ABSTRACT
History progresses in a causal chain, with one dynasty closely following another. One can definitely examine a specific period from that long chain, but it would be imprudent to ignore both the previous and the subsequent periods of history. This methodology also applies to the study of ancient Chinese feudal society. This chapter discusses how feudalism came into being, before looking at the social organisations and functions, as well as all the feudal relations, in ancient China. In the early Zhou Dynasty, agriculture was the backbone of the feudal economy; the entire empire depended on crops, so much so that the king, the nobles and the common people would be reduced to a panic by crop failure. In a feudal society, the upper class had the private ownership of land, whereas farmers were only allowed to receive a piece of this land from their landlords, to whom they usually paid high land taxes or services.
