According to historians, the Shang Dynasty in China lasted from 1766 to 1122 B.C.E., and it had a big impact on setting the fundamental characteristics of early Chinese society, which we know today thanks to the written records and material remains that they left after their dynasty came to an end.1 Immediately following the Shang Dynasty was the rule of the Zhou. Much of those records and remains have given us insight into the cultural features of Chinese society during the Shang Dynasty; however, methods of law, justice, and administration under the Shang rulers is not well known. The Zhou Dynasty has provided us better and clearer information regarding the way that Zhou rulers ran their society.2 One excellent example of Zhou Dynasty ruling practice is their ideological pronouncement known as the Mandate of Heaven.
The Mandate of Heaven was a set of principles that the Zhou dynasty outlined that would have a relevant influence on the way the Chinese thought about government and politics until the twentieth century.3 The Zhou rulers put forward the Mandate of Heaven idea as a way to display their theory of politics. This theory is interesting, and quite different from that of most ancient world dynastic rulers. The Zhou rulers used the Mandate of Heaven as their justification for their rule, and it served as proof of their theory that Heaven (Tian) had withdrawn the mandate to rule from the Shang dynasty and had bestowed it instead on the Zhou dynasty because of the misrule of the Shang rulers.4 Historians have found evidence that the Zhou dynasty’s overthrow of the Shang rulers was largely justified by the claim that they had received a mandate from Heaven to do so.5 Because the Zhou dynasty rested its justification for overthrowing the Shang rulers on this supposed mandate, that Mandate subsequently came to be seen as the primary justification for all new dynasties throughout China’s long history.
The major message of the Mandate of Heaven was one that explained the politics of the time; the concept behind the Mandate of Heaven was that political leaders were given their power by a divine Heaven, a divine consent without which a man could not be considered a legitimate ruler.6 This message is obviously very powerful, and upon closer examination of the mandate and its relationship to the Zhou dynasty, it becomes quite evident that the Zhou rulers used the mandate as a novel means to justify their overthrow of the previous rulers of China. The message outlined in the Mandate also served another purpose, as observed by historians: the mandate issued a message to the Chinese people about the importance of being a good ruler.7 Many believe that the mandate existed with the sole purpose of reminding the people in ancient China that the Zhou had been chosen by Heaven to be rulers because they were worthy of acting in the right way.8 In other words, the Zhou practiced what they preached; they told their people that Heaven believed them to be the most fit to rule China, and they proved that to be accurate by acting as good rulers, at least for a time.
The Mandate of Heaven can easily be seen as the most important political statement made by the Zhou dynasty because of its ability to justify their coming to power and the fact that the early Zhou leaders followed through on the claim. Moreover, the Mandate of Heaven provided a certain view of Chinese history, that is, the view that Chinese history is cyclical. Once the Mandate of Heaven was first issued, it became a norm for each new dynasty to claim they had received the mandate, begin their rule by acting in the right way, but ultimately become complacent and fail as a dynasty. Overall, the mandate was an important idea to the people of ancient China who lived under the rule of the Zhou, or under the rule of all the subsequent dynasties that claimed to have been bestowed with the same Mandate of Heaven.
- Jerry H. Bentley, Herbert F. Ziegler, and Heather E. Streets-Salter, Traditons & Encounters: A Brief Global History From the Beginning to 1500, Fourth, vol. 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2016), 55. ↵
- Bentley, Ziegler, and Streets-Salter, Traditons & Encounters, 55. ↵
- Bentley, Ziegler, and Streets-Salter, Traditons & Encounters, 55. ↵
- Dingxin Zhao, “The Mandate of Heaven and Performance Legitimation in Historical and Contemporary China,” American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 3 (November 1, 2009): 419. ↵
- Dingxin Zhao, “The Mandate of Heaven and Performance Legitimation in Historical and Contemporary China,” American Behavioral Scientist, 419. ↵
- Bentley, Ziegler, and Streets-Salter, Traditons & Encounters, 55. ↵
- Dingxin Zhao, “The Mandate of Heaven and Performance Legitimation in Historical and Contemporary China,”American Behavioral Scientist, 419-20. ↵
- Dingxin Zhao, “The Mandate of Heaven and Performance Legitimation in Historical and Contemporary China,”American Behavioral Scientist, 419-20. ↵
53 comments
Trenton Boudreaux
Its interesting how much Chinese history follows this theroy. You don’t often see that sort of thing in history. It seems this cycle is a very effective way to get the people on your side, having them believe that you were chosen to rule by higher powers sounds like something from a theocracy. It’s no wonder that Mao would adopt parts of this theroy to justify his own rule.
Ian Mcewen
god given right to rule is a common trend among early civilizations that is done to prevent criticism of the government. the mandate of heaven is a way of visualizing what they were told, and a funny part of this is that in order to prevent criticism it eventually cemented the idea that it was right to overthrow the government if it became tyrannical into the minds of it citizens.
Davis Nickle
The mandate of heaven became an essential part of ancient Chinese culture, as it was their way of justifying why the current dynasty had the right to rule China. This was not unique to China we see very similar justifications in Europe where a ruler will say that their rule is decreed by God and the Pope. this is a very interesting connection between the two culture.
Donna Ainsworth
The Mandate of Heaven is just one of the many fascinating things that we have seen coming from the ruling period of the ancient Chinese. The proclamation of such things is incredibly joint among the ancient civilizations, like how the Egyptian pharaohs used to proclaim that they were descendants of the gods so that they didn’t receive questions about their reliability. It is interesting, though, to see how they used this Mandate of Heaven as a justification for the actions they had taken to overthrow the rulers of the Shang dynasty.
Aaron Sandoval
I really enjoyed reading this article and found it very interesting. I know very little about Ancient China and even less on their culture, and ideologies. I found the content of this article interesting because it is very reminiscent of many early civilizations and how they came to power. The belief that a divine spirit gave them the authority to rule over a society carried a lot of weight, and the Zhou empire is a good example of that, and they were easily able to justify them overtaking another empire and ruling over their people.
Antonio Coffee
The Mandate of Heaven is such an interesting concept. The fact that it was used by the Zhou to justify their rule and then later someone else claimed to have had it and overthrow the Zhou is not ironic but is just the way that many things were seen as through the cultural lens. Most things were cyclical in that culture so this was just a reflection in the way that the world worked.
Matthew Swaykus
The article does well in highlighting some of the moral codes of Eastern Philosophy. This was an enlightening read for those, including myself, who are not familiar for cultural and religious wisdoms that originated from Eastern Asia. As Americans, we typically focus on concepts preserved from ancient Mediterranean societies such as those from the Greek Philosophers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Protagoras, and many others. For this reason, I am very interested in moral lessons from Buddhism, Taoism, and other culturally significantly harmonious religions.
This article clearly did well in its research and has inspired me to do some digging myself.
Esperanza Rojas
I always found the Mandate of Heaven really interesting. There wasn’t too much religion according to Chinese history but this proves that the Chinese believed in something greater above them, because normally it was always political or moral based. But this was a form of making the people obey their leader, or emperor, and follow a social structure like most societies especially societies in Europe and North America.
Luke Lopez
This was a very interesting article on the Mandate of Heaven within the Zhou dynasty. This Mandate states that the political leaders were given their authority by a divine Heaven. This meant that the political leaders were showing the Chinese people that they were good rulers, and were worthy of being political leaders. Overall, this was a great article on the Mandate of Heaven.
Christopher Hohman
Nice article. We have learned about ancient china in my history class not to long ago. It is fascinating how even though the Chinese were not ultra religious like some of the Mediterranean civilizations were they still believed in something similar to medieval kings. I think it was more of an excuse to take power and keep it quite like the medieval kings. Or maybe they really did believe they were blessed by the divine.