In the semihistoric Shang dynasty, which ruled China during the second millennium B. C., there was a central overlordship which might well have claimed primacy over all offices of the world. In its own territory, Shang rule seems to have been based not upon a feudal system such as developed later in the time of the charioteering lords but upon the reduction of defeated princes to positions of vassaldom. History cannot yet tell of the exact relations between the Shang overlord and his vassal princes, nor of other monarchs who, in the shadowy bypaths of present knowledge, stand forth vaguely from complete obscurity as rivals to the hegemony of Shang. The rulers of twenty-five or twenty-six centuries ago are recognized by modern Chinese as the direct predecessors of the Ch'ing emperor who in turn yielded to the Republic. This is no case of a Mussolini seeking to weave together the long-broken threads between Augustan and modern Rome; in China the succession is as direct as that from St. Pius I to Pius XI. The central monarchy comes over the edge of history as an identifiable institution. In rudimentary form this monarchy already suggests the features of bureaucracy. Like the Prussian kings thousands of years later, the Shang monarchs seem to have relied upon commoners as their royal officials, and for the same reasons. A commoner strengthened the position of the monarch: "He could not easily usurp the place of his master, even if he had the power. And if he was disobedient he could be executed on the spot, with complete impunity; he had no powerful clan to exact vengeance."[2] Whether or not the system of loose overlordship be termed _feudalism_, social forms not too unlike European feudalism originated under the next dynasty, the Chou (traditionally dated 1122-256 B. C.). Conquering the great city of the Shang, the Chou turned to feudalism for means of internal control and defense. Powerful vassals arose, however, so that after the eighth century B. C. the original Chou dynasty was no longer in actual command. From the eighth to the third century B. C., when China was consolidated under the Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, a rapid spread of feudal organization brought about a state system resembling that of early modern Europe.