3 - State-Based Honor in the Warring States

Summary

The Warring States polity that emerged through the destruction of the old nobility and their segmentary polity was centered around an increasingly powerful autocrat, and based on peasants who paid taxes and provided military service. These two poles were linked by bureaucrats who registered the population and extracted taxes and services, and courtiers or counselors who assisted the ruler. States grew by swallowing up others, until only seven or eight remained, in which most peasants served in the armies. In Qin state, and probably others, this culminated in a state order that ranked the entirety of the free peasant population on the basis of service. Received texts and archaeologically-recovered documents show that the ranking of the population in this hierarchy of titles became fundamental to the legal and administrative orders that defined the place of the individual. Thus new ideas of honor and shame, elaborated in legal codes and administrative practices, were fundamental to the new states.