ABSTRACT
About the time of the Christian era, Chinese society underwent a complete remoulding. The distinction between nobles and commoners, people of property and people without it, loses all importance. The opposition between rich and poor becomes the great principle of classification. The epoch of the Tyrannies is considered as the age of luxury ; at any rate it was the great epoch of declarations against luxury. It is these last and the bitterness of their tone, which reveal the gravity of the crisis passed through by Chinese Society. To this crisis we have little remaining witness ; they do not make clear either its causes or its results. But the fullness of these results is evident from the time of the Emperor Wu, and it seems that from his reign onwards the crisis is precipitated. The main lines of the movement can be distinguished from the more or less skilful measures which sought to stem it. Its effects and its starting-point can be surmised. It appears that the crisis had as origin :—first, the ruin of the old nobility decimated by the wars of the Combatant Kingdoms ; then (and above all) the work of colonization and taming the soil, begun by the Tyrants, and followed, with added resources, by the Emperors. The setting of the land in order allowed of the appearance, together with new sources of wealth and a new taste for it, of new men, whose influence at court and in the towns removed all authority from the last representatives of the old nobility. Thus was created a background favourable to a reform of manners and customs.
