"Evil" Zhou Wang
"Zhou Wang" is not a formal imperial title, but an evil obituary imposed on him by Zhou people, which means "damaging the good". "Zhou Wang" became the code name of tyrant and evil in later generations; Hanshu? In the ancient and modern character list, regardless of historical figures, Zhou Wang belongs to the inferior class and has the worst character; Later generations have more idioms such as "helping others". But later generations also have different views. Zi Gong, a disciple of Confucius, said, "Being poor is better than not being poor." It is based on the fact that a gentleman's evil lives in filth, and all the evil in the world will return. Meaning: Zhou Wang's incompetence is not as serious as the legend. Therefore, a gentleman hates being in a dirty place. Once he is in a dirty place, all the bad reputations in the world will be attributed to him.
Let's take a look at the earliest list of crimes in Zhou Wang, Shangshu? Pastoral Oath, which describes Jin Meng's grazing oath waiting for the swearing-in meeting, is actually an oath issued by Zhou Wuwang at the swearing-in meeting. The allegations against Zhou Wang mentioned in it include:
"Only women's words are useful" means only listening to women's words (which should refer to Zhou Wang's wife);
"Faint abandon Jue Si, answer it", contemptuously abandon sacrifice ancestors and ignore it;
"Abandon Wang's parents and brothers, not De", abandon the former prince and grandson, and do not appoint the brothers of the same clan;
"It's just that there are many sins to escape in all directions, that is, to respect, that is, to make doctors noble, so as to oppress the people and rape the mall." They respect, promote, trust and appoint criminals and fugitives from all directions, make them doctors and nobles, and make them cruelly abuse the nobles of Shang Dynasty and run amok in the capital of Shang State.
Obviously, these so-called "charges" are not familiar to us, such as "Lutai Collection", "Wine Pool Meat Forest", "Burning Pot" and "Breaking Bone and Breaking Fetus". Mr. Gu Jiegang, a famous historian, made textual research on the time sequence of each crime, and wrote the article "The Times of 70 Evil Events", pointing out that 70 crimes began to increase one after another from the Zhou Dynasty, "20 in the Warring States, 2 1 time in the Western Han Dynasty and 0/3 times in the Eastern Jin Dynasty", "Now the legendary evil is accumulated and developed layer by layer." Da ji, for example, comes from Liu Xiang's Biography of Lienv in the Western Han Dynasty, and there is no such person in history. As a symbol of evil, Zhou Wang is deeply rooted, and this "stereotype" is selectively accepted by later generations. The initiator of all this is the excuse created by Zhou people to send troops to conquer.
These "charges" themselves are also debatable. "Only women's words are useful" ignores the tradition of respecting women's status in Shang Dynasty history. For example, Fu Hao, as the wife of Wu Ding in Shang Dynasty, was the first female military commander with written records (Oracle Bone Inscriptions) in China history; Behind "forgetting to worship and answering" may be a great blow to the religious forces of wizards. Generally speaking, just like the views of Hideyoshi Okamura and Miyamoto, sacrifice is an important ritual system that supports the royal power of Shang Dynasty and will never be abandoned. "At that time, it was an advanced and avant-garde employment measure, that is," I only want to escape from many crimes in four directions ",that is, to respect and stay away, and to make doctors and scholars believe". Therefore, "I forgot my parents and brothers, and I'm not good either", which may lead to the big brother Wei who always fails in the power struggle surrendering to Zhou Jun and selling information. In short, the contents of these "accusations" all sound like the complaints of the losing party in the political struggle of the Shang Dynasty, which is really "doing private affairs" for Zhou Wuwang (you have a wool relationship); Of course, Zhou Wuwang can say that he started from morality, but this so-called "morality" hides too many demands of his own political interests and ruthless power calculation, just as the Greek Coalition forces never went to Troy because Helen was kidnapped.
How did the "barbarian at the door" get into the room?
Some historians pointed out that the "Small Country Week" at that time was more backward in civilization than the "Big State Merchants". For example, the famous "King Tai Gong" Jiang Shang is the leader of the Qiang people. He is not a wise old man with white hair and beard in our mind, but a tough and brave general who "holds his father and keeps strong" in the Book of Songs. In addition, according to Mr. Yu's argument in Interpretation of China, the word "China" appeared at the latest in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, and the earliest evidence so far is the inscription on a bronze wine vessel unearthed in Jia Cun, Baoji County, Shaanxi Province, 1963. The inscription reads, "Only the King of Wu ruled the merchants in Dayi, and then moved to Heaven and said,' Yu Qi's residence is China, and he ruled the people himself'" (Zhou Wuwang held a solemn ceremony to report to Heaven after conquering the capital of merchants in big countries: "I have ruled these people according to China himself." )。 Thus, Wu Wang's lucky victory and complacency are beyond words.
However, the "barbarians at the door" in the subtitle of this article does not refer to the national attributes of Zhou and Qiang, nor does it mean that Zhou's allies "Yong, Shu, Qiang, Xun, Wei, Lu, Peng and Pu" are ethnic minorities, but borrowed from Brian? The title of Burroughs' masterpiece The Barbarian at the Gate.
In a sense, King Wu's attack is like the "highly leveraged hostile takeover" described in the book, and its operation method is similar to KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Robert &; Co.L.P.), the world's leading private equity and diversified investment company, has an impressive investment record: as a veteran "king of leveraged buyouts", it can be said that it is one of the most successful industrial investment institutions in financial history-hostile takeover of Renault from 65438 to 0988? Rjr Beske Group, a classic case reproduced in The Barbarian at the Door, is one of the most famous corporate struggles in the history of Wall Street.
On the one hand, the "barbarians at the gate" have standards for the choice of acquisition targets, and they must be "local tyrants" with problems in the "moat". The last years of the Shang Dynasty were different from many later dynasties and did not collapse. Its national strength is still strong, and it has good brand value (Dayi Merchant, Tianyi Merchant, Dabang Merchant, China, etc.). ) and healthy free cash flow (raw materials such as copper, lead and tin are bronze wares, jadeite jade, millet, rice and wheat, and human resources. However, due to the expedition to Dongyi and other reasons, Zuo Zhuan? Gong Xuan 12 years, known as "a hundred grams of gold, no successor", has flaws in its own diversified investment, which also causes its unexpectedly low valuation and low P/E ratio, making it a good acquisition target. On the other hand, the "barbarian at the door" is often a "collaborator" from the beginning, and does not reveal its true face of "barbarism"; Similarly, Zhou, as a vassal in-laws of Shang, has been pretending to be a pig and eating a tiger, waiting for the opportunity.
At that time, although Zhou had been in business for several generations, his own strength was still relatively weak. In the battle of Makino, there were only 300 chariots, 3,000 elite soldiers and tens of thousands of infantry. However, King Wu unified the Qiang people, Ba people and the above-mentioned allies mentioned in the Pastoral Oath. The pastoral oath only mentioned the punishment of not using their lives, but did not mention the benefits promised to them after victory. We can only observe the follow-up examples. Afterwards, according to incomplete statistics, the above-mentioned Yong, Peng, Ba, etc. They were all enfeoffed, and even the famous Chu State was a member of these allies, but it was really weak at that time and was ignored. In addition, Jiang Shang was sealed in Qi State, Duke Zhou was sealed in Lu State, and Zhao Gong was sealed in North Yan State. We can infer that Zhou Wuwang's commitment is that after the business is terminated, all its own people and funded allies will share fertilizer according to their personal merits, and the source of fertilizer sharing resources is the future income right and free cash flow of the acquisition target. Many of these are just confirmation of their original status, such as some allies, Qi, Lu and Yan. They use the expressions in Water Margin and Yuanqu, that is, "cut the cat's tail and mix the cat's rice", and their source is not the resources they had at the time of acquisition.
We can see that "Small State Week" destroyed "Big State Merchant" is a malicious leveraged buyout with high debt, which is earth-shattering, and it is different from KRR's hostile takeover of Reynolds mentioned above. Compared with Beskirk, it's not too much. The Analects of Confucius? Taber said that "(Zhou) has two parts of the world to serve Yin" is the beautification and whitewashing of later Confucian scholars. In fact, there was no plan to "serve the yin" on Monday; Second, strictly speaking, there is no two-thirds market share at all. Even if there is, it is a loose alliance with future earnings. Just like KRR actually used only $6.5438+0.5 million of its own funds in the above-mentioned campaign, 94% of its capital contribution came from junk bonds issued by michael milken, which was guaranteed by future income. From this point of view, it seems that there are not many "safety margins", but the largest "safety margin" is left.
In the Jianghu law of helping the needy, helping the needy is always more important than helping the needy. The root of all problems is the appeal of interests and the alliance of interests. The pastoral oath, like the financial commentary "Wharf Business Begins to Change in Hong Kong" in 1977 (Wharf Acquisition and Anti-takeover Case) and the letter written by Junan Securities to all shareholders of Vanke Co., Ltd. in 1994 (Wanjun War Case), is a public opinion offensive before the acquisition. In this process, this battle has never been one-sided because of the defection of the Shang army striker, as whitewashed by later generations. Mencius said: "It is better to believe in books than to have no books, even heartless. How can there be blood? " But is it really "forbearance"? Did the enemy surrender as soon as the teacher of justice came out? Historical evidence proves that it is still Shangshu? The "blood drift" described in Wu Cheng is more real.
Table of interest pattern of Wu Wang after the attack.
According to comprehensive historical data
Judging from the above table, it is clear at a glance whether the parties concerned will win or lose after this campaign. In short, this is a transfer of control. Zhou replaced the old system of Shang with a new system of tribute and redistribution, and Shang and its allies were completely defeated. It's ironic to look at the expressions of sacrificial rites at ancestral temples in Shang Dynasty and the interests of princes and nobles in Pastoral Oath. Shang Wang Jiuyuan can do it, and he certainly won't agree with Zhou Wuwang's moral stance that seems to stand on their side. History: After the succession, Wu Geng, the appointed son, took charge of Yin (now Anyang City, Henan Province), the capital of Shang Dynasty, and the adherents of Yin were very happy. The position of a real businessman, so I think more than half.
Cultural integration determines the ultimate success or failure.
However, the Zhou dynasty, which was not as "smooth as the sky" as advertised, later continued its position as "the master of the world" for 800 years. This fact tells us: whether it is a "barbarian at the door", whether it is a goodwill acquisition or a malicious acquisition, adapting to the environment, surviving and becoming bigger and stronger is the winner.
Management scholars generally believe that the most difficult thing after M&A is cultural integration. According to statistics, more than 60% of global mergers and acquisitions in the past two decades ended in failure, among which 85% CEO admitted that management style and corporate culture differences were the main reasons for the failure of mergers and acquisitions. In the practice of M&A, if a powerful enterprise acquires a relatively weak enterprise, the integration will be relatively easy. If both are strong, or are acquired by small ones, especially small ones, cultural integration will inevitably be particularly difficult.
The reason why cultural integration has become the most difficult task in M&A integration is that corporate culture is deeply rooted in the history of the organization, lasting for a long time and deeply rooted, which deeply affects the value orientation and behavior of the members of the organization. Corporate culture integration is essentially a change in people's thinking and behavior in enterprises, which cannot be solved by simple rules and regulations and operating procedures. It needs to be influenced by others, imperceptibly, and it is difficult to "do its best in one battle."
More than 500 years after the battle of Makino, Confucius, a descendant of the Shang dynasty nobles, said: "Zhou Jian was in the second generation, and he was depressed!" I am from Zhou. "The etiquette system of the Zhou Dynasty was established on the basis of the evolution and development of Xia and Shang cultures. How rich and complete it is. I follow the system of the Zhou Dynasty.
It seems that as long as you are rebellious and obedient, and work hard enough, The Barbarian at the Door can also be made into a positive result.