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A History of China by Wolfram Eberhard
page 57 of 545 (10%)
religion of Heaven, according to which there could be only one ruler
(_wang_) in the world.

At the beginning of the seventh century it became customary for the
ruler to unite with the feudal lord who was most powerful at the time.
This feudal lord became a dictator, and had the military power in his
hands, like the shoguns in nineteenth-century Japan. If there was a
disturbance of the peace, he settled the matter by military means. The
first of these dictators was the feudal lord of the state of Ch'i, in
the present province of Shantung. This feudal state had grown
considerably through the conquest of the outer end of the peninsula of
Shantung, which until then had been independent. Moreover, and this was
of the utmost importance, the state of Ch'i was a trade centre. Much of
the bronze, and later all the iron, for use in northern China came from
the south by road and in ships that went up the rivers to Ch'i, where it
was distributed among the various regions of the north, north-east, and
north-west. In addition to this, through its command of portions of the
coast, Ch'i had the means of producing salt, with which it met the needs
of great areas of eastern China. It was also in Ch'i that money was
first used. Thus Ch'i soon became a place of great luxury, far
surpassing the court of the Chou, and Ch'i also became the centre of the
most developed civilization.

[Illustration: Map 2: The principal feudal States in the feudal epoch.
(_roughly 722-481 B.C._)]

After the feudal lord of Ch'i, supported by the wealth and power of his
feudal state, became dictator, he had to struggle not only against other
feudal lords, but also many times against risings among the most various
parts of the population, and especially against the nomad tribes in the
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