Zhou Conquest of the Shang Dynasty

The Zhou conquest of the Shang dynasty was decided at the Battle of Muye, traditionally dated to 1046 BCE, when King Wu of Zhou, leading an alliance of the Zhou state and several allied tribes, defeated the much larger but reportedly demoralized army of the last Shang king, Di Xin, whose forces are said to have partly defected during the battle itself. Zhou accounts, most influentially the Classic of History, framed the conquest as the fulfillment of the Mandate of Heaven, a political and religious doctrine holding that a ruler's right to govern depended on just conduct and could be justly withdrawn from a corrupt dynasty, a concept that became the enduring ideological foundation for legitimate rule in later Chinese political thought. Following the victory, King Wu established the Zhou dynasty and enfeoffed relatives and allies with territories across the conquered Shang domain, creating a decentralized feudal-style political order that endured, through its Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou phases, as the longest-lasting dynasty in Chinese history.