Spring and Autumn period

The Zhou court, having lost its homeland in the Guanzhong region, held nominal power, but had real control over only a small royal demesne centered on Luoyi.

The Zhou court would never regain its original authority; instead, it was relegated to being merely a figurehead of the regional states and ritual leader of the Ji clan ancestral temple.

This political framework retained the fēngjiàn power structure, though interstate and intrastate conflict often led to declining regard for clan customs, respect for the Ji family, and solidarity with other Zhou peoples.

[20] The king's prestige legitimized the military leaders of the states, and helped mobilize collective defense of Zhou territory against "barbarians".

The fields had been put in the care of Lu by the king for the exclusive purpose of producing royal sacrifices for the sacred Mount Tai.

The duke counterattacked and raided Zhou territory, defeating the royal forces in the Battle of Xuge and injuring the king himself.

[17][24][25] Zheng was the first vassal to openly defy the king, kicking off the centuries of warfare without respect for the old traditions which would characterize the period.

With the help of his prime minister, Guan Zhong, Duke Huan reformed Qi to centralize its power structure.

The state consisted of 15 "townships" (縣) with the duke and two senior ministers each in charge of five; military functions were also united with civil ones.

Soon after, King Hui of Zhou conferred the title of bà (hegemon), giving Duke Huan royal authority in military ventures.

[27][28] An important basis for justifying Qi's dominance over the other states was presented in the slogan 'Revere the King, Expel the Barbarians' (尊王攘夷; zun wang rang yi).

The role of subsequent hegemons would also be framed in this way: as the primary defender and supporter of nominal Zhou authority and the existing order.

Using this authority, during the first eleven years of his hegemony, Duke Huan intervened in a power struggle in Lu; protected Yan from encroaching Western Rong nomads; drove off Northern Di nomads after their invasions of Wey and Xing, providing the people with provisions and protective garrison units; and led an alliance of eight states to conquer Cai and thereby block the northward expansion of Chu.

When Duke Wen of Jin came to power in 636 after extensive peregrinations in exile, he capitalized on the reforms of his father, Duke Xian (r. 676–651), who had centralized the state, killed off relatives who might threaten his authority, conquered sixteen smaller states, and even absorbed some Rong and Di peoples to make Jin much more powerful than it had been previously.

In the Spring and Autumn Annals he is defiantly referred to as Zi (子, ruler; unratified lord),[35] even at a time when he dominated most of south China.

[36] In the case of Jin, the shift happened in 588 when the army was split into six independent divisions, each dominated by a separate noble family: Zhi (智), Zhao (趙), Han (韓), Wei (魏), Fan (范), and Zhonghang (中行).

Wu was a state in modern Jiangsu outside the Zhou cultural sphere, considered "barbarian", where the inhabitants sported short hair and tattoos and spoke an unintelligible language.

[39][40] Although its ruling house claimed to be a senior lineage in the Ji ancestral temple,[e] Wu did not participate in the politics and wars of China until the last third of the Spring and Autumn period.

[42] After a period of increasingly exhausting warfare, Qi, Qin, Jin and Chu met at a disarmament conference in 579 and agreed to declare a truce to limit their military strength.

[44] In addition, new aristocratic houses were founded with loyalties to powerful states, rather than directly to the Zhou kings, though this process slowed down by the end of the seventh century, possibly because territory available for expansion had been largely exhausted.

With the help of Wu Zixu and Sun Tzu,[45] the author of The Art of War, he launched major offensives against the state of Chu.

A full-scale civil war between 497 and 453 ended with the elimination of most noble lines; the remaining aristocratic families divided Jin into three successor states: Han, Wei, and Zhao.

On the other hand, the existence of the Book of Changes is well-attested in the Zuozhuan, as multiple characters use it for divination and accurately quote the received text.

While the aristocracy of the Western Zhou frequently interacted via the medium of the royal court, the collapse of central power at the end of the first half of the dynasty left in its wake hundreds of autonomous polities varying drastically in size and resources, nominally connected by bonds of cultural and ritual affiliation increasingly attenuated by the passage of time.

At the top of the bunch were Gong (公) and Hou (侯), favoured lineages of old with generally larger territories and greater resources and prestige at their disposal.

[52] Meanwhile, a new class of lower-tier aristocrats formed: the Shi (士), gentlemen too distantly related to the great houses to be born into a life of wielding power, but still part of the elite culture, aiming at upward social mobility, typically through the vector of officialdom.

[53] Alongside this development, there was precedent of Zhou kings "upgrading" noble ranks as a reward for service to the throne, giving the recipients a bit more diplomatic prestige without costing the royal house any land.

[54] During the decline of the royal house, although real power was wrested from their grasp, their divine legitimacy was not brought into question, and even with the king reduced to something of a figurehead, his prestige remained supreme as Heaven's eldest son.

[55] Archaeologically excavated primary sources and received literature agree to a high degree of systematization and stability in noble titles during the Eastern Zhou, indicating an actual historical process.

Traditional history lists five hegemons during the Spring and Autumn period:[57] Alternatively:[citation needed] Bureaucrats or Officers Influential scholars Other people The Liji claims that the Eastern Zhou was divided into 1773 states,[16] of which 148 are known by name as mentioned in the Zuo Zhuan.