Northern Song (北宋, 960–1127) was one of the dynasties of China. Zhao Kuangyin received the abdication of Chai Zongxun, the Gong Emperor of the Later Zhou, the last dynasty of the Five Dynasties, and established the state with its capital at Kaifeng. Its official name was Song, but after the Jin dynasty drove it from Kaifeng and it moved south, it was called the Northern Song to distinguish it from the Southern Song. The Northern Song was a state that succeeded the Tang dynasty founded by the Han Chinese, and together with the Southern Song it is called Song or Song dynasty (宋朝).1 The Khitan borrowed the dynastic surname of the Song state and called it Zhao Guo (趙國, Khitan: ʤiauɡu-i ɡur).2
History
Zhao Kuangyin, who had been the Commander of the Front Palace Guard (殿前都点検; imperial guard commander) of the Later Zhou, received the abdication of Gong Emperor (恭帝), the last emperor of the Later Zhou, and founded the state. Zhao Kuangyin tried to conquer the remaining Ten Kingdoms and reunify a China divided into fragments, but he died without achieving his aim. His successor was his younger brother Zhao Guangyi (趙匡義), but many aspects of this succession are unclear, and the doubtful rumor known as Candle Shadow and Axe Sound (燭影斧聲) spread. Zhao Guangyi, who became Emperor Taizong (太宗), inherited his elder brother's work, completed the reunification of China, and aimed to perfect the imperial examination system. The examination system was completed during the reign of Zhenzong (眞宗), the son of Emperor Taizong.
The establishment of the examination system strengthened the emperor's autocratic power, but at the same time its excessive favoring of civil officials led to a decline in military strength. In 1004, the Liao dynasty in the north invaded the Song from the north. Emperor Zhenzong personally led his army to Chanyuan and fought back, but he concluded a peace by sending the Liao an annual payment of goods and silver. (Because Chanyuan is also called Chanyuan, this treaty is called the "Treaty of Chanyuan" [澶淵之盟].) At the same time as the Liao invasion, the Tangut people in the west founded the Western Xia and rebelled against the Song, but this too was settled in 1044 by sending goods. (The Treaty of Qingli [慶曆和約].)
Having gained peace through these covenants, the Song flourished in high culture on the basis of its overwhelming economic power. In this period there are many works in painting, ceramics, Chinese poetry, and other fields that are regarded as the peak of all Chinese history. Moreover, with economic development the economic power of ordinary people also rose, and the capital Kaifeng was so lively that it never slept; markets were opened freely in the city, and in the entertainment quarters storytellers and performing artists delighted the ears and eyes of the citizens.
In later times, there are opinions that criticize the peace obtained by paying tribute to the Liao and the Western Xia (and later also the Jin of the Southern Song era) from fiscal and nationalist perspectives. However, it also had effects that weakened the ruling classes of the Liao and the Western Xia, leading to the weakening of the military strength of those states, and the widespread habit of favoring silk fabrics, ceramics, and tea spread throughout the societies of these states, increasing imports; as a result, goods exceeding the tribute flowed back to the Song side, which is also linked to the strengthening of the Song's economic power.
Conflict between the New Policies and Old Policies
However, behind this economic development, social contradictions also progressed, and the economic gap between the common people became very large. In addition, the military expenditure used to defend against the Liao and the Western Xia imposed a great burden on national finances, and the decline in tax revenue from large merchants and large landowners reached a level that could not be ignored, so reform was demanded by all means.
The sixth emperor, Shenzong (神宗), appointed Wang Anshi (王安石) and set out on reforms of state administration. This movement was called the New Policies, or Wang Anshi's New Policies (王安石의 新法). These New Policies aimed mainly at protecting small peasant farmers and restraining large merchants and large landowners, so they provoked enormous opposition from the forces of landowners and merchants and the officials who came from those classes. These opposing groups were called the Old Policy faction (舊法派).
The conflict between the New Policy faction and the Old Policy faction grew more intense day by day. The representative of the Old Policy faction, opposing Wang Anshi of the New Policy faction, was Sima Guang (司馬光). While these two men were alive, the factional conflict was based on lofty ideals, but after both died it fell into ideological conflict driven by party interests. When the New Policy faction won, officials of the Old Policy faction were all at once removed from the center, and all laws were revised; but when the Old Policy faction later gained power, the opposite happened, and such situations were not uncommon.
Such conflict affected the state system, and gradually the national power of the Song declined.
Fall
The eighth emperor, Huizong (徽宗), was a ruler with outstanding artistic talent, and his paintings are counted among the peaks not only of the Northern Song period but of Chinese history as a whole. However, as a ruler, under the influence of favored courtiers who sought profit by using the emperor, such as Cai Jing (蔡京), Gao Qiu (高俅), Li Yan (李彦), and Tong Guan (童貫), he used enormous amounts of state funds to transport huge garden rocks and garden trees from the distant south for his own art (Huashi Gang), and to fill the resulting deficit he resorted to tax increases by using the New Policies. In response, popular rebellions broke out frequently, and the army was busy suppressing them. One of the rebellions of this period provided a hint, and the story was embellished and spread through storytelling; the work that later compiled it into a grand whole is the Water Margin (水滸伝).
At this time, the Liao, the northern enemy of the Song, was under threat from the Jurchen who arose in Manchuria in northeastern China. The Jurchen, united in their tribes in resistance to the Liao's exploitation, founded their own state in 1115, which was the Jin dynasty. The court of the Song dynasty, which paid attention to these Jurchen, promised the Jin that they would jointly attack the Liao (the Maritime Alliance).
In 1121, in joint military action with the Jin dynasty, the Song destroyed the Liao dynasty and recovered part of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun; however, before the return, the entire area of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun was plundered by the Jin army and its residents were forcibly relocated to the north, so for the time being the Song could not expect tax revenue from this region. Because the Song allied with remnants of the Liao to resist the Jin, the Jin incurred great anger, and in 1127 Kaifeng was captured, and the emperor Qinzong and the retired emperor Huizong were taken north as captives. This is called the Jingkang Incident (靖康의 變). Qinzong's younger brother, Zhao Gou (趙構), fled south and declared himself emperor at Hangzhou, securing the lands south of the Huai River, where Jin influence did not strongly reach due to terrain and climate, and thus continued the lifeline of the Song. From this time the Song dynasty was called the Southern Song.
Politics
Civil Governance
The Song dynasty, founded by Emperor Taizo Zhao Kuangyin, which had seen the Tang dynasty tolerate the regional rule of jiedushi (節度使), called warlords (warlords) in various regions, which eventually led to the warfare of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, began fully operating the examinations to draw in powerful figures across the regions, including conducting the palace examination (殿試), and thereby the bureaucracy of civil officials reached the stage of completion in name and in fact. After the Qin dynasty, the Sixteen Kingdoms period, the Northern and Southern dynasties period, and the warlord rule situation of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, such warlord regional rule ceased to appear in Chinese dynasties until modern times.
The Song ruling system, after the aristocratic class of the Tang era declined through the warfare of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, was centered on a new class called the scholar-official (士大夫). The scholar-officials were wealthy citizens with cultivated learning; by studying and passing the examinations to become officials, they were respected not through the blood ties of aristocrats but because producing successful examination candidates who rose to high office earned the respect of those around them, and they became local fixtures and accumulated wealth. Conversely, this means that if no successful, prosperous person emerged from the family, respect would not be earned and the wealth would eventually disappear.
The system in which the emperor used officials from this scholar-official background as his hands and feet to manage state affairs was also called "imperial autocracy" or "monarchical dictatorship." However, on the other hand, it is worth noting that after the death of Zhenzong, young and sickly emperors succeeded one after another, and empresses dowager or grand empress dowagers with no blood relation to the Song imperial house acted on the emperor's behalf and stabilized politics.
Because this scholar-official class were at once officials, landowners, and large merchants, they came to monopolize all culture. After this period in China, with the exception of the following Yuan dynasty era, those who appeared on the stage of history were almost limited to scholar-officials; besides them, the only figures were founders of dynasties such as Nurhaci and their associates, and rebel leaders that can be named such as Li Zicheng and Hong Xiuquan.
Imperial Examination System
The examination system was begun by Emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty, but it can be said that the examination only exerted its true effect in the Song period. In the Tang dynasty, even those who passed the examinations were obstructed by the aristocratic class and sometimes did not receive official posts for several years. Han Yu (韓愈) is a representative example of this. In the Song period, because the aristocratic class had declined, such things did not happen.
The major change in the examination system during the Song period was the introduction of the palace examination. Until then there had been two kinds: the Jieshi (解試), a first-stage examination held locally, and the Huishi (會試), a second-stage examination held at the center; a palace examination conducted before the emperor was established above these examinations.
At first, some people failed the palace examination, but essentially no one failed it. Also, the many examination subjects (not school subjects, but exam courses) that existed until then, divided into Jinshi (進士), Mingfa (明法), and others, were unified into a single Jinshi subject during the reign of Emperor Shenzong. From this time on, successful examination candidates came to be called Jinshi.
In the examination system, each year the examiner formed a teacher-student relationship with the successful candidates of that year, and this became the foundation of the personal networks related to officialdom. The very existence of the palace examination, in which no one failed, also lies in this; the fact that teacher-student relationships were formed with the emperor produced the consciousness that officials were directly subordinate to the emperor.
In the Song period, which was the most flourishing era of the examinations in Chinese history, examinations were held roughly once every three years, and about 300 to 400 candidates passed each time. Among them, the top successful candidate was called the Zhuangyuan (状元).
In the Song period a spirit of individuals willing to take responsibility for the state appeared that had not been seen before. Even in the conflict between the New Policies and the Old Policies, that spirit was evident. The source of this can be said to be the pride in having gained status through ability via the examinations. Throughout the Song period the influence of officials and of students, the reserve force of officials, became very strong, and there were cases in which chief ministers were impeached through student movements.
Bureaucratic System
The bureaucratic system of the Song dynasty changed greatly around the Yuanfeng era of the Northern Song. Until the Yuanfeng Reforms at the beginning of the Song, under strong influence from the Five Dynasties, official titles based on the Tang system became "registered ranks" (寄禄官; salary schedule ranks) that did not indicate actual posts, and the system took a form not seen in the Tang system or the bureaucratic systems of the Ming and Qing periods.
For example, the vice ministers (侍郞) and assistant ministers (員外郞) of the Six Ministries did not actually perform the work of the Six Ministries, but were used to indicate levels of salary. A brief description of the bureaucratic system of this period is as follows.
The central administrative structure formally maintained the Three Departments and Six Ministries (三省六部), the Nine Offices (九寺), and the Five Supervisorates (五監) inherited from the past. Among them, the Zhongshu Province (中書省), absorbing the powers of the Menxia Province (門下省), formed a chief ministerial office (宰相府) in which power was concentrated; the chief minister was called Tong Zhongshu Menxia Pingzhang Shi (同中書門下平章事), and not one but three persons were selected, and several assistant chief ministers were chosen as Canzhi Zhengshi (參知政事).
The chief ministerial office handled civil administration, and military affairs were handled by the Privy Council (樞密院). The head of the Privy Council, the Shumi Shi (樞密使), and the deputy head, the Shumi Fu Shi (樞密副使), together with the Canzhi Zhengshi, were called the Zhizheng (執政), and the chief ministers and the Zhizheng handled all government affairs.
Although the administrative organs, the Six Ministries, the Nine Offices, and the Five Supervisorates, existed, in practice they had no real role; instead, offices called Shizhi (使職) carried out the actual administration.
- Sansi (三司) - in charge of finance.
- Yushitai (御史台) - supervised officials.
- Shenguanyuan (審官院) - in charge of personnel.
- Taichang Liyiyuan (太常禮儀院) - in charge of rituals.
- Shenxingyuan (審刑院), Xingbu (刑部), Dalisi (大理寺) - in charge of trials.
These offices handled such duties.
The official titles inherited from the past did not express the content of the work but merely indicated the rank at which a person existed in the system. In other words, it is like saying that the lower position of the ninth rank can be considered below the third rank in the Tang system.
The largest administrative division based on the local administrative system was the Lu (路), and below it existed the Fu (府), Zhou (州), Jun (軍), and Xian (縣). The head of a zhou was called Zhi (知) ~ Zhou (州; the part of ~ contains the name of the zhou), and his deputy was called Tongpan (通判).
Military System
The military system of the Song was a system of conscription. Emperor Taizu, while restricting the power of the jiedushi, strengthened the Jinjun (禁軍), the imperial guard from which he himself had originated, and made it the regular army. Through this policy the central power became stronger and the jiedushi's regional rule was suppressed. However, he did not stop there; taking as a lesson his own rise from commander of the imperial guard to emperor, he reformed the system of the Jinjun, abolished the post of commander of the entire army, and decided not to use generals who existed as subordinates under the direct control of the emperor.
There was the regular army, the Jinjun, and the Xiangjun (廂軍), which served as garrison soldiers; the standing army numbered 1.4 million in the middle of the Northern Song. However, despite the large numbers, many soldiers were unreliable in actual battle. Moreover, because of the policy of prioritizing civil officials, other military men were looked down upon, and as a result recruiting soldiers became very difficult, so soldiers came to be recruited from criminals.
As one countermeasure to this tendency, Wang Anshi put forward a military reform plan called the Baoma Method (保馬法). The Baoma Method encouraged the raising of military horses; it was implemented to increase cavalry, since the Song army, with many infantry, sought to improve its combat power by increasing cavalry.
Reforms
The Song was the period in which officials were treated most favorably among all dynasties in history.
References
- Bo Yang (1977). 《中國歷史年表》 [Chinese History Chronology] (in Chinese). Taipei: Sing-Kuang Book Company Ltd.
Footnotes