The feudal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty had the functions of guarding and managing. In order to unify this feudal network, the military power and patriarchal clan system in the Western Zhou Dynasty are two sides of an organic whole, and the operation of the feudal system is maintained by a set of etiquette. This set of etiquette, including packet, employment, ceremony, marriage and other aspects of etiquette, can also be said to be the upper class in the feudal system.
In the upper feudal society of the Zhou Dynasty, due to the superposition of monarchical power and patriarchal clan system, political ethics and blood ethics were also integrated. Thus, the relationship between monarch and minister, father and son, husband and wife. , has become the ideal code of conduct in feudal society. All this can be attributed to the upper culture of feudal hierarchy in Zhou Dynasty.
The Eastern Zhou Dynasty is only a nominal continuation of the Western Zhou Dynasty. In fact, the Eastern Zhou monarchs were unable to control and defend the huge feudal network in the East. The collapse of rites is not to describe the loss of ceremonies or the decline of political authority, but the collapse of cultural order. The princes in the Spring and Autumn Period had considerable political autonomy, and the royal family could no longer control the princes.
As a result, in the first half of the Spring and Autumn Period, the enfeoffment system with scattered rights within the country appeared, which was almost a local replica of the feudal relatives in the Western Zhou Dynasty. By the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, there were three Huan in Lu, seven shepherds in Zheng, countries, Gao, Cui and Tian in Qi, Sun and Ning in Wei and six Qing in Jin. Within the country, there is a second-class monarch-Doctor Qing. After the mid-Spring and Autumn Period, political power fell to the subordinates of these great doctors. On the other hand, the losers in the power struggle, whether they are Dr. Qing's son, grandson or family subordinates, will lose their social status and economic resources after losing power. The social changes of more than 200 years are essentially the reorganization of the original feudal system order.