereditary monarch. This is not enough to say' feudalism'. Without an extraordinary aristocratic class, it is not enough to say' feudalism'. ..... This land is neither fief nor feudal. ..... In the past, China's society was not feudal or industrial and commercial, but sui generis. Why do you want to cut your feet and fit your shoes? It is the evolution of human history and cannot escape the classification of western scholars? " ⑥ The General History of China Thought written by Hou Wailu in the 1940s is more acute. He said it was "confusing the world" to confuse the two. But their opinions are not in the mainstream and their voices are getting weaker and weaker. At this point, the question can be summed up as follows: Is there a unified development schema in pre-modern human society, and can a concept be used to express the social nature and characteristics of all nations and countries? Furthermore, can the feudal system in western Europe, which was translated into "feudal system" in the past, cover China? The author intends to use historical methods to solve and answer questions, so he must first accept the test of historical facts. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (1) Hu Shi wrote the Outline of China's Philosophical History in 19 18, holding that the "gestation period" of China's philosophy was from the 8th century BC to the 6th century BC. Various social classes of the ancient feudal system have gradually disappeared. ""Ancient feudal society was the most important class. "When talking about the great purpose of Confucius' philosophy, he said:" Confucius saw the phenomenon of disputes without owners and recalled the well-organized class society in the heyday of feudal system. It was a pity to go to ancient times. " (2) In the early 1930s, Zheng Zhenduo wrote The Illustrated History of China Literature, which discussed the unification before Qin unified the world. "This is just the enfeoffment of the captaincy and the detention of ethnic minorities around the country. They still maintain their feudal system, and they are not very obedient to the central authorities. After the reunification of Qin, the deep-rooted and scattered local kingdom system was shattered and the world was changed to counties. " (3) Jiang and Jiang Zuyi co-authored "Chinese Self-study Counseling Series" 1942, aiming at introducing the origin and evolution of classic works in traditional culture to Chinese people. There is a sentence in a series of Jing Jing: "Qin Shihuang unified China, abolished feudalism and changed counties. This is an extremely significant and thorough reform in China's political system. Fundamentally eradicated the feudal system that had been practiced for thousands of years before the Zhou Dynasty ... This was indeed an epoch-making political change in China. Although the ancient feudal system had collapsed in the Warring States period, major political and social reforms were often not satisfied with the old ones. He also said, "The collapse of the feudal system began in the mid-Spring and Autumn Period and was completed in the Qin Dynasty. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, counties and counties were mixed, but the feudal system was exposed, so it was like a flash in the pan. This is the general trend and inevitable. " (4) Zhang Yinlin said: "Strictly speaking, the elements of a feudal society are as follows: under a royal family, there are pagodas of several levels of monarchs, and each monarch is actually the hereditary ruler and landlord of a region, although it is a vassal of the superior; In this society, rulers are all landlords, and landlords are all rulers. At the same time, farmers under the rule of rulers at all levels are not serfs or sharecroppers, and they cannot own or resell cultivated land. " ⑤ Zhang Yinlin: An Overview of China, pp. 24-25. ⑥ Qian Mu: Outline of National History, Commercial Press, 1994, Introduction, page 2 1-22. ⑦ Hou Wailu: A General History of China's Ideological History, Volume II, Sanlian Bookstore, 1950, p. 374.