ABSTRACT
The historical development of different countries and nations has both generality and individuality. In this chapter, following the principle of generality of historical development, the authors focus on the differences in the ancient history of the East and the West. The ancient society includes three social formations: primitive society, slave society, and feudal society. The primitive society is of a long and distant history and often is inadequately documented, which poses challenges to our work here. Consequently, the authors also focus on the different characteristics of slave society and feudal society between the East and the West. Although we believe some countries in the East and West have experienced successively the slave society and the feudal society, we at the same time hold that not all countries have developed the typical slave and feudal societies. Ancient Greece and Rome, as we understand, were typical examples of the slavery society; while China was a typical feudal society.
