The Spring and Autumn period is an era of early Chinese history, the first half of the Eastern Zhou dynasty. By convention it runs from about 771 to 476 BCE, though scholars also end it at 481 or 453 BCE. It takes its name from the Spring and Autumn Annals, the terse court chronicle of Lu. As the Zhou king's authority faded, the states of his realm competed for power, and the strongest lords claimed the title of hegemon. These were not sovereign nations, and there was as yet no unified China. The age also produced Confucius and the roots of Chinese political thought.
The book that named the age is almost unreadable. The Spring and Autumn Annals records two and a half centuries in the small state of Lu as a string of bald entries: a duke dies, a comet appears, an army marches, with no drama and barely a motive. Yet Chinese tradition made this dry ledger a sacred classic and handed its name to a whole era. The reason was a conviction that the chronicle's very word choices hid Confucius's silent verdicts on who had ruled well and who had disgraced themselves.