The “cake” is getting smaller and smaller! Why did the “Enfeoffment Order” become the most successful policy to reduce the power of the feudal lords in history?

Recently I saw an interesting topic: "Is the Enfeoffment Order, the most successful policy in history to reduce the power of feudal lords, really unsolvable?" People who are familiar with history should all know about the "Enfeoffment Order" and would also think about why it was successful at the time?

I personally think that before the emergence of modern medicine , there was basically no solution to the Enfeoffment Order. Today, let’s start with what the Enfeoffment Order is and talk about this issue with everyone.

01. What is the “Enfeoffment Order”?

The Enfeoffment Order was an important decree issued by Emperor Wu of Han to consolidate the central power. The essence of the Enfeoffment Order was an improvement on the county system. The order required that the areas governed by the princes, which were previously inherited only by their eldest sons, be jointly inherited by their eldest, second and third sons. According to the Han system, the marquisates formed under the Enfeoffment Order were subordinate to the prefectures and had the same status as the counties. Later, according to this decree, the princes were divided into smaller and smaller states, and Emperor Wu of Han took the opportunity to weaken their power.

During the reign of Emperor Wen of Han Dynasty, Jia Yi, in view of the rebellion of the King of Huainan and the King of Jibei, proposed in his "Plan for Public Security" to "establish many princes and reduce their power."

During the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, Lord Father Yan proposed the implementation of the Enfeoffment Order, which stipulated that after the death of a prince, in addition to the eldest son inheriting the throne, other sons and daughters could also divide part of the kingdom's land to become marquises, and be governed by a county governor.

The core of the Enfeoffment Order is the gradual dispersion of wealth

The solution is: just have one child .

But here comes the problem: How do you ensure that you only have one child and that it survives ?

02. Only one child? - Contraception

The rapid development of contraceptive technology is the result of the emergence of modern science and technology, which has led to the emergence of various contraceptive methods, such as physical contraception such as condoms, chemical/biological contraception such as IUDs, and more thorough sterilization.

However, these technologies were not available in ancient times.

Although there were some contraceptive measures in ancient times, such as fish maw, their shelf life and popularity were far inferior to those of condoms.

As for other so-called contraceptive methods, it basically depends on luck. For example, there is talk of using some liquid to clean the lower body, or other external methods, which involve great uncertainty.

As for the abortion methods in ancient times, they were unimaginable, with a high mortality rate. When there was no way to solve the problem of contraception, they couldn't kill babies in large numbers, after all, they were royal descendants.

03. Extremely high mortality rate

In fact, the second point is more troublesome, that is, you cannot guarantee that a son will live to pass on the next generation.

People often question why the life expectancy in ancient times was so short and unreasonable, after all, there were a lot of people who lived a long time. However, in fact, life expectancy is an average value. A person with a very short life span of 100 years old, plus two people who died young, can directly lower the average life expectancy a lot.

Take Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty as an example. Kangxi was an emperor with many descendants, so we can rule out many accidents. Kangxi himself lived to be 68 years old. But what about his descendants?

Therefore, if this wave is included, the average will have to be discounted.

This is the royal family, and they can't achieve a high survival rate, let alone other princes. Therefore, when there is no guarantee that one baby can survive, giving birth to a large number of babies is a safer way.

As for other factors, such as having many sons and more blessings, as well as the conflicts over inheritance between sons and their parents, it can be said that they directly contributed to the transmission of the Enfeoffment Order.

Therefore, the best way to resolve the Enfeoffment Order was difficult in ancient times. Of course, reshaping the system of primogeniture inheritance was a strategy, but this strategy was quite risky.