User:Madalibi/Xia-Shang-Zhou economy

The Neolithic and the early Bronze Age
Agriculture began almost 10,000 years ago in several regions within the area we now call China. The earliest domesticated crops were millet in the north and rice in the south. . Some Neolithic cultures produced textiles with hand-operated spindle-whorls as early as 5000 BCE. The earliest silk remains date to the early third millennium BCE. By the Longshan period (north China, ca. 3000-2000 BCE), a large number of communities with stratified social structure had emerged.

The Erlitou culture (ca. 1900-1350 BCE, named after a representative site in modern Henan) dominated northern China in the early second millennium BCE. This is when urban societies and bronze casting appeared for the first time in the area. The cowries, tin, jade, and turquoise that were buried in Erlitou suggest that the Erlitou polity traded with many neighbors. A considerable labor force also had to be mobilized to build the rammed-earth foundations of Erlitou buildings. Even if the "highly stratified" Erlitou society has left no writing, some historians have identified Erlitou as a site from the possibly mythical Xia dynasty, which is mentioned in traditional Chinese sources as preceding the Shang.

Only a strong centralized state led by rich elites could have produced the bronzes of the Erligang culture (ca. 1600-1400 BCE or 1500-1300 BCE). The Erligang state, which archeologist Robert Bagley has called "the first great civilization of East Asia," interacted with neighboring ones, which either imported bronzes or the artisans who could cast them. These exchanges allowed the technique of bronze metallurgy to spread to surrounding polities. Some historians have identified Erligang as a Shang site because it corresponds with the area where traditional sources say the Shang were active, but no written source from the time allows to confirm this identification.

The Shang dynasty (ca. 1600 – ca. 1045)
The first site unequivocably identified with the Shang dynasty by written records is Anyang, a Shang capital that became a major settlement around 1200 BCE. The staple crop of the Shang, a predominantly agricultural society, was millet, but rice and wheat were also cultivated. These grains were produced in fields owned by the royal aristocracy. Agricultural surpluses produced by royal fields supported the Shang royal family and ruling elite, advanced handicraft industries (bronze, silk, etc.), as well as large armies. Large royal pastures also provided animals for sacrifices and meat consumption.

Since land was only cultivated for a few years before being left fallow, new lands constantly needed to be opened, either by drainage of low-lying fields or by clearing of scrubland or forested areas. These tasks were performed by corvée labor under state supervision, often in the context of hunting expeditions.

Like their Neolithic predecessors, the Shang kept using spindle-whorls to make textiles, but the Shang labor force was more formally organized. By Shang times, controlled workers produced silk in workshops for the aristocracy. Fields and workshops were manned by labor of various degrees of servitude. Some historians have called these dependent workers "slaves" and labeled the Shang a "slave society," but others reject such labels as too vague because we know too little about the nature of this labor force.

The Western Zhou (ca. 1045 – 771 BCE)
The Zhou dynasty defeated the Shang around 1045 BCE and took control of the Wei and Yellow River valleys that the Shang had dominated. Land continued to belong to the royal family, which re-distributed it among its dependents in a system that many historians have likened to the feudal organization of medieval Europe. Epigraphic evidence shows that, as early as the late 10th century BCE, land was already starting to be traded, though without becoming private property yet. Edward Shaughnessy hypothesizes that this increase in the land exchanges came from the splitting of elite lineages into branches, which increased demand for land precisely as its supply was diminishing.

The fourth-century book Mencius claims that the early Zhou developed the well-field system, a pattern of land occupation in which eight peasant families cultivated fields around a central plot that they farmed for the landlord. The system was named after the Chinese character for "well" (jing 井), which resembles the grid-like pattern in which these nine fields were supposedly arranged. Historians have generally doubted the existence of this idealized system, but some maintain that it may have existed informally in the early Zhou, when dependent tenants working on manorial estates paid corvée to their landlords instead of taxes, as they would later.

Cowry shells started to be used as currency and units of wealth during the Western Zhou. The Zhou also used precious metals for trade purposes, but most daily exchanges were still conducted by barter.