Chinese nobility

This process was a function of the interface between the ancient patriarchal clan system, an increasingly sophisticated apparatus of state, and an evolving geopolitical situation.

In the subsequent millennia, this system retained its essential character, albeit with modifications in titles and their relative rankings, and fluctuating power dynamics between the great families, the imperial house, the ministerial and mercantile classes, and other stakeholders in the political economy of the times.

After the Song dynasty, most bureaucratic offices were filled through the imperial examination system, undermining the power of the hereditary aristocracy.

"Barbarian" leaders could also be referred to by names such as Yiwang, "king of the Eastern Yi", while in other cases terms such as tusi (土司, "native chief") might be used for the same office.

In practice, many Chinese Empresses Dowager wielded great power— either as official regent for a young sovereign or with the influence of position within family social ranks.

The Rites of Zhou states that Emperors are entitled to the following simultaneous spouses: Sovereigns styled Ba or Bawang (霸王, hegemon-protector), asserted official overlordship of several subordinate rulers while refraining from claiming the royal title.

This practice began in the Spring and Autumn period, spurred by a royal house too militarily weak to defend its own lands, in combination with an aristocracy flexing its power in novel ways.

When Cao Wei defeated the Shu Han Emperor Liu Shan, he and his family were granted noble titles under the new regime.

The child emperor Gao Heng of the Northern Qi dynasty experienced a similar narrative arc two decades later.

This practice continued all the way through the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, when the Republic of China allowed the last Qing Emperor to stay in the Forbidden City and keep his title, treating him as a foreign monarch until 1924.

The Zhou dynasty not only preceded the full unification of early China under the Qin dynasty, the first empire whose realm would subsequently be considered to extend broadly enough to be national in the context of the territorial concept of China, the Zhouli, Rites of Zhou were subsequently canonized by Confucius among his Confucian Chinese classics as a model precedent in principles of government, so ranks of nobility in later regimes both in periods of unified sovereignty and of competing smaller states would typically draw from its catalog of peerage.

From Zhouli, later Confucian political philosophy and government publications, and from the surrounding historical literature of particular individuals, localities and events, the following social classifications have been attested.

The social system of the Zhou dynasty is sometimes referred to as the Chinese feudalism and was the combination of fengjian (enfeoffment and establishment) and zongfa (clan law).

[16] After a few hundred years, political thinkers saw this emergent structure and projected it idealistically and anachronistically backwards into a past where it had not actually held.

Besides the systematized ranks listed above, there were also other familial appellations used as titles, e.g. Bo (伯; such as Bo Qin of Lu, later, its usage changed to titles for hegemony and countship), Zhong (仲; such as Guo Zhong [zh], younger brother of King Wen of Zhou), Shu (叔; such as several younger brothers of King Wu of Zhou, Guanshu Xian, Wei Kangshu, etc.

The royal ancestral temple kinship group surnamed Xiong and its branch lineages of Qu, Jing, and Zhao formed the main nobility of Chu.

Within the elite, Chu's early period mirrored that of Predynastic Zhou, the aristocratic ancestral temples and clan lineages sufficing to determine social position, without an additional expressly political dimension.

Noble ranks, bestowed primarily as reward for military and civil service, and not in principle heritable, came with a state stipend.

On the other hand, victorious generals were often granted official praise-names or names implying particular old and new duties or some combination of these, which would be quasi-executive or fully executive titles honored as much like peerage as like actual military rank, as in the case of Liu Bei promoting Guan Yu to a rank phrased as General Who Exterminates Bandits (蕩寇將軍) during the active course of Guan Yu's military career.

[20] These officials bore the ranks of Majoor, Kapitein or Luitenant der Chinezen, and had extensive political and legal jurisdiction over the local Chinese community.