Chinese Empire

The Mandate of Heaven

The Mandate of Heaven (天命, tianming) was the foundational doctrine of the imperial Chinese political theology. It held that Heaven (tian) granted the right to rule to a virtuous dynasty and withdrew it when the dynasty became corrupt, tyrannical, or incapable. Every dynasty that came to power in the two thousand years of the imperial era claimed to have received the Mandate; every fallen dynasty was explained, in the histories written by its successors, as having lost it. The doctrine was the basic grammar of dynastic legitimacy in imperial China, and it shaped the way that Chinese rulers, officials, and historians understood the rise and fall of dynasties, the limits of imperial power, and the relation between the human and the cosmic order. The broader context is set by the overview of imperial ideology, and the state cult of Confucius and the related Confucian state cult of the imperial state were the ritual expression of the Mandate.

The Zhou Doctrine

The Mandate of Heaven was first articulated in the speeches attributed to the founders of the Zhou in the Book of Documents (Shang shu). The most famous of these is the speech of the Duke of Zhou, the regent for the young King Cheng, in the years following the Zhou conquest of the Shang around 1046 BCE. The Zhou had overthrown the Shang, which was, by the Zhou account, a dynasty that had once been virtuous and had brought peace and prosperity to the people. The question was how to explain the fall of a virtuous dynasty. The answer was that the Shang had lost the Mandate through the last king’s cruelty and vice, and that Heaven had transferred it to the Zhou.

The doctrine served three important political functions. First, it explained the fall of the Shang and the rise of the Zhou in a way that preserved the basic moral order of the cosmos. Second, it bound the new Zhou rulers to the same moral standard. The Zhou had received the Mandate, but the Mandate was conditional. If the Zhou became corrupt, Heaven would withdraw the Mandate and give it to another. Third, it provided a model for the legitimation of future dynastic change.

The Zhou Mandate doctrine was the foundational political theology of the imperial Chinese state. The Zhou itself lasted for almost eight centuries (1046–256 BCE), and even the later Zhou kings who had lost all real power were still the formal occupants of the throne. The doctrine, however, was not just a Zhou artifact. It was taken up by the Qin (221–206 BCE), the Han (202 BCE–220 CE), and every later dynasty, and it became the basic framework within which the Chinese understood the rise and fall of dynasties, the limits of imperial power, and the relation between the human and the cosmic order.

The Signs of Losing the Mandate

The Mandate of Heaven was conditional, and the imperial state developed a sophisticated system of signs and omens for the loss of the Mandate. The most important signs were natural disasters and cosmic disorders: the earthquakes, the floods, the famines, the plagues, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the appearance of comets, the unseasonable weather, the failure of the crops. The state maintained a large staff of specialists in astronomy, calendrics, hemerology, and portents, and the official histories of every dynasty contained long sections on the omens recorded during the reign.

The omens were not, in theory, the cause of the loss of the Mandate; they were the sign of it. The cause was the moral failure of the ruler and the dynasty; the sign was the cosmic disorder that followed. The same doctrine held that a virtuous ruler produced cosmic harmony, and an unvirtuous ruler produced cosmic disorder. The omens were the diagnostic signs of the dynasty’s illness, and they were the occasion for the ruler to take corrective action. A serious omen was, in this sense, a kind of natural political check, and the imperial Chinese state was one of the few premodern states in which the ruler was, in theory, morally accountable to the cosmos.

The corrective actions that the ruler might take on the occasion of a serious omen included the public expression of remorse, the issue of an edict of self-criticism, the change of the reign title, the dismissal of offending ministers, the grant of amnesties, the performance of special sacrifices, and the reduction of taxes. The edicts of self-criticism, preserved in the dynastic histories, are a remarkable record of the way that the Chinese imperial system tried to combine the absolute authority of the emperor with the moral accountability of the cosmic order.

The Mandate and Dynastic Change

The Mandate of Heaven was, in practice, the basic framework for the legitimation of dynastic change. The Qin (221–206 BCE) claimed to have received the Mandate from the Zhou. The Han (202 BCE–220 CE) claimed to have received the Mandate from the Qin. The Xin interregnum of Wang Mang (9–23 CE), the restoration of the Han, the Three Kingdoms, the Jin, the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Sui, the Tang, the Song, the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing — each new dynasty claimed to have received the Mandate from its predecessor, and each fallen dynasty was explained, in the histories written by its successors, as having lost it.

The Mandate doctrine was both a justification of dynastic change and a check on the abuse of power. The dynasty that had received the Mandate was, in theory, obligated to use it for the good of the people. The dynasty that abused the Mandate, by becoming tyrannical, corrupt, or incapable, would lose it, and Heaven would transfer it to a more worthy successor.

The doctrine had, in practice, a complex relation to the realities of political power. Dynasties did not always fall because they had lost the Mandate; they sometimes fell because of military defeat, economic collapse, natural disasters, or the internal contradictions of the imperial system. The Mandate doctrine was, however, the language in which the Chinese understood and explained the rise and fall of dynasties.

The Mandate in the Late Imperial Period

The Mandate of Heaven remained the basic framework of the imperial political theology until the end of the imperial era in 1912. The Ming founder, the Hongwu emperor (r. 1368–1398), justified the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan on the grounds that the Yuan had lost the Mandate through their tyranny and incompetence. The Qing founder, Nurhaci, and his successors justified the conquest of the Ming on the same grounds: the Ming had lost the Mandate through the corruption of the late Ming court, and the Qing had received it.

The late Qing saw a slow erosion of the Mandate doctrine. The crisis of the nineteenth century — the Opium Wars, the unequal treaties, the Taiping Rebellion, the Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer Rebellion — produced a serious questioning of the inherited Chinese political and religious traditions. The abolition of the examination system in 1905 marked the end of the Confucian institutional structure of the state, and the founding of the Republic in 1912 marked the end of the Mandate of Heaven itself. The new republican state developed a different political theology based on popular sovereignty and constitutional government.

The doctrine, however, has not disappeared from the Chinese political vocabulary. The phrase “Mandate of Heaven” is still used to describe the right of a government to rule, and the idea that a government that has lost the confidence of the people has, in some sense, lost its mandate continues to inform Chinese political thought.

See Also