VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 1, SECTION 3

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 1, SECTION 3

Enfeoffing Land and Enfeoffing Office

The first two sections set the skeleton of enfeoffment and the five laws. This section comes down to earth and looks at the two oldest, most common shapes enfeoffment takes: enfeoffing land, and enfeoffing office. See these two clearly and you will find that most institutions from antiquity to now are variations on them.

The enfeoffment of land is simple in shape. The front-most figure hands a stretch of land to one person or one family. That land's produce, its people, its soldiers, are all theirs to direct. What to grow, how much to tax, what cases to judge, how many troops to keep, mostly they decide. But the family owes the front-most figure something in return: tribute at set times, troops in war, attendance at great occasions, and no open revolt.

That is the enfeoffment of land. Its heart is that the position passes down a bloodline. A stretch of land belongs to a family, father to principal son, principal son to principal grandson, generation after generation unchanged. China from the Western Zhou through the Spring and Autumn and Warring States, and Europe through the Middle Ages, ran mainly on this shape. Look once at each.

Over three thousand years ago King Wu of Zhou beat the last Shang king at Muye and founded the Zhou. The realm he had won was too large for one man in the capital to manage. So King Wu and the Duke of Zhou did a thing. They parceled the realm out to royal kin, to men of merit, to the descendants of former kings, and had them set up feudal states in their own regions, governing that patch for the Son of Heaven. Lu went to the Duke of Zhou's son, Qi to the man of merit Taigong, Yan to the Duke of Shao, Jin to Tang Shuyu, Wey to Kang Shu. Dozens of states at first, later hundreds. Each state was its own system. The lord had broad self-rule within his state, and enfeoffed the ministers below him, who enfeoffed the officers below them, layer on layer. The lords brought tribute to the capital at set times, local goods, soldiers, craftsmen, to show submission to the Son of Heaven. Among themselves they married, allied, and quarreled, but on the surface all honored the Zhou king as common head. In the early Western Zhou it ran well. The lords felt it an honor to be enfeoffed there, a thing their heirs could hold for generations. The Son of Heaven was glad not to manage so vast a land himself.

Wipe the two sides of this system and look. The good side first, and it is truly good. First, clear succession. The position passes steadily inside one family, generation to generation, without a fight each time, so the state can store up culture and wealth across centuries. Lu passed through more than ten reigns, the ruler's seat handed steadily within one family. Second, local self-rule. The lord knew the local people and land, and governed with a finer hand than a Son of Heaven far off in the capital. Third, cultural accumulation. Lu kept the Zhou rites most fully and became a center of rite and music, Qi grew rich by the sea in craft and trade, Chu in the south held a culture of its own. These features were kept alive under the long enfeoffment, and Chinese civilization grew rich and various because of it. Fourth, meeting the outside foe. The border lords became the Son of Heaven's shield. Jin held off the northern peoples, Qi the eastern, Chu the southern, each fighting to keep its own fief, and together they served the Zhou's stability. Do not set the enfeoffment of land equal to backwardness the moment you see it. In its own age it had a real function.

But the bad side is just as real. First, the lords grew too strong. In peace it was self-rule, in upheaval it became regional breakaway. A lord had his own army and treasury, and the Son of Heaven could not master him by force. Second, the rules of succession got broken. A principal son died young or proved unfit, a lesser son had military merit, the rule wavered, and ministers could hollow out the ruler, as the three houses did in late Lu. Third, the lords swallowed one another. The states went from hundreds at first, to dozens in the Spring and Autumn, to seven in the Warring States, and at last to Qin. The enfeoffment of land ate itself. Fourth, the Son of Heaven was hollowed out. The lords grew ever stronger, the king ever weaker, until in the late Eastern Zhou only a common head in name remained, and holding the Son of Heaven to command the lords became a tactic, the throne a flag for others to fly. This is exactly last section's point. The position of Son of Heaven was truly accepted by the lords early on, and later the acceptance drained toward zero, and the position emptied out. Good and bad live together. See both sides. Do not take its good for perfection, nor take its faults for worthlessness.

Cut to Europe. Around the year eight hundred, Charlemagne was crowned in Rome as emperor of the Romans, and an empire spanning today's France, Germany, and Italy was born. But the empire was too large for one man. He and his heirs parceled the land out to nobles across it, each to govern a patch. Each noble held on his fief a castle, knights, a court, the right to tax, and owed the king above him limited duties: tribute, troops in war, attendance at important councils, and no open betrayal. This system is one bloodline with the Western Zhou. A patch of land handed to a family, that family with broad self-rule over it and limited duty to the one above. The forms differ. The European tiers were more tangled, a noble could be vassal to several lords at once, and there was a saying, the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal, but the skeleton is one.

Europe's two sides are just as real. The good is real. After Rome collapsed Europe fell into long disorder, and the feudal system pressed that disorder down. Each patch of land got a concrete master, farmers could till, villages could rebuild, and it was a saving grace out of chaos into order. Under the lords' protection, monasteries and churches kept a great store of ancient Greek and Roman texts, which without that stability might have been lost to war. The nobles developed a code of chivalry, honor and loyalty and courage and protection of the weak, often broken in fact yet lasting as an ideal. And the stability gave commerce and craft the room to recover, so that Venice, Florence, Paris, and London grew into new centers by the late Middle Ages. But the bad is real too. Serfs could not freely leave the land, owed the lord labor and many dues, and lived hard, bound for generations. Nobles warred for land, marriage, and inheritance year after year, each war draining resources and hurting common people. Power was highly scattered, each with its own law, weights, and tolls, a barrier when large cooperation was needed. Royal power was weak, many great nobles richer than the king, which was a check at some moments and a paralysis at others. The Western Zhou's enfeoffment of land and Europe's medieval one, the good of the one real, the bad of the other real, neither savage nor advanced, each a workable enfeoffment for its own age.

How does the enfeoffment of land match the five laws from last section? A position must exist: the lord is the pivot in his state, the Son of Heaven the pivot over the whole realm. A position must be accepted: a lord must be accepted by the ministers, officers, and commoners of his state, the lords must accept one another, and all must accept the Son of Heaven, and where any layer fails to accept, that layer shakes, as the three houses hollowed out Lu, as the lords stopped accepting the Zhou king and the age of warring states came. Acceptance is dynamic: high for the Son of Heaven in the early Western Zhou, his position steady, low in the late Eastern Zhou, his position hollow. When acceptance drains past a point the position vanishes: by the end of the Eastern Zhou the lords' acceptance of the king had drained near zero, Qin ended the Zhou, and the position of Son of Heaven at last vanished, but not overnight, over centuries of slow draining. A new position necessarily arises: after the Son of Heaven vanished, the First Emperor became emperor, a new position grown out of the mutual swallowing of the seven warring states, the next shape after the enfeoffment of land had spent itself.

Now the second kind, enfeoffing office. It differs at the root from enfeoffing land. In the enfeoffment of land, the position passes down a bloodline, a patch belonging to a family, unchanged across generations. In the enfeoffment of office, the position passes with the post. An office, a magistrate, a prefect, a minister, a mayor, is granted from above. A person holds it some years, leaves, and the next person comes. Hold this root change. The office belongs to the state, not to a family. The person flows, not passing down a line. The family is stripped away. The office stands on its own.

That change began with the Qin. After the Qin unified the six states, one of the most important things it did was to abolish enfeoffment and set up commanderies and counties, dividing the whole realm into commanderies, each with a governor sent by the court, the governor not hereditary but appointed, replaceable after some years, his son unable to inherit the seat but having to earn appointment by his own ability. This system ran in China for over two thousand years, the Qin and Han commanderies and counties, the Sui and Tang prefectures and counties, the Song circuits and prefectures, the Yuan provinces, the Ming and Qing provinces, prefectures, and counties, the forms changing, the skeleton one: the office belongs to the state, the person flows.

The enfeoffment of office has a good side, truly good. First, higher efficiency. A central order can go straight down to the county level without passing through tiers of feudal lords, and a decree can reach the whole realm in months. Second, the flow of talent. It is no longer that without a family background there is no chance, and in principle anyone can enter a governing position by examination or recommendation, which is exactly the examination system of the next chapter. Third, it heads off breakaway. A local official's army and treasury belong to the state, so breaking away is hard. Fourth, professional governing. The one over finance handles finance, the one over criminal law handles criminal law, finer than one lord handling everything. But the bad side is real too. First, short sight in officials. A magistrate serves a place only three or five years, feels no family bond to it, and if he does harm it goes unpunished once he leaves, so he seeks only the record of his own term. Second, the ease of a corrupt bureaucracy. Superiors promote inferiors, inferiors flatter superiors, and they knit into rings of mutual protection, officials sheltering officials. Every dynasty cleaned house, and every cleaning, past a point, could not be sustained. Third, rigidity. Power runs so high that any decision must pass the center, and local flexibility is stripped away. Fourth, a brittle top position. Under the enfeoffment of land, a weak Son of Heaven still had the lords to hold things up. Under the enfeoffment of office, power gathers wholly at the center, and when the center falls the whole system falls with it.

Add one stroke here, picking up the thread from the end of last section. When enfeoffment is unsteady, an outside shock can topple the whole group at a blow. The enfeoffment of office makes a group more efficient, steadier, richer inside, but it also gives that group a peculiar brittleness before an outside shock. The officials of the enfeoffment of office are flowing, procedural, rule-following, and those qualities are strengths in peace, but when a foe who follows no procedure charges straight at them, the procedural official often cannot react in time. More than once in history a bureaucratically fine civilization, meeting a foe that charged in on a more primitive logic, could not react and fell fast. In the late Roman era the bureaucracy was the finest in the world, yet as the Germanic peoples came in wave on wave, a decision had to pass debate in the senate and troop movements a maze of approvals, and it was swallowed piece by piece. In the late Northern Song the bureaucratic system was among the most complete in Chinese history, yet when the Jin charged in, ministers were still debating peace or war in the hall, the procedure turning while the enemy stood at the gate, and Kaifeng fell. At the end of the Ming the bureaucracy was complete but the factional strife fierce, and as the Manchu cavalry drove straight in, the Chongzhen emperor wished to move the whole realm and could no longer get a response. Consider that the Northern Song's forces were not in fact weak, its treasury not empty, its technology ahead. The problem was not resources but reaction speed. The bureaucratic procedure made decisions too slow, and by the time one was made the Jin had crossed the Yellow River. Yet the whole design of the Northern Song was built to prevent a strong figure who would go around procedure from ever appearing, which was its stability and its brittleness both, and both are real. Standing high does not mean standing steady. Rich does not mean safe. Civilized does not mean unbeatable. A group standing very high can be knocked back to its most primitive state in one or two outside shocks, its people cut down, its records destroyed, back to the bloody turnover. The good of the enfeoffment of office is truly good, its brittleness truly brittle. See both sides.

So here is the position this section lays down. Enfeoffment has two most basic shapes, of land and of office. The enfeoffment of land sets the position inside a bloodline, and speaks of the stability of family succession. The enfeoffment of office strips the family away, lets the office stand on its own, and speaks of the stability of a flowing post. The enfeoffment of office is the evolved form of the enfeoffment of land, moving from bloodline to post. But see clearly that both still turn inside those five laws. The enfeoffment of office is the same: a position must exist, the governor and magistrate are the pivots. A position must be accepted, he must be accepted by superiors, peers, subordinates, and the people together. Acceptance is dynamic. When acceptance drains past a point the position vanishes, and demotion, removal, dismissal, and being driven out are all this one law. A new position necessarily arises, one leaves and the next fills in. Two enfeoffments, two stabilities, each with its own brittleness too, the land kind easily hollowed by lords, the office kind easily broken by an outside foe. See both sides. Do not take either as absolutely above the other.

So the question steps further. The enfeoffment of land and of office both hand a position down from above. But there is a kind of enfeoffment whose direction runs the other way, where every common person at the very bottom, with the one vote in hand, lifts a position up from below. That kind is called voter enfeoffment. The next section walks into it.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.

Chapter Two. The other shapes of enfeoffment