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Chinese History Made Easy: The Mandate of Heaven

Join the channel and get perks!    / @austinguidry2   The Mandate of Heaven arose out of the Zhou’s need or perceived need to justify deposing the Shang. When dynasties are created through war, blood is of course shed, and not everyone is happy, so the right story needs to be told in order to persuade the masses to settle down and keep the peace. It's the "Dynastic Cycle." When someone new rises to power in an authoritarian type of government after a period of fighting (physical or otherwise), there is a need to re-write history in a sense. The correct narrative needs to be told, and no one is better at creating a narrative to serve that kind of purpose than the Chinese. As the Chinese say: (成者为王，败者为寇) "The winner becomes king, the loser becomes outlaw” The Mandate of Heaven was political-social philosophy that served as the basic Chinese explanation for the success and failure of monarchs and states down to the end of the empire in 1912 CE. Whenever a dynasty fell, it was because it had lost the moral right to rule, a right given by Heaven alone. When we say Heaven, we do not mean a personal god who watches over football games as well as countless atrocities and genocides, but more of a mysterious cosmic all-pervading power. Heaven grants the rulers the right to rule as long as they rule in an upright and benevolence manner. However, if they begin to rule selfishly and without regard to the will and/or well-being of the people, Heaven can take away their mandate, or right to rule. When that happens, a new group of people are allowed to come in and take over, usually in the form of a violent and destructive revolution. Most historians today agree that the the Zhou invented the Mandate of Heaven. The king was seen as a sort of father figure to his people, and as paternal authority was the cement that held Chinese society together from the earliest times, rebellion against a father figure needed extraordinary justification. The mandate provided this justification. It gave that leeway for a new power to rise up in the event of a king becoming too corrupt or power-hungry or what have you. It’s akin to the theory of the theory of the Divine Right of Kings in European history with its accompanying idea of Resistance Theory. We go from dynasty to dynasty, nearly all of which come about because of a rebellion that is woven into this Mandate of Heaven narrative. Xia, Shang, Zhou, Warring States Period, Qin, Han, Three Kingdoms, Sui, Tang, and on and on until the end of the dynastic period of Chinese history, and without exception, every single dynasty was made part of the Mandate of Heaven narrative. If you don’t know about the Mandate of Heaven, you don’t know Chinese history. Now, if you’ll remember the decline of the Shang, you'll remember how its rulers seemed crazy, despotic, wasteful, or all of the above. Rulers like Zhou Wang and Jie who we’ve already covered can be observed as almost a caricature of a Disney movie villain. Zhou Wang was sexually aroused by torture, Wuyi loved to disrespect the Gods, and Jie rode on people like they were horses. Did they actually do this? Probably not, but did writing this as if it were fact in order to make the new rulers prove effective? Absolutely. You’ll see this pattern continue. Dynasties begin in glorious, selfless fashion, and end in an abhorrent state of immorality and selfishness. Upon inspection now, it’s clear to see that this Mandate was applied in nearly every instance after the changes in rulers by the rulers themselves. History is written by the winners, so they say. Revolts were attributed to the loss of the Mandate, but were they really because of that? Probably not. People didn’t revolt because they thought Heaven had removed the mandate - they usually revolted because they were hungry or feeling like the ruler didn’t care about them. That was their reality, and the poor, illiterate, uneducated farmers probably weren’t thinking about the cosmic implications of it all. Looking at the idea of the Mandate of Heaven itself, some argue that this kind of idea gives just about anyone who has a grievance against the government to rebel. To them, it means that any crazy mullet who thinks that the government’s gone too far can legitimately take on the government. Who’s to say when the government lost its mandate? Where is the line drawn? How much justification is needed to overthrow a government? Where do the interests of the people end and the personal selfish desires of the ruler begin? These are questions that are still asked and sometimes acted upon, even to this day, and that just goes to show you that some questions never change, some issues can never truly be resolved, and that when people in power are put in life or death situations, they can be very, very creative. http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~ph... Facebook:   / letchinasleep2   Twitter: @LetChinaSleep