Week
3:
Song politics before the Mongol conquests
For
the sake of understanding much of the secondary material on this
period, it is
important to note that in terms of Chinese history, the Mongols are
often
regarded as the third of three 'conquest dynasties' that confronted the
Song
dynasty (960-1276) in China. Understanding the Song dynasty is
therefore
important if we are to get more than a one-sided picture of the Mongol
conquest
of China. The Song will be our focus this week, but I offer here a
little
information about the first two of the 'conquest dynasties', not least
because
the Mongols conquered the second of them (the Jurchen Jin), which had
itself
conquered the first (the Kitan Liao). It happened like this:
The Liao
(907-1125)
was founded by a group known as the Kitan, originating in Manchuria.
Note that
their dynasty predates the
Song. The Liao never actually took permanent control by
military means of any part of 'China' – the lands they held south of
the
line of the Great Wall were given in payment for assisting a neighbour
to gain
a throne for himself. As such, they were not strictly a conquest
dynasty, but
most history you will read counts them as one nevertheless! After 960
the
expansionist leaders of the Song fought with the Liao until the two
made a
treaty in 1005. Peace lasted until 1115, when the rising power of the
Jurchen
challenged Liao authority. Assisted by the Song, the Jurchen destroyed
the Liao
dynasty in 1125. Thus the Liao had ended well before the rise of the
Mongols.
The Jin
(1115-1234)
was the dynasty founded in North China by the Jurchens, noted above.
They were
another Manchurian people, from further east and south than the Kitan.
Not
content with conquering Liao, the Jurchen turned against their
erstwhile
allies, the Song, and drove them out of the lands on both sides of the
Yellow
River, comprising roughly a third of the previous Song realm. The
Jurchen took
the Song capital at Kaifeng near the Yellow River in 1126, and the Song
court
withdrew to the south, reestablishing the dynasty in 1127 with a
supposedly 'temporary capital' at Hangzhou (known at the time as
Lin'an). Now known as the
Southern Song, periods of peace and hostility with Jin alternated until
the
advance of the Mongols in the 1220s led the Song to seek an alliance
with the
new Mongol power against the Jin, which fell to the Mongols in 1234.
Although
the Kitan Liao and the Jurchen Jin are often bracketed with the Mongol Yuan
dynasty (1260-1368) as
'conquest dynasties', you should note the differences between
them. Mongol origins, for instance, lay much further west and north
than their
Manchurian predecessors (that is, the Mongols came from Mongolia), and
their
economic base was not identical.
So, for this
week you need to keep in mind that the northern third of the Song
dynasty was
conquered by the Jin in 1126. Subsequently this section of the dynasty
has
become known as the Northern Song (960-1126). The reestablished dynasty
in the
south is known to us as the Southern Song (1127-1276). Both halves of
the
dynasty had very complex political relations with numerous neighbours,
and the
basic political history of this period has finally(!) been published.
Foreign
enemies were a major concern throughout the dynasty, so that even in
those rare
periods when there was an absence of 'hot' war (that is, during the
eleventh
century) Song officials still worried about their neighbours.
What is now
becoming recognised is that the Song was itself a conquering dynasty.
In the
tenth century it fought to bring all the peoples south of the line of
the Great
Wall under its control, its wars with the Liao in the tenth and
eleventh
centuries were by no means one-sidedly defensive, and it allied first
with the
Jin against the Liao (which fell in 1125) and then with the Mongols
against the
Jin (which fell in 1234). When the Mongols then turned to conquer the
Song, the
dynasty held out for some four decades before it finally succumbed.
Furthermore, not
everyone in the Song dynasty responded to foreign enemies in the same
way.
Officials disagreed about what to do, individuals sometimes exhibited
greater
resistance than their masters, and some blamed the dynasty for their
hardships
rather than the invaders.
Some issues
to consider
Primary
sources
The 'south first'
strategy, from: Edmund
H. Worthy, 'The
founding of Sung China, 950-1000: integrative changes in military and
political
institutions' (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1976), pp. 15-17.
The Treaty of Shanyuan, 1005, from: David C. Wright, From war to diplomatic parity in eleventh-century China: Sung's foreign relations with Kitan Liao (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 74-77.
Franke, Herbert, ‘Chinese texts on the Jurchen: translation of the Jurchen monograph in the San-ch’ao pei-meng hui-pien’, Zentralasiatische Studien 9 (1975), 119-86.
Seminar
questions and secondary materials
ESSENTIAL (to skim and dip
into)
Twitchett, Denis,
and Paul J. Smith, ed. CHC 5: The Sung dynasty and its
precursors, 907-1279, Part 1 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), Chapters 1, 3-7.
A:
How did
the Song and their predecessors regard their neighbours during the
tenth
century?
*Lau
Nap-yin, 'Waging war for
peace? The peace accord between the Song and the Liao in AD 1005', in
Van de
Ven, pp. 180-221.
*Lorge,
Peter, 'The Great
Ditch of China and the Song-Liao border', in Wyatt, Battlefronts, pp.
59-74.
Lorge, Peter, 'War and the creation of the Northern Song' (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1996).
*Standen, Naomi, 'Raiding and frontier society in the
Five Dynasties', in Di Cosmo and Wyatt, pp. 160-91.
Worthy,
Edmund H., 'The
founding of Sung China, 950-1000: integrative changes in military and
political
institutions' (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1976).
Wright,
David C., 'The
Sung-Kitan war of AD 1004-1005 and the Treaty of Shan-yüan', JAH 32:1
(1998), 3-48.
B:
How did
the Song regard their neighbours during the eleventh century?
*Tao
Jing-shen, 'Barbarians
or northerners: Northern Sung images of the Khitans', in Rossabi, China
among equals,
pp. 66-86.
Tao
Jing-shen, 'Yü Ching and
Sung policies toward Liao and Hsia, 1042-44', JAH 6:2
(1972), 114-22.
Tao Jing-shen,
'Peace with
the barbarians: the policies of Wang An-shih', Two Sons of
heaven: studies
in Sung-Liao relations
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), pp. 68-78.
*Wang
Gungwu, 'The rhetoric
of a lesser empire: early Sung relations with its neighbors', in
Rossabi, China
among equals,
pp. 47-65.
*Wright,
David Curtis, 'Parity, pedigree, and
peace:
routine Sung diplomatic missives to the Liao, JSYS 26
(1996), 55-85.
Wyatt,
Don J., 'In
pursuit of the Great Peace: Wang Dan
and the early Song evasion of the "just war" doctrine', in Wyatt, Battlefronts, pp.
75-110.
C:
How did the Song regard their neighbours in the century before 1234?
Aubin, Françoise,
'The
rebirth of Chinese rule in times of trouble: north China in the early
thirteenth century', Foundations and limits of state power in
China, ed. Stuart Schram
(London: SOAS, 1987),
pp. 113-46.
*Liu,
James T.C., 'The Jurchen-Sung confrontation', China under
Jurchen rule,
ed. Hoyt C. Tillman and Stephen H. West (Albany:
SUNY, 1995), pp. 39-49.
Liu, James T.C., China
turning inward:
intellectual-political changes in the early twelfth century (Harvard University
Press, 1988).
*Peterson, Charles
A., 'Old illusions and
new realities: Sung foreign policy, 1217-1234', in Rossabi, China
among
equals, pp. 204-39.
*Tao Jing-shen, 'Allying with the Chin to destroy the Liao', Two Sons of heaven: studies in Sung-Liao relations (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), pp. 87-97.
Extra
Haeger, John W.,
'Between north and south:
the Lake Rebellion in Hunan, 1130-1135', JAS 28:3 (1969), 469-88.
Lamouroux, Christian, 'Geography and politics:
the Song-Liao border
dispute of 1074/75', China and her neighbours: borders,
visions of the
other, foreign policy 10th to 19th century, ed.
Sabine Dabringhaus, Roderich Ptak, Richard Teschke (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz,
1997), pp. 1-28.
Leung, Irene S.,
'"Felt yurts neatly
arrayed, large tents huddle close": visualizing the frontier in the
Northern
Song dynasty (960-1127)', in
Di Cosmo and Wyatt, pp.
192-219.
Standen,
Naomi, 'What nomads want:
raids, invasions, and
the Liao conquest of 947', in Amitai and Biran, pp. 129-74.
Tietze,
Klaus-Peter, 'The
Liao-Sung border conflict of 1074-1076', Studia
Sino-Mongolica: Festschrift
für Herbert Franke, ed.
Wolfgang Bauer (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979), pp. 127-51.
Wilhelm, Helmut,
'From myth to myth: the
case of Yüeh Fei's biography', in Wright and Twitchett, pp. 146-61.
Wright,
David Curtis, From
war to diplomatic parity in eleventh-century China: Sung's foreign
relations
with Kitan Liao
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2005).
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