The Northern Song (or Sung) Dynasty was a period of great economic advancement, population growth, urbanization, and political change in China.
[1]
Eleventh-century China under the Song has been called the ’most advanced place in the world’ at that time.
[2]
The Northern Song government ruled from its capital in Kaifeng, while the Southern Song were based in Hangzhou.
The century between the fall of the Tang dynasty and beginning of the Song dynasty was characterized by the rise of powerful warlords in the south and political turmoil in the north.
[1]
The first Song emperor, Emperor Taizu, reunified the Yangtze River Valley and South China.
[3]
The territory held by the Song was smaller than that held by previous powerful dynasties, and much of North China was still dominated by outside rule.
[3]
Population and political organization
The Song government was marked by the increasing importance of the civil service examination and the rise of Confucianism.
[1]
The prominence of the civil service examination led to the emergence of a central government governed by scholar-officials rather than by aristocrats, as was traditionally the case. The government was headed by a powerful emperor and featured a large central bureaucracy.
[4]
The Song period saw rapid commercial and industrial expansion.
[5]
Agriculture, paper-making, printing, and iron-working flourished,
[6]
[2]
and paper money was first produced in China under the Song.
[7]
Foreign trade increased as the state expanded its trading networks.
[2]
Although it is clear that the Song Dynasty was a period of massive population growth and urbanization,
[2]
there is some disagreement about exact population numbers. Some scholars agree that the population had reached around 100 million by 1000 CE,
[8]
[9]
while others believe it was closer to 60 million.
[10]
[1]: (Ebrey 1996, 136) Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 1996. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[2]: (Weatherhead East Asian Institute 2008) Weatherhead East Asian Institute. 2008. ’China in 1000 AD: The Most Advanced Society in the World’. Asian Topics on Asia for Educators: The Song Dynasty in China (960-1279). Columbia University. http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/song/. Accessed 15 March 2017.
[3]: (Meyer 1994, 217) Milton W. Meyer. 1994. China: A Concise History. Lanham, MD: Littlefield Adams.
[4]: (Hartman 2015, 20, 88) Charles Hartman. 2015. ’Sung government and politics’, in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 5: The Five Dynasties and Sung China, 960-1279 AD, Part 2, edited by J. W. Chaffee and D. Twitchett, 21-138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[5]: (Ebrey 1996, 144) Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 1996. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[6]: (Ebrey 1996, 141-42) Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 1996. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[7]: (Ebrey 1996, 142) Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 1996. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[8]: (Ebrey 1996, 141) Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 1996. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[9]: (Mote 2003, 164) Frederick W. Mote. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[10]: (Hartman 2015, 29) Charles Hartman. 2015. ’Sung government and politics’, in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 5: The Five Dynasties and Sung China, 960-1279 AD, Part 2, edited by J. W. Chaffee and D. Twitchett, 21-138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
| none |
| China |
| Later Jin |
| [2,000,000 to 3,000,000] km2 |
| cultural assimilation |
| UNCLEAR: [cultural assimilation] |
| unitary state |
| 500,000 people | 1000 CE |
| 1,000,000 people | 1100 CE |
| [3,033,000 to 2,900,000] km2 | 1000 CE |
| [2,367,000 to 2,233,000] km2 | 1100 CE |
| [60,000,000 to 100,000,000] people |
| 7 |
| [2 to 3] |
| [8 to 10] |
| [7 to 8] |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| absent |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| inferred present |
| unknown |
| unknown |
| present |
| inferred present |
| present |
| inferred present |
| present |
| unknown |
| present |
| absent |
| present |
| present | |
| absent |
| inferred absent |
| inferred absent |
| inferred absent |
| absent |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| inferred absent |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| inferred present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| inferred present |
| present |
| present |
| inferred present |
| inferred present |
| present |
| unknown |
| unknown |
| Year Range | Northern Song (cn_northern_song_dyn) was in: |
|---|---|
| (960 CE 1126 CE) | Middle Yellow River Valley |
11th Century
"Eleventh-century China was one of the high points of Chinese and world culture in almost every human endeavor, whether artistic, intellectual, or technological, and this grand century of achievement was founded on the long peace that the Chanyuan Covenant created."
[1]
11th Century China has been compared to the Renaissance in Europe.
[2]
Before 1060s CE
Factional conflict in the central government bureaucracy began in the 1060s CE.
[3]
990-1010 CE
"Between the last decade of the tenth century and the first decade of the eleventh, annual revenues of the Sung government doubled, and its yearly budgets moved from deficit to surplus financing."
[4]
1000 CE
After 960 CE the Song state "would take some 45 years to reach territorial stability and peaceful relations with its close neighbours."
[5]
960-979 CE "two-decade-long expansion"
979-1005 CE conflict/relations with the Khitans
1005 CE Chanyaun Covenant. "Few peace treaties in world history have ever been so successful, creating 120 years of peace, yet so disliked by at least one of the signatories, the Song."
[1]
"T’ai-tsu and T’ai-tsung bequeathed to their successors a prosperous empire in which taxes were light and the government treasuries full."
[6]
Under Chen-tsung "the austerity of the earlier emperors went out of fashion."
[6]
After Wang An-shih’s financial reform program "the government’s yearly revenues increase spectacularly, providing far more than was needed to meet expenditure, but the financing of local administration was also put on a sounder basis than at any time since the beginning of the dynasty."
[7]
[1]: (Lorge 2005, 35)
[2]: (Hartman 2015, 19)
[3]: (Levine 2008, 1) Levine, Ari Daniel. 2008. Divided by a Common Language: Factional Conflict in Late Northern Song China. University of Hawai’i Press. Honolulu.
[4]: (Hartman 2015, 23)
[5]: (Lorge 2005, 30)
[6]: (Golas 2015, 147)
[7]: (Golas 2015, 152)
km squared.
Inhabitants. Kaifeng.
1000 CE
Estimated population 500,000: 1021 CE.
[1]
No date estimates
According to study by Gilbert Rozman Kaifeng was in the 1 million range.
[2]
K’ai-feng "reached over 1 million (about 1 per cent of the Song population)."
[3]
- when? 1100 CE?
1100 CE
Kaifeng had "more than one million betwee the years 1102-1106 AD."
[4]
[1]: (Lorge 2005, 7)
[2]: (Mote 2003, 164) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
[3]: (Liu 2015, 57)
[4]: (Du and Koenig 2012, 180) Du, P and Koenig, A. in Angelakis, Andreas Niklaos. Mays, Larry W. Koutsoyiannis, Demetris. 2012. Evolution of Water Supply Through the Millennia. IWA Publishing.
Inhabitants. Kaifeng.
1000 CE
Estimated population 500,000: 1021 CE.
[1]
No date estimates
According to study by Gilbert Rozman Kaifeng was in the 1 million range.
[2]
K’ai-feng "reached over 1 million (about 1 per cent of the Song population)."
[3]
- when? 1100 CE?
1100 CE
Kaifeng had "more than one million betwee the years 1102-1106 AD."
[4]
[1]: (Lorge 2005, 7)
[2]: (Mote 2003, 164) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
[3]: (Liu 2015, 57)
[4]: (Du and Koenig 2012, 180) Du, P and Koenig, A. in Angelakis, Andreas Niklaos. Mays, Larry W. Koutsoyiannis, Demetris. 2012. Evolution of Water Supply Through the Millennia. IWA Publishing.
in squared kilometers. Contains interpolated data. 800,000: 960 CE; 550,000: 970 CE; 3,100,000: 980 CE; [3,033,000-2,900,000]: 1000 CE; [2,900,000-2,767,000]: 1020 CE; [2,767,000-2,633,000]: 1040 CE; [2,633,000-2,500,000]: 1060 CE; [2,500,000-2,367,000]: 1080 CE; [2,367,000-2,233,000]: 1100 CE; [2,233,000-2,100,000]: 1120 CE; 2,100,000: 1127 CE (in squared kilometers) [1]
[1]: (Chase-Dunn spreadsheet)
in squared kilometers. Contains interpolated data. 800,000: 960 CE; 550,000: 970 CE; 3,100,000: 980 CE; [3,033,000-2,900,000]: 1000 CE; [2,900,000-2,767,000]: 1020 CE; [2,767,000-2,633,000]: 1040 CE; [2,633,000-2,500,000]: 1060 CE; [2,500,000-2,367,000]: 1080 CE; [2,367,000-2,233,000]: 1100 CE; [2,233,000-2,100,000]: 1120 CE; 2,100,000: 1127 CE (in squared kilometers) [1]
[1]: (Chase-Dunn spreadsheet)
People.
Hartman provides a general population estimate of 60 million, whilst Mote estimates 100 million by 1100 CE. Analysis by Lui suggests a figure between these numbers.
No date estimates
60 million. "a general population of 60 million people."
[1]
140 million
[2]
1100 CE
100 million by 1100 CE.
[3]
14,245,000 households in 1077 CE
[4]
-- 85,000,000 million if six per household? "The population of Song China in 1077 was over 80 million"
[5]
"The aggregate households registered by the government increased from 6,418,500 in 980 to 16,402,631 in 1078 CE. -- 38,000,000: 980 CE* and 98,000,000: 1078 CE million if six per household?
[6]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 29)
[2]: (Peers 2002, 33)
[3]: (Mote 2003, 164) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
[4]: (Liu 2015, 52)
[5]: (Liu 2015, 61)
[6]: (Liu 2015, 62)
levels.
1. Capital: Kaifeng
2. Prefectural Capital: Luoyang, Beijing, Nanjing: Prefectural capitals had urban populations between 20,000-100,000.
[1]
3. Large City4. City5. Market Town
[2]
6. Village7. Hamlet
There was a more complex hierarchy for taxation purposes (1077).
[1]
Level / commercial taxes / # "large cities"
Level I: 100,000-400,000 strings. (1)
Level II: 50,000-100,000 strings. (7)
Level III: 30,000-50,000 strings. (20)
Level IV: 20,000-30,000 strings. (26)
Level V: 10,000-20,000 strings. (73)
"Only 44 out of 1,132 county seats (less than 4 per cent) were able to contribute 10,000 strings or more."
[1]
Kaifeng as the political center: "Studies of Chinese urban history have pointed to a revolutionary change in urban settlement after the Rebellion. The change was conditioned by the rise of long-distance trade between the north and the south and the increase in rural markets across the country. Kaifeng is a well-known case. It was the first city in Chinese history to be chosen as the political centre because it was a hub of transport and trade."
[3]
According to population study by Gilbert Rozman Kaifeng was in the 1 million range. 30 cities had 40,000-100,000, 60 cities roughly 15,000, possibly 400 towns had 4,000-5,000 people.
[4]
[1]: (Liu 2015, 56)
[2]: (Mote 2003, 161) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
[3]: (Liu 2015, 57)
[4]: (Mote 2003, 164) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
levels.
1. Emperor
"The emperor was first and foremost the primary religious officer of the Sung state. His function in this capacity was unique and irreplaceable. He was the principal officiant at a series of rituals that regulated time; offered sacrifices to deities; paid homage to stars, mountains, and rivers; and worshipped ancestors."
[1]
"The state also used both Buddhist and Taoist institutions to funnel financial and spiritual aid to the population after natural disasters and warfare."
[2]
2.3.Buddhism. "The great temples of the capital and other major cities, often patronized by the rulers, housed in some cases thousands of monks."
[3]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 83)
[2]: (Hartman 2015, 96)
[3]: (Mote 2003, 161) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
levels.
"Several innovations in the Song army during the Tangut war transformed the army’s structure, armament and tactics. The most important change was in the creation of "legions" (jiang) of from 2,500 to 4,000 men (on rare occasions as high as 10,000 men) as permanent maneuver elements. The success of the legions in the latter stages of the war not only discredited the older system, in which armies were created by drawing disparate battalions of 500 men from large garrisons, but also created a distinction between field or border forces and the garrison forces in the capital. The legion was more formally introduced throughout the army during the New Policies reforms of Wang Anshi during the reign of Song Shenzong (1067-1085)."
[1]
1. Emperor
Commander-in-chief. "T’ai-tsu and T’ai-tsung were actual warriors who fought personally in combat. Although subsequent emperors rarely took the field against opponents, they created bureaucratic structures that severely restricted the independent authority of military commanders."
[2]
?. Chief Councilors (tsai-hsiang)
"during the reign of Chen-tsung, the chief councilors could sometimes participate in deliberation on military affairs, and this fact constituted interference in the military administration of the Bureau of Military Affairs."
[3]
2. Bureau of Military Affairs (Shu-mi-yuan)"T’ai-tsu continued the Five Dynasties system of making the Bureau of Military Affairs (Shu-mi-yuan) the highest military organ and having it take charge of military administration; he did not directly lead the military. The senior officials of the Bureau of Military Affairs were executive officials (chih-cheng kuan), and their positions were second only to those of the chief councilors (tsai-hsiang). The position of the Bureau of Military Affairs was higher than that of the Three Capital guards, but the military authority of these two organs served as a mutual check or restraint each on the other. Although the senior officials of the Three Capital Guards and the military districts had charge of the armed forces, they could not engage in military actions unless they had orders from the Bureau of Military Affairs."
[4]
Civilian overseer Chao K’uang-yin made his generals "subject to on-the-spot control by civilian overseers."
[5]
3. Palace Bureau of the Commander-in-Chief (Tien-ch’ien tu chih-hui shih ssu) - one of the Three Capital GuardsThe founder Chao "downgraded the Palace Inspectorate-General (Tien-ch’ien tu tien-chien ssu), which commanded the imperial guardsmen (chin-ping) to the Palace Bureau of the Commander-in-Chief (Tien-ch’ien tu chih-hui shih ssu).
[6]
"three main divisions or ranks can be distinguished: upper imperial armies, middle imperial armies, and lower imperial armies (shang, chung, and hsia ch’in-chun). The upper imperial armies included four armies: P’eng-jih and T’ien-wu (both under the Palace Command), Lung-wei (under the Metropolitan Cavalry Command), and Shen-wei (under the Metropolitan Infantry Command). Together these four armies were called the Four Elite Armies (Shang ssu chun)."
[3]
3. Imperial Bodyguard (Shih-wei ch’in-chun) Bureau of the Commander-in-Chief >>> Imperial Bodyguard Cavalry Bureau of the Commander-in-Chief (Shih-wei ch’in-chun ma-chun tu-chih-hui shih ssu) / Imperial Bodyguard Infantry Bureau of the Commander-in-Chief (Shih-wei ch’in-chun pu-chun tu-chih-hui shih ssu) (by Emperor Chen-tsung r. 997-1022) - the other of the Three Capital GuardsThe founder Chao "set up two separate officials of equal rank below another Bureau of the Commander-in-Chief which commanded imperial guardsmen - the Imperial Bodyguard (Shih-wei ch’in-chun) Bureau of the Commander-in-Chief - and they commanded the cavalrymen and infantrymen separately."
[4]
"three main divisions or ranks can be distinguished: upper imperial armies, middle imperial armies, and lower imperial armies (shang, chung, and hsia ch’in-chun). The upper imperial armies included four armies: P’eng-jih and T’ien-wu (both under the Palace Command), Lung-wei (under the Metropolitan Cavalry Command), and Shen-wei (under the Metropolitan Infantry Command). Together these four armies were called the Four Elite Armies (Shang ssu chun)."
[3]
4. Wing (hsiang) left and right - 25,000"The organization hierarchy of the imperial armies was as follows ... "
[3]
5. Army (chun) 2,500 soldiers"The organization hierarchy of the imperial armies was as follows ... "
[3]
6. Commandery (chih-hui) or reginment (ying) 500 soldiers"The organization hierarchy of the imperial armies was as follows ... "
[3]
"because the military power of the army and wing organizational units was relatively large, the commanders of these units could easily create a threat to the imperial authority. The Northern Sung proceeded to createdisorder among the wing and army organizational units. Some imperial armies had no wings or armies, while in other imperial armies the manpower of these two units was below the established quotas. For the most part, after the beginning of T’ai-tsung’s reign, the commander was usually the basic organizational unit of the imperial armies during troop movements, fortifications, and battles."
[7]
7. troop (tu) 100 soldiers"The organization hierarchy of the imperial armies was as follows ... "
[3]
8. Platoon (50 soldiers)"Chang Yu, a military writer of the late Sung period, describes a system of organisation based on a squad of five, which implies that the traditional five-deep deployment was still in use. There were 50 men in a platoon, two platoons in a company, two companies in the next unit up, and so on up to an ’army’ of 3,200. Chang Yu remarks: ’Each is subordinate to the superior and controls the inferior. ..."
[8]
"Emperor Shen-tsung also promoted the Company System (Chieh-tui fa), in which companies (tui), the basic unit of military organization during the Sung, were organized and divided into various sub-company units, the smallest of which contained only three men."
[9]
9. Squad (5 soldiers)"Chang Yu, a military writer of the late Sung period, describes a system of organisation based on a squad of five, which implies that the traditional five-deep deployment was still in use. There were 50 men in a platoon, two platoons in a company, two companies in the next unit up, and so on up to an ’army’ of 3,200. Chang Yu remarks: ’Each is subordinate to the superior and controls the inferior. ..."
[8]
"Emperor Shen-tsung also promoted the Company System (Chieh-tui fa), in which companies (tui), the basic unit of military organization during the Sung, were organized and divided into various sub-company units, the smallest of which contained only three men."
[9]
10. Individual soldier
5. Area Generalships (chiang)"Emperor Shen-tsung implemented the Area Generalship System (Chiang-ping fa), in which various commanderies of the imperial armies were combined to form area generalships (chiang). ... The designation of area generalships had begun in four circuits of Shen-hsi during the reign of Jen-tsung. ... organized by combining the variously designated commanderies of the imperial armies. For example, the Second Area Generalship of the K’ai-feng area encompassed the stationed armies of five of the sixteen counties of K’ai-feng prefecture."
[10]
6. Regiments (pu)
7. Company - 50 troops
8.9. Individual soldier"The ranks of military officers in the area generalship system included general (cheng-chiang) and vice general. Fifty troops formed a company and above the companies and below the area generalships were the regiments (pu). This led to the three-tiered organization structure of area generalship, regiment, and company."
[10]
[1]: (Lorge 2005, 48)
[2]: (Hartman 2015, 85)
[3]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 216)
[4]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 215)
[5]: (Peers 2002, 33)
[6]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 214)
[7]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 216-217)
[8]: (Peers 2002, 35)
[9]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 226-227
[10]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 227
levels.
1. Emperor
"He assumed ’dictatorial’ powers because only the sovereign, through the examination system, now controlled access to office. This new centralized bureaucracy of Sung was more beholden to the throne and so supported imperial power in a different manner and on a greater scale than had its medieval forebears."
[1]
"Huang-ti and T’ien-tzu (Son of Heaven) were the most usual titles on the formal seals of Sung emperors."
[2]
2. Palace Domestic Service"Like other major Sung institutions, the Palace Domestic Service dates from the reign of Chen-tsung. Organized in 1022 into six ministries with a plethora of subdivisions, it contained a total of 282 billeted positions. These six ministries were General Affairs, Ceremonies, Wardrobe, Food Service, Housekeeping, and Workshop Service."
[3]
"In 1113, Emperor Hui-tsung, as a continuation of the Yuan-feng reforms of 1082, reorganized the Palace Domestic Service to mirror the organization of external government. The traditional six inner ministries of 1022 were reorganized into six divisions that corresponded to the external Six Ministries of the Department of State Affairs, and the top supervisory positions were recast as “inner councilors” (nei-tsai). As justification for this move, Hui-tsung’s edict declared that this new structure would facilitate “the disposition of matters submitted to the throne from the external Six Ministries.” This phrasing raises the interesting question whether, in addition to processing their own internal paperwork, the women also processed external documents coming to and from the emperor. There are tantalizing indications that this was probably the case."
[4]
"Tenth-century Sung government was a hopeless patchwork of late T’ang administrative structure and ad hoc provincial institutions inherited from the military governors of the Five Dynasties."
[5]
_Central government_
Pre-1082 CE State Council (Military Affairs Commission / Secretariat-Chancellery)
2. Chief Councillor"Initially, the Sung chief councilors were secondary in importance to the Military Affairs Commissioner. But, as soon as literati culture began to emerge in the early eleventh century, the first of the great chief councilors also emerged in the person of Lu I-chien."
[6]
"the office of chief councilor was the pinnacle of the Sung bureaucracy, the chief officer charged with formulating and executing policy."
[7]
3. Five Offices (Wu fang) of the Secretariat-Chancellery staffed by clerks or assistant chief councillors collectively known as Bureau of Edicts (Chich-ch’ih yuan)
[6]
4. Clerks"In the mid-eleventh century, the support staff at the Secretariat-Chancellery numbered at least two to three hundred clerks, although this number ballooned after the Yuan-feng reforms."
[8]
5-?. Lesser clerks"They were staffed by professional clerks, who had their own hierarchy, but were not graded officials (shih ta-fu)."
[8]
Post-1082 CE (Yuan-feng reform) Military Affairs Commission, Department of the Secretariat (Chung-shu sheng), Department of the Chancellery (Men-hsia sheng), Department of State Affairs.
[9]
2. Left Chief Councillor and Right Chief CouncillorSix Ministries under the Department of State Affairs divided into "Left" and "Right" groups)
[6]
Three Departments (San-sheng)
[10]
Illustrated by a T’ang saying often repeated in Sung texts: "the Secretariat obtains the imperial will; the Chancellery resubmits the memorial; the Department of State Affairs (Shang-shu sheng) promulgates the action."
[10]
"The Left Chief Councilor was Left Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs and concurrent Vice Director of the Chancellery (Shang-shu tso p’u-yeh chien men-hsia shih-lang). The Right Chief Councilor held a similar title but was concurrently Vice Director of the Secretariat (there were no directors)."
[11]
3. Left and Right Assistant Directors of the Department of State Affairs"The position of Assistant Chief Councilor was abolished, replaced by Left and Right Assistant Directors of the Department of State Affairs (Shang-shu tso yu-ch’eng)."
[12]
4. Subunit of the Six Ministries (ssu)The Six Ministries had twenty-four subunits (ssu)
[8]
5. Clerks"In the mid-eleventh century, the support staff at the Secretariat-Chancellery numbered at least two to three hundred clerks, although this number ballooned after the Yuan-feng reforms."
[8]
6-?."After 1082, two or three graded officials in each of the Six Ministries and their twenty-four subunits (ssu) supervised a much larger number of clerks."
[8]
Pre-1082 CE The Censorate and the Bureau of Policy Criticism.
2. Vice Censor-in-Chief (Yu-shih chung-ch’eng) of the Headquarters Bureau (T’ai-yuan). There was also The Palace Bureau (Tien-yuan) and The Investigation Bureau (Ch’a-yuan)."... the major organs through which public opinion was to be funneled into court decision making. These institutions did not begin to assume their mature role in Sung government until the 1030s..."
[13]
"First, independently of other agencies, it gathered information and kept the emperor informed on conditions in the state. Second, it kept watch over the bureaucracy and enforced rules and standards for official conduct. In the metaphor of the state as a body, the censors were the "eyes and ears" of the sovereign."
[14]
"there was no Censor-in-Chief; the post was always vacant"
[15]
3. Attendant Censor (Shihyu-shih) of the Headquarters Bureau (T’ai-yuan)
[15]
4. Head of subdivision within Headquarters Bureau (Palace Bureau / Investigation Bureau)
[15]
5. Clerk
6. Assistant clerk"Within these three divisions there were eleven subdivisions with a total quota of forty-four clerks."
[15]
Rank grade classes in the civil-administrative structure (note: each of these classes are further sub-divided)
[16]
1. Ministers-in-attendance (shih ts’ung)
The Emperor "personally made all appointments and personnel decisions concerning top officials. Such officials, known collectively as ministers-in-attendance, had personal-rank grades of eleven or above."
[17]
2. Senior directors (Ta ch’ing-chien)3. Directors (Lang-chung)4. Vice-directors (Yuan-wai-lang)5. Court officials (Ch’ao kuan)6. Capital Officials (Ching-kuan)7. Executory Class Officials (Hsuan-jen)
2. Finance Commissioners (san-ssu shih) in the State Finance Commission or Three Offices (San-ssu)"The commissioners (sansishi) at the head of the State Finance Commission were carefully chosen by the court."
[18]
The Salt and Iron Monopoly "handled the production and distribution of military supplies, paid the salaries of military officials, supervised communications, collected commercial taxes, and ran the government monopolies, except for the wine monopoly."
[19]
The Tax Bureau "prepared annual financial reports and controlled receipts and disbursements, including the salaries of civil officials."
[19]
The Census Bureau "was responsible for population records, collected agricultural taxes, administered the wine monopoly, supervised long term storage of goods, and handled certain public-works projects."
[19]
3. Assistant commissioner (san-ssu fu-shih)"Various unsuccessful attempts were made to divide authority at the top among two or more commissioners, but it was not until the beginning of the eleventh century that a workable answer was found: a single finance commissioner (san-ssu shih), aided by an assistant commissioner (san-ssu fu-shih) and three administrative assistants (san-ssu p’an-kuan) in each of the three offices. The finance commissioners were answerable not to the chief councilors (tsai-hsiang) who headed the regular civil administration, but directly to the emperor."
[20]
4. Three administrative assistants (san-ssu p’an-kuan)
4. Heads of the sub-units of the Three Officese.g. The Salt and Iron Monopoly included an Armaments Section (Chou an) prior to some later reforms.
[21]
5. Clerk in sub-unit of the Three Offices -- inferred
6. Assistant clerk in sub-unit of the Three Offices -- inferred"In 978, it was reported to have comprised 24 offices and employed over 1,000 clerks."
[18]
5. Manager of state-owned production unit -- inferrede.g. Did the manager of a crossbow producing factory report to the Armaments Section chief?
local officials called "jiandangguan (officials with supervision and administrative duties in financial and other economic issues), also performed finance and taxation work. They were primarily responsible for collecting commercial taxes, supervising salt and wine monopolies, and managing storehouses."
[22]
6. State-owned production unit assistant manager -- inferred
7. State-owned production unit worker -- inferred
7. State monopoly agents"... under the control of the counties, a large number of ch’ang-wu, monopoly or commercial tax installations, directed not by clerks or local notables but by regular officials, the state monopoly agents (chien-tang kuan)."
[23]
2. Institute of Academicians"The academicians of the Institute composed the formal, important documents of imperial rule - notices of imperial appointments and promotions, amnesties, and foreign correspondence."
[24]
_Provincial government_
2. Circuits (lu) - Fiscal Commissioner (chuan-yun shih or ts’ao-ssu) / Judicial Commissioner (t’i-tien hsing-yu kung-shih or hsien-ssu) / Military Commissioner (ching-lueh an-fun shih or shuai-ssu)"the entire empire was divided into circuits (lu or, for a short time, tao) which usually included eight to fifteen prefectures"
[25]
"These circuits served in the first instance for the surveillance of affairs in the prefectures but increasingly tended to assume other roles such as general co-ordination and mobilization of a region’s resources."
[25]
"The circuits defined the area of activity of a number of circuit commissioners whose offices were designated as supervisorates or surveillance agencies (chien-ssu)."
[26]
3. Vice Commissioners (fu-shih)
[26]
4. Administrative assistants (p’an-kuan)
[26]
4. Winery "directly run by officials"Fiscal Commissioners "checked the receipts from all wineries, ordered their immediate subordinates or officials from the prefectural offices to inspect specific wineries, determined which wineries would be directly run by officials and which would be leased out to private operators..."
[26]
5. Winery management6-?. Winery staff
3. Prefect and Vice prefect (t’ung-pan)
[27]
of a Prefecture (chou)
[28]
Superior prefectures (fu)
[28]
"At the prefectural level, many financial activities were handled not by the prefect but by the vice prefect (t’ung-pan)." "Vice prefects enjoyed approximate equality with prefects: they were permitted to memoralize the throne directly on prefectural affairs and their endorsement (chien-shu) was required on reports from the prefect."
[27]
4. Prefectural court judge (t’ui kuan)
[29]
5. Clerk in a court
[30]
4. Magistrates and Vice magistrates in a County (hsien)"counties (hsien), the lowest general administrative level of the government"
[31]
"Much the same kind of independence was enjoyed at the county level by vice magistrates (hsien-ch’eng), who were appointed in counties of special importance."
[27]
5. ClerksThe Granaries Policy (Ts’ang fa) (1070) put some previously unsalaried local clerks in local government on government salaries.
[32]
County registrars (chu-pu)
[33]
5. State monopoly agents (chien-tang kuan) -- may belong in the central government under The Salt and Iron Monopoly tree?"... under the control of the counties, a large number of ch’ang-wu, monopoly or commercial tax installations, directed not by clerks or local notables but by regular officials, the state monopoly agents (chien-tang kuan)."
[23]
5. County sheriff (hsing-wei)T’ai-tsu in 962 CE "ordered that each county establish a county sheriff (hsing-wei) with a salary equal to that of the county registrars (chu-pu), though sheriffs stood below the registrars in the protocol order."
[33]
6. Clerks (chieh-chi) and Bowmen (kung-shou)"These sheriffs, assisted by a body of clerks (chieh-chi) and bowmen (kung-shou), were to enforce the law in the countryside."
[33]
_Village level political structure of Emperor Shen-tsung and Wang An-shih_
6. Superior Security Group (ten ta? pao) lead by a fu-pao-cheng"Emperor Shen-tsung and Wang An-shih promoted the pao-chia system at the village-level political structure. Every five households constituted one pao (security group) and were headed up by a security-group head (pao-chang); five pao formed a large pao headed by a large security-group head (ta pao-chang); and ten large pao formed a superior security group (tu-pao) headed by a superior security group head (fu-pao-cheng) and his assistant (fu tu-pao-cheng)."
[34]
7. fu tu-pao-cheng (assistant to fu-pao-cheng)
7. Large Security Group (five pao) ta? pao lead by a ta pao-chang
8. Security Group (every five households) pao lead by a pao-chang
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 20)
[2]: (Hartman 2015, 82)
[3]: (Hartman 2015, 88)
[4]: (Hartman 2015, 88-89)
[5]: (Hartman 2015, 29)
[6]: (Hartman 2015, 99)
[7]: (Hartman 2015, 98)
[8]: (Hartman 2015, 101)
[9]: (Hartman 2015, 98-99)
[10]: (Hartman 2015, 37)
[11]: (Hartman 2015, 99-100)
[12]: (Hartman 2015, 100)
[13]: (Hartman 2015, 38)
[14]: (Hartman 2015, 103)
[15]: (Hartman 2015, 104)
[16]: (Hartman 2015, 61)
[17]: (Hartman 2015, 84)
[18]: (Liu 2015, 65)
[19]: (Golas 2015, 145)
[20]: (Golas 2015, 146)
[21]: (Golas 2015, 153)
[22]: (Liu 2015, 66)
[23]: (Golas 2015, 148)
[24]: (Hartman 2015, 92)
[25]: (Golas 2015, 143)
[26]: (Golas 2015, 144)
[27]: (Golas 2015, 147)
[28]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 217)
[29]: (McKnight 2015, 267)
[30]: (McKnight 2015, 266)
[31]: (Golas 2015, 141)
[32]: (Golas 2015, 151)
[33]: (McKnight 2015, 262)
[34]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 228)
"Unlike other dynasties that had relied on civilian militias conscripted from the peasant population, the Sung maintained paid professional armies."
[1]
"The rank-and-file were mercenaries, serving for pay and rations, and recruited from among the lower orders of society - including petty criminals, vagabonds and amnestied bandits."
[2]
"By the tenth century, soldiers, to the intense consternation of statesmen, were wholly divorced from any productive activities and earned their livings by skill at arms. Despite many attempts to replace this "mercenary" system, it remained in place until the end of imperial times."
[3]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 28)
[2]: (Peers 2002, 33)
[3]: (Lorge 2005, 7)
"... begun during the Tang dynasty... The rise of religious professionals and soldiers as clearly separate groups was contrary to the previous normative view of society divided into knights (shi, the term that would later be applied to the literati or gentry), farmers, artisans and merchants."
[1]
Buddhism. "The great temples of the capital and other major cities, often patronized by the rulers, housed in some cases thousands of monks. But even a small county such as Yinxian (Ningpo) in Chekiang had over 100 Buddhist temples, some of which had several hundred monks and drew annual incomes from their temple lands, from donations, and from their pawnshops, temple fairs, and other businesses that made them the richest institutions in the locality."
[2]
[1]: (Lorge 2005, 7)
[2]: (Mote 2003, 161) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
"There were many salaried ranks for officers and men and also several specific types of allowance. Most of the military personnel, however, received very small allowances, thus making it difficult for them to maintain a living. ... Serving in the military was a kind of profession, and the soldiers and their family dependants usually lived together in military camps." [1]
[1]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 219)
Present
"Theoretically, the process of promotion review entailed two components: a review by the relevant central government authority of the yearly performance evaluations written by the official’s immediate superior and a verification of the years in service necessary to qualify for the promotion."
[1]
"The development of professional services also refers to the prevalence of the revenue-centred meritocracy in the Song bureaucracy. Officials were appointed, reviewed, and rewarded based on their financial administration records. The chance of promotion in someone’s official career heavily depended on how much he could increase the share of indirect tax revenues contributed to the court, a key step in centralizing the financial administration."
[2]
"To ensure professionalism, the appointment of high officials in the central government had to demonstrate their financial expertise background. For most of the first century of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), over 75 per cent of the Council of the State members, the top level of the central authority, had previous experience in financial administration."
[2]
Present, among a limited class
“Once a bureaucrat had achieved high office, his descendants were entitled to such privileges and advantages that facilitated examinations and direct entry into officialdom. Hence the attainment of high political office for its members allowed an elite lineage to reaffirm its social status and solidify its economic base for another generation.”
[3]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 63)
[2]: (Liu 2015, 65)
[3]: (Levine 2008, 4) Levine, Ari Daniel. 2008. Divided by a Common Language: Factional Conflict in Late Northern Song China. University of Hawai’i Press. Honolulu.
There were about 40,000 graded officials in late Northern Sung.
[1]
Professional tax system.
[2]
Time series civil + military officials: 13,000: Early Sung; 17,300: 1049 CE; 24,000: 1064-1067 CE; 34,000: 1080 CE; 28,300: 1086 CE; 43,000: 1112 CE; 33,516: 1191 CE; 42,434: 1196 CE; 37,807: 1201 CE; 38,870: 1213 CE.
[3]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 33)
[2]: (Liu 2015, 48)
[3]: (Hartman 2015, 53)
"Distrustful of their own military peers, they revised the old T’ang examination system and used it to recruit shih ta-fu ("literally servicemen and grand masters"), essentially a new civil service, from among the emergent commoners and nouveau riche."
[1]
"... the Sung examination system graduated on average about 200 chin-shih per year, and these graduates soon made up about 40 percent of “administrative-class” officials."
[2]
In the army "Training and drill were studied scientifically, and in the best units, at least, men were allocated to different duties on the basis of examinations in shooting and various athletic pursuits."
[3]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 20)
[2]: (Hartman 2015, 34)
[3]: (Peers 2002, 34)
"Ordinary prefectures had a prefectural court (chou-yuan) headed by an executive inspector (lu-shih ts’an-chun), an on-duty office (tang chih-ssu) headed by a staff-supervisor (p’an kuan) or prefectural judge (t’ui kuan), and a court of the police inspector (ssu-li ts’an-chun)."
[1]
"During the Northern Sung the village officer in charge of rural law and order was the elder (ch’i-chang), who was assisted by unpaid drafted assistants called stalwart men (chuang-ting)"
[2]
County magistrate (chih-hsien) "could investigate, try, sentence, and punish crimes" however trial usually at prefectural level.
[3]
At the prefectural level "The presiding judge there would ordinarily be a subordinate official and not the chief administrative officer."
[3]
[1]: (McKnight 2015, 267)
[2]: (McKnight 2015, 262)
[3]: (McKnight 2015, 265)
Based on the legal code of the T’ang period.
[1]
Later Chou produced the Penal conspectus of the Great Chou (Ta Chou hsing-t’ung) 957 CE which "formed the foundation for the later Sung penal conspectus (Sung hsing-t’ung)". The Chou document "was basically a reissuing of the T’ang code and commentary of 737, with the addition of a few edicts from later periods."
[2]
"At the beginning of the Sung eight principal collections of law were in use, four from the T’ang period, two from the Later T’ang, and two from the Later Chou, but the centerpiece of the legal system, and the chief source of penal rules, was the twenty-one chapter Ta Chou hsing-t’ung, which had been put into practice in 958."
[3]
T’ai tsu revised the Ta Chou hsing-t’ung code into "the thirty chapter Sung penal conspectus (Sung hsing-t’ung), also known as the Chung hsiang ting hsing-t’ung, the ’Re-examined and redetermined collected penal laws."
[3]
[1]: (McKnight 2015, 250)
[2]: (McKnight 2015, 252)
[3]: (McKnight 2015, 254)
"At the capital the three principal organs concerned with legal matters continued to be the Censorate, the Court of Judicial Review (Ta-li ssu), and the Ministry of Justice (Hsing-pu), a pattern which was to continue through the Sung dynasty (960-1279)."
[1]
Lowest level court was the yamen of the county magistrate (chih-hsien).
[2]
At prefectural level "three (or sometimes four) separate courts". "Ordinary prefectures had a prefectural court (chou-yuan) headed by an executive inspector (lu-shih ts’an-chun), an on-duty office (tang chih-ssu) headed by a staff-supervisor (p’an kuan) or prefectural judge (t’ui kuan), and a court of the police inspector (ssu-li ts’an-chun). In superior prefectural (fu) capitals there were two such police inspectors’ courts (of the right and the left), and in two of the four imperial capitals two courts of the military inspectors (also divided into the right and the left) (tso yu chun-hsun yuan)."
[3]
[1]: (McKnight 2015, 252)
[2]: (McKnight 2015, 264)
[3]: (McKnight 2015, 267)
In Kaifeng wells were dug for drinking water. [1] However, bamboo piping systems were created in some area to convey drinking-water. "The largest bamboo piping systems seem to have been built by the great poet-official Su Shi. Under his inspiration, water mains of large bamboo trunks were installed at Hangzhou in 1089 AD and at Guangzhou in 1096 AD." [2]
[1]: (Chen 2015, 730) Chen, Ping. 2015. Material Science and Environmental Engineering: Proceedings of the 3rd Annual 2015 International Conference on Material Science and Environmental Engineering (ICMSEE2015, Wuhan, Hubei, China, 5-6 June 2015). CRC Press.
[2]: (Du and Koenig 2012, 205) Du, P and Koenig, A. in Angelakis, Andreas Niklaos. Mays, Larry W. Koutsoyiannis, Demetris. 2012. Evolution of Water Supply Through the Millennia. IWA Publishing.
"... the coastal cities of the east and southeast emerged for the first time in Chinese history as major centers of shipbuilding and international trade." [1] E.g. Quanzhou, southern coast. "According to labels found among the cargo, the ship belonged to the imperial clan, and corroborates other documents showing that nobles were directly involved in trade (Chaffee 2001:34)." [2]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 22)
[2]: (Miksic 2013, 102) Miksic, John N. 2013. Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300-1800. NUS Press.
"The Sung was among the most document-driven of all Chinese states and compiled its own history from the plethora of bureaucratic records generated during the course of routine administration. But few of these records survive in their primary form." [1] E.g. Sung hui-yao chi-kao (A draft compendium of Sung documents) 19th-Century era compilation that copied from the 1408 CE (Ming dynasty) Yung-lo ta-tien (Yung-lo encyclopedia). [1]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 24)
"The Sung was among the most document-driven of all Chinese states and compiled its own history from the plethora of bureaucratic records generated during the course of routine administration. But few of these records survive in their primary form." [1] E.g. Sung hui-yao chi-kao (A draft compendium of Sung documents) 19th-Century era compilation that copied from the 1408 CE (Ming dynasty) Yung-lo ta-tien (Yung-lo encyclopedia). [1]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 24)
"By the turn of the eleventh century the four divisions that would later make up the Sung Han-lin Academy (astronomy, calligraphy, painting, and medicine) had already been established." [1] "Complete Essentials from the Military Classics" (Wujing Zongyao, 1044 CE) "currently ranks as the first text directly to describe the formula for gunpowder" [2] "The first mention of what we would call gunpowder appeared in 808... These mixtures grew out of a very long tradition of alchemical experimentation usually tied to certain schools of Daoism that sought elixirs of immortality or the means to transmute one material into another. While all of our early evidence for alchemical mixtures is tied to Daoists, this may be a historiographical artifact produced by the better preservation of texts tied to that school of though (in all its varieties). There were also medical specialists, among others, interested in the effects of various substances and compounds on materials and bodies." [3]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 94)
[2]: (Lorge 2011, 24)
[3]: (Lorge 2011, 32)
Neo-Confucian revival. [1] Lixue or Xing li xue was "a new formulation of Confucian ethics and metaphysics." [2] There was "a brilliant flowering of philosophy. Over several centuries it focused on the nature (xing) of humans and of things, and on the mind (xin) more than on the more directly practical issues regarding social order and the state which had been central to Confucian thought and practice from its early beginnings." [2]
[1]: (Mote 2003, 119) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
[2]: (Mote 2003, 135) Mote, Frederick W. 2003. Imperial China: 900-1800. Harvard University Press.
"Although both qianyin and huizi functioned as de facto paper money, they still preserved certain features of the instrument of credit that allowed for a close connection with the financial market." [1] "There were two key reasons for the success of qianyin in the twelfth century: first, like its antecedent the jiaozi voucher, qianyin was redeemable by the government; second, the Sichuan administration recognized it as a means of payment. Soldiers used it to purchase goods on the market after receiving their qianyin-paid salaries, and farmers and merchants used it to pay taxes.This policy turned qianyin into a paper money and certainly increased the real size of the money supply." [1] However, the qianin and huizi played a greater role in the Southern Song after 1130 CE because "as the Song court could maintain a budgetary balance during the centuries prior to 1125, it did not seriously exploit the credit instruments for waging war." [2]
[1]: (Liu 2015, 70)
[2]: (Liu 2015, 69-70)
T’ai-tsu and T’ai-tsung "bequeathed to their successors... a unified, stable currency out of the various monetary systems of the Five Dynasties period." [1] "The main currency in the early Sung - and it would remain important throughout the dynasty - was a round bronze coin, the ch’ien. This coin had a square hole in the middle which made it possible, for large transactions, to thread many of them onto cords or strips of leather to form "strings" (min, kuan) really or nominally consisting of 1,000 coins." [2] Government mints. "In total, the mints produced 262 million strings of bronze coins over one-and-a-half centuries. In addition, the mints produced a large amount of iron coins, the circulation of which was restricted to Sichuan and the frontier in north-west China. Large amounts of bronze coins produced by previous dynasties also circulated in the market. At the dawn of the twelfth century, the aggregate value of the money supply has often been estimated at no less than 300 million strings." [3]
[1]: (Golas 2015, 147)
[2]: (Golas 2015, 207)
[3]: (Liu 2015, 62)
From poem by Ouyang Xiu (1059 CE): "In cold seasons, cassia seeds will drop in the empty mountains. Postal deliveries will never stop, moving at the speed of flight, So don’t begrudge sending new poems regularly back and forth." [1]
[1]: (Hawes 2012, 71) Hawes, Colin S C. 2012. Social Circulation of Poetry in the Mid-Northern Song, The: Emotional Energy and Literati Self-Cultivation. SUNY Press.
Natural "elm palisade." "To defend itself in the face of escalating territorial threat, the Song government constructed a series of connected ponds and lakes (called tangbo) running from Baozhou (present day Baoding) in the west to Cangzhou in the east. The administrative centre or zhisuo of Song dynasty Cangzhou was in present day Cangxian county, Hebei province. The network of lakes was designed to thwart the Liao cavalry, against whom the Song also had recourse to primitive non-explosive landmines and spiked obstacles named for their shape ’puncture vines’ (jili or Tribulus terrestris). The lines of natural and man-made lakes were unfortunately seasonal and they either froze over in winter, enabling the Khitan horsemen to cross, or they dried up in the late autumn or early spring. The lakes were therefore supplemented by a dense network of trees, which were called ’the elm palisades’ (yusai). The extent to which the Chinese or lacework elm (Ulmus parvifolia), as opposed to other varieties of trees, was planted to form the palisades cannot be ascertained from the brief historical records of this defensive experiment in reforestation." [1]
[1]: (The Elm Tree Palisade 2006). 2006. "The Elm Tree Palisades: The Great Wall of the Northern Song." China Heritage Project: Australian National University, 6.
No data yet. If not the typical Song fortification it is likely that stone fortifications existed, even if on a small/local scale.
No data yet. If not the typical Song fortification it is likely that stone fortifications existed, even if on a small/local scale.
"When Jin forces attacked the Song capital of Kaifeng in 1126, they met stout resistance. The city’s defenses had been overhauled, and it boasted immense walls, a deep wide moat, and advanced fortifications structures including bastions and barbicans." [1]
[1]: (Andrade 2016, 34) Andrade, Tonio. 2016. The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
City walls usually protected by a moat. [1] "When Jin forces attacked the Song capital of Kaifeng in 1126, they met stout resistance. The city’s defenses had been overhauled, and it boasted immense walls, a deep wide moat, and advanced fortifications structures including bastions and barbicans." [2] "In the late-tenth and very beginning of the eleventh century, the Song dynasty (960-1279) undertook a large-scale defensive project to protect its northeast border. ... the Song government gradually constructed a continuous band of water obstacles, spanning hundreds of miles across northern Hebei province from the Taihang Mountains ... in the west to the Gulf of Bohai in the east. The spine of these obstacles was a dike that connected its surrounding rivers and swamps into a continuous defense line. Unlike the Great Wall, the role of which was miniscule, this Great Ditch played a large part in stabilizing the military situation between the Song and Liao, leading to the Chanyuan Covenant (Chanyuan zhi meng) in 1005, and a peace that lasted for more than a century." [3]
[1]: (Lorge 2011, 30)
[2]: (Andrade 2016, 34) Andrade, Tonio. 2016. The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[3]: (Lorge 2008, 60) Peter Lorge. The Great Ditch of China. Don J Wyatt. 2008. Battlefronts Real and Imagined: War, Border, and Identity in the Chinese Middle Period. Palgrave Macmillan. New York.
"Wootz steel was "being exported from India to China at least as early as the +5th century. … good steel was manufactured in China by remarkably modern methods at least from that time onwards also."
[1]
First high-quality steel 450 CE. Japan exported steel swords to China (time not stated, possibly once the Japanese had refined their methods, before the Song Dynasty).
[2]
"according to Wagner there is no direct evidence that cast steel was made in China. ... Exports of bin iron from Persia and Jaguda (Ghazni) to China in 6th-7th centuries are recorded. This was an imported steel of high quality. Curiously, bin iron disappears from Chinese sources after the 7th century, then reappears from 10th-17th centuries. This might have been a consequence of the Islamic conquest of Persia, followed by the rise of trade routes to China used by Arabs. An account of an embassy sent by the Yuan to Hulagu Khan in 1259 mention that bin iron was made in India."
[3]
[1]: (Needham 1962, 282) Joseph Needham. 1962. Science and Civilization in China. Volume IV. Physics and Physical Technology. Part 1: Physics. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
[2]: (Williams 2012, 42) Alan Williams. 2012. The Sword and the Crucible: A History of the Metallurgy of European Swords Up to the 16th Century. BRILL. Leiden.
[3]: (Williams 2012, 39) Alan Williams. 2012. The Sword and the Crucible: A History of the Metallurgy of European Swords Up to the 16th Century. BRILL. Leiden.
Traction trebuchets. "A Tang dynasty description from 759 is very similar to that from Mo Zi, but includes references to ‘whirlwind trebuchets’ and ‘four-footed trebuchets’, two variations that are illustrated in the Wu Jing Zong Yao of 1044. The frame of the whirlwind trebuchet was a single vertical pole that could be rotated horizontally through 360 degrees, thus allowing a wide arc of fire for comparatively lightweight missiles. Another picture in the same source shows a whirlwind trebuchet mounted on a four-wheeled carriage, which would make it even more flexible." [1] "In 979 the Emperor T’ai-tsung ordered 800 to be built, and in 1126 at least 500 machines were present at the defence of K’aifeng alone." [2] catapults [3]
[1]: (Turnball 2002) Turnball, S. 2002. Siege Weapons of the Far East (1): AD 612-1300. Osprey Publishing.
[2]: (Peers 2002, 35)
[3]: (Lorge 2005, 48)
"As in earlier periods, sophisticated siege equipment was available, including artillery, towers and rams." [1] "Of the date of the introduction of the counterweight trebuchet to China there can be no doubt. It occurred in 1272, during one of the greatest sieges of Chinese history, at Xiangyang, where the Mongols besieged the Southern Song for five years." [2]
[1]: (Peers 2002, 17)
[2]: (Turnbull 2012, 33) Stephen Turnbull. 2012. Siege Weapons of the Far East (1): AD 612-1300. Osprey Publishing.
"As in earlier periods, sophisticated siege equipment was available, including artillery, towers and rams." [1] "Of the date of the introduction of the counterweight trebuchet to China there can be no doubt. It occurred in 1272, during one of the greatest sieges of Chinese history, at Xiangyang, where the Mongols besieged the Southern Song for five years." [2]
[1]: (Peers 2002, 17)
[2]: (Turnbull 2012, 33) Stephen Turnbull. 2012. Siege Weapons of the Far East (1): AD 612-1300. Osprey Publishing.
Unlikely when better, easy to use, weapons like crossbow widely available.
Unlikely due to use of crossbow and composite bow
No reference and unlikely if battlefield dominated by crossbow and bows.
"While in the eleventh century the Song dynasty had an established gunpowder manufacturing bureau, and gunpowder weapons were included in a government-produced military manual, by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries gunpowder weapons were standard devices in sieges, battles, and naval combat. The true gun itself appeared in the mid-thirteenth century." [1]
[1]: (Lorge 2011, 24)
"The first surviving mention of gunpowder weapons in the military manuals is in the Wu Ching Tsung Yao of 1044, which describes soft-cased bombs thrown by artillery, but a silk banner from Tunhuang, said to originate from the middle of the 10th century, shows that primitive gunpowder devices were already in use at this date. Among the weapons illustrated in this source are a hand-hurled bomb and a fire-lance - a short barrel on the end of a pole, from which flames are emerging. This latter weapons was eventually to give rise to the hand-gun, but at this time it was no more than a close-range flame projector..." [1] "While in the eleventh century the Song dynasty had an established gunpowder manufacturing bureau, and gunpowder weapons were included in a government-produced military manual, by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries gunpowder weapons were standard devices in sieges, battles, and naval combat." [2] only question is whether the variable specifically demands that gunpowder was used in cannon. Was cannon used? If not should this variable (later) be reworded to be inclusive of general use of gunpowder in warfare. ET
[1]: (Peers 2002, 42)
[2]: (Lorge 2011, 24)
Sung bought 10,000-40,000 horses a year for the military. [1] "According to Sung calculations, maintaining one cavalryman was as expensive as maintaining five infantrymen. ... Often during the Northern Sung, 30 to 40 percent of cavalrymen were without mounts" [1]
[1]: (Tseng-yü and Wright 2009, 235)
Coat made from hundreds of steel plates can been seen on statues.
Leather and fabrics certainly incorporated into armour as padding, straps etc.
Armoured coats in illustrations all appear to be made up of small plates. However, it could have been used for special situations
not typical but we cannot rule out they used it for specialist reasons
"Every dynasty that wanted to create a Chinese empire extending south of the Yellow River had to build a navy." [1] According to Joseph Needham Northern Song’s naval resources began at 11 squadrons of 3000 men and reached 20 squadrons of 52,000 men. The main base was Shanghai. [2]
[1]: (Lorge 2011, 28)
[2]: (Needham ????) Needham, Joseph. ???? Science and Civilization in China.