One knows little thing of the origins of Zhou. It seems that they were barbarian and seminomad people whose kingdom was established in Shenxi.

Manners more warlike than their Eastern neighbors, Shangs, Zhou assimilated their culture, and ended up subjecting them. One thinks that, originating in an area favorable to the breeding of the horse, they made, under the control of their king Wen, a greater use of the tank, tie favors of an innovation, the attachment with four horses of face. Their victorious advance, under the control of their king Wen, was greeted as a libéartion by the old subjects of Shang which were believed thus released of their tyranny.  

Feudalization
The king Wu successor of Wen (one of the Confucian saints par excellence) is definitively victorious of Shang to the battle of Muye, north of Jaune river, and the last of kings Shang, Zhouxin, is decapitated. Wen divided China (then reduced with the basin of Houanghe) between a multiplicity of vassal, keeping for him only the valley of Wei (country of Zhou). Its descendants, initially enough strong to maintain cohesion along the period of Zhou Eastern (1050-771 av. J. - C.), with long, were exhausted by punitive forwardings against certain too bold or unquestionable barbarians vassal too turbulent; they last, into 770 (first unquestionable date of the Chinese history), to give up their fields to settle more in the east, on the site of Luoyang, in the middle of their partisans. The latter, surrounding a private royal family of her own goods, managed to make puppets of them and competed for the real power.  

The Chunqiu period (722 - 481 av. J. - C.) and let us hégémons them
Ignoramuses of their petty, new principalities, more recent quarrels and of higher potential, appear with the periphery and assert themselves in turn like guarantors of the order (VIII E - O C century): it is hégémons them Ba, which chairs the “Chinese Confederation”, and return in very theoretical Zhou only one allegiance, forcing even sometimes the king to go of force to their assemblies. This period, called the period Chunqiu Spring and Automnes thus sees a general opposition taking shape between the old city of the central plain (zhongguo, “the principality of the center”, term which was reprsi to indicate China later) and of the peripheral entities which starts to form powerful political units: Jin (in Shanxi), IQ (in the North-West of Shandong), Fallen (in the average valley of Yangzi), etc the fight for hegemony ends up exhausting the great principalities: more none was enough strong to be essential on the others.  

The Kingdoms combatants
At that time the age of the Kingdoms combatants (453-222 av. J. - C.) starts, which sees disappearing the last pretense from order; strongest annex successively weakest: on more than one hundred principalities, there remain soon only six about it.

The kingdom of Qin, whose cradle was appreciably the same one as that of Zhou, adopts Draconian methods of government which enable him to reverse all its rivals, involving Zhou themselves in the storm, before proclaiming into 221 the advent of the imperial order. Ancient China had lived.

End of the rites: a political reality
In parallel, and in reaction with Shang, a certain material moderation involved the development of the spirit of measurement and the ritual system (this last will be idealized by Confucius like milks it fundamental feudal company). The history of the end of Zhou is however that of the degradation of the ritual company (and therefore, of feudality), under the push of the great peripheral States, forged in contact with a barbarian world, and ignoramuses of precedences and rites in which trap the small principalities of the Center. The fights of the Kingdoms combatants accelerate the process while making become aware of the factors military and economic, involving the progressive ousting of the nobility to the profit of new men who seize the power and keep it by authoritative means: imposition, monopolies commercial, criminal laws, administration, genesis of a centralized power.  

Technical innovations
The most important technical innovation is iron; the Chinese know the cast iron some 1600 years before Europe. The foundries become immediately government enterprises. With such means, the war takes a total aspect and is always balanced by the destruction of the State overcoming (milked unknown until hégémons: in antiquated China, to destroy a State was equivalent alienating its god of the ground; when Zhou triumphed over Shang, they left them the principality of Song, their own field). The warlike States, from now on rich of average materials and human, undertake work of great width: irrigation (little practiced hitherto), channels, defensive walls.  

Social evolution
The reinforcement of the power in the States and the prosperity of the Chinese world as a whole involve the appearance of new social groups, independent craftsmen (and attached either to the palate) and tradesmen. It is that the Chinese city becomes considerable: several the 100 ' 000 inhabitants exceed, and the capital of the IQ (Shandong) counts 300 ' 000 of them. The new tendencies are best illustrated by the State de Qin, of which the leaders put the theories legalists into practice, thus preparing the empire.

Literature

On the plans arts person and philosophical, the difference is sensitive between the feudal period, which see the flowering of the ritual ones, and that of the Kingdoms combatants, characterized by a boiling of ideas without precedent: they are the Hundred Schools (IV E and III E centuries).  

The Zhou thought
Philosophers traverse China and offer to the sovereigns very diverse councils for controlling well, and if required adapting the empire. It should be noted that their fundamental concerns are of a pacifist nature. One can distinguish, among the thinkers, the ritualists, who believe in a return to the golden age (Confucius, Mencius, Siun-tseu), “realistic” the, conscious ones of the inescapable collapse of the old values and need for newer solutions (Han Fei, Mozi), and finally the quietists which preach the detachment, such as Laozi, Zhuangzi, Lizi and Yang Tchou. In addition, poetry is detached from the oral tradition and popular represented by the collection of Che-king, to reach with literary creation conscious with the elegies of Tch' or (works of K' iu Yuan), pathetic lamentations of a wrongfully exiled faithful minister, and of which the high one and noble inspiration will remain a model through all the history of the Chinese literature.  

Hundred Schools
Among the Hundred Schools, only the Confucianism and the taoism could be essential in a durable way, but it was not without receiving the influence of various currents, which did not survive in themselves but marked the development of the Chinese thought. Many thinkers of China of IVe and IIIe front centuries J. - C., little are clearly known to us, but their ideas are often quoted by other sources (traditional of the Confucianism and taoism). If the school of doctors, that of the farmers, etc, are condemned to remain in the half-light, it is not the same dialecticians, mohists, and especially of the legists.

Mohism
If the mohism (or motism) played in the long term a less part, one cannot doubt that it had its hour of glory. Qualified the utilitarian ones, the disciples of Mozi preach a cold austerity in the name of the community property, a many population enjoying the goods essential to the man, drank who can reach himself only by the sacrifice of superfluity (including arts and the rites). Vis-a-vis the “partial” love towards parents, friends, sovereign, who sermon Confucius, Moziappelle with the universal love, without blaming the respect of the superiors. Mozi judged the war like worst evils, but supported that it is necessary to be denied the aggressions. Inventor of machines of war and organizer of a true army of disciples (prototype of the secret societies), it into practice put his ideas by ensuring on several occasions the survival of small principalities in danger.  

Dialecticians
The dialecticians are during Greek sophists. They are flattered “to show that the impossible one is possible”. At the base of their demonstrations, disconcerting aphorisms: a white horse is not a horse (the ideas “horse” and “white” are distinct), an ox has five legs (i.e., the abstract idea “leg” added with the four real legs). Kong Souen-length is thus brought to determine the definition of concrete and the abstract. Its ideas survived as a curiosity and like mental gymnastics. At the time of the Hundred Schools at least, the dialecticians knew, it seems, a certain audience.  

Legists
The theories developed by the legists knew greatest fortune, not as a school, but while combining with the official Confucianism. Han Fei, aristocrat himself, was conscious of the inescapable disappearance of a certain order. In its treaty, Hanfeizi, it advises with the model sovereign systematically to break any medium able to deviate the power with its profit (noble, courtiers). Han Fei designs a prince who is not necessarily higher as a man (chance of the succession), but who, by means of a certain number of receipts, isolates himself from all and reaches a level abstracted to become the power; it directs the men by the play of the rewards and the punishments, applied coldly. Thus, it in itself was a very unspecified character, the sovereign would be maintained. It is a very new theory in China: the power is not conceived any more like a religious abstraction, but like a purely human phenomenon. The well-read men understood very quickly that such theories would usefully supplement the humane government of Confucius, too utopian. Thus, while being officially condemned as a school, the legism played in the Chinese history a big role. Not only it was at the base of the genesis of the empire, but still there remained a dominating component of the Chinese political theory, to the paddle of the XX E century.

Art

It is only from 1945 that one undertook to excavate the Zhou sites systematically: they were shown extremely rich, as well for the study of art as for that of antiquated civilization (to Lieouli KB, a tomb of IVe century delivered nineteen tanks of war). As regards art also, the civilization of Zhou continues that of Shang.  

Bronzes
The place of honor remains with the bronze, which made it possible to the craftsmen to show their skill to model the forms, talent attested in particular by the vases zoomorphes (imaginary owls, tigers, creatures). The very many objects of bronze are distributed, according to their forms, of categories corresponding to precise ritual employment. Decoration characteristic of Shang (animals) breaks up gradually to make place with geometrical reasons (bands, grooves, meanders). The latter especially tend to cover all surface with the vase, whose form is done readily exuberant.  

From the VII E century, the forms become again severe and the decoration is done discrete, but grows rich by money and gold incrustations. Desired archaisms attest already the taste of the return to old. Under the Kingdoms combatants, the production multiplies and diversifies, bronzes not being more only of the ritual objects, but also translating the profane luxury: crockery, bells, ornaments of harness and tanks, handles of knives, fibules with decoration of animals indicating a marked influence of the art of the steppes.  

Ceramics and jade
Some of most beautiful ceramics of the Zhou period are gray ground copies of the bronze vases, but it also develops a glazed ceramics more elaborate than that of Shang. One finds finally figurines of terra cotta surprisingly alive (fighters). Jade (pendentive, solar disks, etc) reached an unequalled degree of perfection. Initially held with ritual and funerary employment, it becomes a source of pleasures for the alive ones. The technical amazing feat that certain parts (chain cut in the mass) represent lets suppose that one knew already the drill and the turns.  

The many archaeological lucky finds contribute to indicate the period of Zhou like one of richest of Chinese art, most creative in any case.