Colonialism and Diaspora in Early China

Abstract The fall of the Western Zhou Dynasty “left behind” the regional states of China’s central plain, creating a situation perhaps unique in history: the near-erasure of a colonizing power while its colonies continued to thrive. That the Western Zhou regime, despite its loose authority in the Guanzhong, can be considered a “colonizing” entity is here argued both in light of archaeological and textual evidence. Over time its destruction became re-imagined as a kind of traumatic inciting incident of the sort that many diasporic groups recall as the cause of their diasporic status. Just as with other diasporic groups, existing traditions and gaps in memory are filled in by re-imagined accounts and moral lessons displaying clear concern for the preservation of identity and discomfort with “outsiders.” This new reading of the Zhou period opens up a new angle by which Warring States texts—especially those including the Confucian canon—must be re-read, explaining such things as Confucian concerns about traditionalism as absolutely understandable given the wider diasporic discourse that emerged in the Eastern Zhou period.