What was the political system of the Western Zhou Dynasty?

The king of Zhou—the princes—the ministers, the officials—the scholars. ?

The King of Zhou is the supreme ruler of the country. Relatives with the same surname were the subjects of enfeoffment, and they also enfeoffed meritorious officials, in-laws, and descended clans from the Yin and Shang dynasties; the enfeoffed princes must obey the orders of the Emperor of Zhou, and the princes had the obligation to guard the territory for the Emperor of Zhou, fight with them, pay tribute, and report on their duties during pilgrimage.

The relationship between various levels is not only the relationship between large and small clans, but also the relationship between superiors and subordinates. Under the feudal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, land and laborers were nominally owned by the Zhou king, and the lower level had to bear the obligations of paying tribute, performing military service, military protection, and reporting duties to the upper level.

In the actual operation of the system, nobles at all levels have hereditary rights of administrative rule and economic exploitation within their own fiefdoms; like royal vassals, feudal states and fiefs can be governed by officials, and buildings can be built. With a capital city and an army, it was like a small kingdom. After the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, this system was gradually replaced by the county system.

The feudal system was the political system of the Western Zhou Dynasty. Judging from the purpose, it is to consolidate the power of the slave state. Judging from the specific practice, the king of Zhou enfeoffed the royal family, heroes and nobles of the past generations to various places to become vassals and established vassal states. In essence, enfeoffment was a national system that belonged to the superstructure and was mainly used to resolve internal conflicts within the ruling class.

The main contradiction in slave society is the contradiction between slave owners and slaves. The contradiction within the slave owner class is a secondary contradiction, but secondary contradictions sometimes also dominate. The enfeoffment system, as the superstructure of our country's slave society, is based on the economic foundation of the well-field system. The significance of implementing the enfeoffment system is:

1. It summarized historical experience and organically combined the establishment of local political power with the consolidation of its own rule. In the process of enfeoffing princes, the Zhou Dynasty formulated a series of systems , allowing the royal family to effectively control the entire territory.

2. The enfeoffment system enabled the unified social system to be widely implemented in the vassal states. The Zhou royal family used the provisions of rights and obligations to make the Zhou emperor a veritable king of the vassals, changing the behavior of kings in the Xia and Shang dynasties. The status of the heads of princes.