Confucius is born in the year 551BC. His father is a Prince. His mother is a peasant, who gave birth to him when she was only sixteen.
Prior to 221BC, China was multiple nations, much like today's Europe. However, an international body that was much like today's UN and the European Union, was formed, to maintain peace and harmony and was successful in keeping peace and harmony, to the same extent of modern UN. The leader of this union is the Zou nation, serving a function similar to modern UN Security Council. As a result, the King of Zou nation was also been considered as the King of Kings, this era is commonly referred to as the Zou dynasty. However, by the time of Confucius, the federation was breaking down. The result of the breaking down of this federation, China was gradually moving into become a feudal society, similar to the era of feudal Japan and Europe during the dark and middle ages.
Confucius himself was from the Lu nation, who is located along the north eastern shore of modern China. During Confucius time, Lu nation was been divided by three warlords families, fighting each other to try gain full control of the nation, the people were living in poverty due to the continuing warfare and the government was corrupt. The King of the Lu nation has no real power.
Confucius' father died when he was three years old. Despite been of noble birth, after his father's death, Confucius and his mother were been exiled from the royal family. Confucius was raised by his mother, single hand. Confucius grew up in poverty, despite been of royal blood, so he was very intact with the common people.
Confucius' mother died when he was fifteen. After burying his mother with his father, in accordance to the custom of the time, Confucius decided he wanted to be an educated and travel throughout China to study.
The common study of Confucius of the time is called Dao. Dao is a study to understand how things work. However, Dao believe as mere humans we are not capable of changing things and we can only live in respect to how things are. This anger Confucius a lot, he felt as an educated, we should use our knowledge to help make the world a better place, rather than hide from the world. And Confucius believes in changing the corrupt social science of his era, by restoring China, to the peace and harmony, prior to the collapse of the Zou Federation.
At the age of nineteen Confucius married a woman from Song nation and has one son and one daughter, although some evidence suggests Confucius might have a second daughter. In his early 20th Confucius got a job working for one of the three feudal Lords of Lu nation, he managed grand storage for the Ji family, the most powerful of the three families and made a lot of money.
Confucius believe the way to restore China to the harmony, prior to the collapse of the federation, is through humanity. Confucius believes, if everybody is humane and the ruler of the nations is humane and care about public interest, things would change.
Confucius believes in initiating these changes, it must start with education. In his early 30s, Confucius opened his first school. During Confucius time, only the nobles and the wealthy can afford to go to school. Confucius intentionally created a school, where children from all walk of life, can come and study in his school. The tuition fee of Confucius school is so cheap, even the poorest parents can send their children to come study in Confucius' school. Confucius students include both rich and poor, both royal and peasants and it even include foreign nationalist to Lu. They all study under Confucius as equals and Confucius also teach his ideas to his students.
When Confucius was in his 50s, the King of Lu nation wanted to use the continuing fighting amount the three warlord families to regain control of Lu nation and seek Confucius for help. Confucius believes this is his opportunity to change things and accept the offer, so the King appointed Confucius as the Prime Minister of Lu nation.
As Prime Minister, Confucius put his theory to the test in governing the nation. Within four years of been in power, Lu nation saw a prosperity that have not been seen, since the three families took power, crime rate hit an all-time low. Through a variety of diplomacy method, Confucius was able to help increasingly secure the power of the Federal government from the three family and secure Lu nation's border, from Ci nation, which wanted to conquer it and when necessary, Confucius is also a brilliant General who is able to use the military to achieve this goal. Confucius is in fact also a great warrior, it was recorded Confucius was extremely tall and masculine for his time and is an expert in archery and melee combat and leading troops into battle. People of Confucius time said, Confucius has the strength of a tiger. Confucius' father is also known to be one of the greatest warriors and General of his time. But because Confucius is anti-violence, he do not resolve to a military solution, unless there are no other choices, so he was not well known for his skills as General until he lead troops into battle for the first time, as Prime Minister.
Fearing the increasing threat of Lu King, with Confucius' assistance, the three families and Ci nation seek to find a ways to push Confucius out of power. Thus, they send the King 80 beautiful woman as a peace offering. The King didn't show up to government hall for three days, entertained by the beautiful women and then sacked Confucius as Prime Minister.
Disappointed by the Lu King, Confucius left Lu nation and embarked on a journey travel throughout China, for the next twenty years trying to persuade the ruling class of each nation to change their ways, he was only accompanied by his students. But the ruling class of the time choose to just ignore him, once Cheng nation and Cai nation even send an allied force to tried have Confucius killed. Confucius and his students were been trapped in a valley until troops from Chu nation come to rescue them. The only nation, that was interest in using Confucius was Wei nation, but the King was only interested in Confucius' skills as a General, not his skill as a politician. Confucius rejected Wei King's offer to use him as the General of his army and reform his army to become a powerful one.
When Confucius was traveling the world, one of Confucius former student, becomes the General of Lu nation's army, to defend Lu nation from the invading of Ci nation, because Confucius refuse to return to lead Lu army that was been defeated. After defeating Ci nation, the student became the Prime Minister of Lu nation and due to his influence, Lu nation invited Confucius to return. After returning to Lu nation, Confucius focused on teaching and died in his seventies, in the year 479BC.
It was said Confucius died with a broken heart, feeling he failed in his quest of restoring China to the peace, harmony and prosperity, it enjoyed, in the era prior to the collapse of the Federation.
However, Confucius' teaching live on through his students, it is said, Confucius had over 3000 students, 72 of those students became some of the greatest politicians, generals, academics and teachers of the time and through his 3000 students and then his students' students and so on, Confucius ideology was been kept alive.
Confucius ideology influence on Asia
256 years after Confucius' death, Feudal China was all conquered by Cin nation. Cin nation also conquered land south of the Yangtze River, including modern Vietnam and formed the Cin Empire. But the Cin nation's King was known for brutality, he also created a two class citizen, for those who are Cin citizens to be the nobility class and those who are not of Cin citizen to be a subclass. Confucius ideology is considered as a threat to the Cin's power to rule and initiate a series of policy to kill those who follow Confucius' teaching.
After only ruling China and Vietnam for 14 years, the people revolted, under the leadership of a man named Liou Bond.
After overthrowing the Cin Empire, Bond who is not the King of any existing nation of China formed a new nation to rule all of China and Vietnam. In 206BC Bond formed the Han Empire. Bond is in favour of Confucius way of governing and decided to put his way into practice. Since then, Confucius ideology becomes the most influential philosopher, in Asia's history. Bond created numbers of reform following Confucius ideology. Firstly, Bond created the Federal, State, and district system. Bond divided China into thirteen states and each state is divided into multiple districts. Because many Kings of each former nations of China wanted to revolt, Bond appointed the King and the Princes to be the first district magistrates of the districts and have the full authority to govern their district independently, but subject to the state and federal. In earlier days, the state can only supervise the district, but later, was also granted the full authority to govern the state independently, but cannot contradict federal. The Federal government is divided into four branches, legislative, executive, military and human resource. The Emperor holds the power to the legislative branch of the government, the other three branches, are all govern by a Chancellor. Human Resource, supervise the federal, state and district government. The Han Empire also invented the modern examination system, it is a system put in place to find the most qualified educated to be in government, the peasants and the nobles, sit as equals, to be tested in their knowledge and ethic in governing. Those who score the highest would be given a position within government.
By using the ideas of Confucius, China and Vietnam saw a great level of peace and prosperity. The believe in been humane, to promote the right people to the right post to assist the King and to promote competent people ahead of people of noble title, like Confucius preached allows the Han Empire, to reach its full potential in military and economic strength, which is enough to make them the most powerful nation, of the ancient world. Adding to their pro-human right and pro-civil right policies, due to their pro-humane culture, the Han Empire, in many ways, was the ancient version of modern United States. The Han Empire collapsed in 220AC. This is due to a new policy to allow the state to have an own independent military, independent from the federal. And later, the army of the state magistrate Cao cao rebel and seized control of the capital and hold the Emperor as a puppet. The Emperor was forced to appoint Cao as the Prime Minister and approve all laws Cao present. The Southern states, refusing to submit to Cao's rule, declared independents.
Between late 17th century to late 18th century Cing Empire that once ruled parts of Manchuria conquer all of Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, Xian Jiang, China and Western Taiwan. Fearing revolt, from local magistrates, the Cing Empire greatly reduces the power of state and district government. In Federal government, there was only one branch of government, control directly by the Emperor. This become one of the main reason China fall by 19th century. The British ambassador to China in the 18th century once said the Cing Empire is like a giant ship that only has one sailor. For now the ship is sailing fine, but if the sailor become dizzy for only a second, the ship would start sinking and nothing the sailor can do later, could change things and that was exactly what happened. If it isn't because of the Cing Empire, China would still be the most powerful, in the modern world.
The pro-humane culture, also result in a situation where ancient China was extremely anti conquering, as a result, despite it was extremely powerful, in the ancient world, China conquer nothing. But on multiple occasions send troops to assist in defending nations been invaded by another nation, if the invading nation could be a threat to China and would attack nations threatening China's boarder. During the 17th century, the Ming Empire that ruled all of China also engaged in warfare with Spain, Dutch and Portuguese and won. The Ming Empire defeated Portuguese, Dutch and Spain in wars of defending its boarders. It also defeated Portuguese over conflicted related to Portuguese trying to conquer Malaysia and then over the issue of slavery, due to the Ming Empire's strong anti-slavery position. There were many cases while trading with Europeans, the businessman of Ming Empire, purchases black slaves, just to set them free. However, the anti-humane culture of 17th century Europe, also create a strong anti-western feeling in China, many then Chinese refer to Europeans as western savages.
