Not to be confused with: Song Dynasty (420-479)

The Song dynasty (Chinese: 宋朝) was a ruling dynasty in China from 960-1279. Its founding marked the reunification of China for the first time since the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907. The intervening years, known as the Period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, were a time of division between north and south and of rapidly changing administrations.

The Song dynasty itself can be divided into two distinct periods: the Northern Song and Southern Song. The Northern Song (960-1127) signifies the time when the Song capital was in the northern city of Kaifeng and the dynasty controlled all China. The Southern Song (1127-1279) refers to the time after the Song lost control of northern China to the Khitan Liao dynasty, itself later conquered by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. The Song court retreated south of the Yangtze River and made their capital at Hangzhou. Because Chinese diplomatic theory did not recognize relations between equal states, the Southern Song was technically a tributary state of the northern dynasty.

The northern Jin dynasty was overrun by the Mongols in 1234, who subsequently took control of northern China and maintained uneasy relations with the Southern Song court. The Mongol Yuan dynasty, proclaimed in 1271, finally destroyed the Song dynasty in 1279 and once more unified China, this time as part of a vast Mongol empire.

Arts, culture and economy

The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in the previous dynasties.

The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials, sometimes collectively referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners - the mercantile class - arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige.

Culturally, the Song refined many of the developments of the previous centuries. Included in these refinements were not only the Tang ideal of the universal man, who combined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman, but also historical writings, painting, calligraphy, and hard-glazed porcelain. Song intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics. This renewed interest in the Confucian ideals and society of ancient times coincided with the decline of Buddhism, which the Chinese regarded as foreign and offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.

The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers was Zhu Xi (1130-1200), whose synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late 19th century. As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi's philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the 19th century. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

Fall of the Southern Song

In 1276 the Southern Song court fled to Guangdong by boat, fleeing Mongol invaders, and leaving the Emperor Gong of Song China behind. Any hope of resistance centred on two young princes, Emperor Gong's brothers. The older boy, Zhao Shi, aged nine was declared emperor, and, in 1277, the imperial court sought refuge first in Silvermine Bay (Mui Wo) on Lantau Island and later in today's Kowloon City, Hong Kong (see also Sung Wong Toi). The older brother became ill and died, and was succeeded by the younger, Zhao Bing, aged seven. When on March 19, 1279 the Song army was defeated in its last battle, the Battle of Yamen, against the Mongols in the Pearl River Delta, a high official is said to have taken the boy emperor in his arms and jumped from a clifftop into the sea, drowning both of them. These emperors are also believed to have held court in the Tung Chung valley, which takes its name from a local hero who gave up his life for the emperor. Hau Wong , an official from this court, is still revered as a god in Hong Kong.

Song dynasty emperors

    Qiande (乾德 Qiándé) 963-968

    Kaibao (開寶 Kāibǎo) 968-976

    Yongxi (雍熙 Yōngxī) 984-987

    Duangong (端拱 Duāngǒng) 988-989

    Chunhua (淳化 Chúnhuà) 990-994

    Zhidao (至道 Zhìdào) 995-997

    Jingde (景德 Jǐngdé) 1004-1007

    Dazhongxiangfu (大中祥符 Dàzhōngxiángfú) 1008-1016

    Tianxi (天禧 Tiānxī) 1017-1021

    Qianxing (乾興 Qiánxīng) 1022

    Mingdao (明道 Míngdào) 1032-1033

    Jingyou (景祐 Jǐngyoú) 1034-1038

    Baoyuan (寶元 Bǎoyuán) 1038-1040

    Kangding (康定 Kāngdìng) 1040-1041

    Qingli (慶曆 Qìnglì) 1041-1048

    Huangyou (皇祐 Huángyòu) 1049-1054

    Zhihe (至和 Zhìhé) 1054-1056

    Jiayou (嘉祐 Jiāyòu) 1056-1063

    Yuanfeng (元豐 Yuánfēng) 1078-1085

    Shaosheng (紹聖 Shàoshèng) 1094-1098

    Yuanfu (元符 Yuánfú) 1098-1100

    Chongning (崇寧 Chóngníng) 1102-1106

    Daguan (大觀 Dàguān) 1107-1110

    Zhenghe (政和 Zhènghé) 1111-1118

    Chonghe (重和 Chónghé) 1118-1119

    Xuanhe (宣和 Xuānhé) 1119-1125

    Shaoxing (紹興 Shàoxīng) 1131-1162

    Qiandao (乾道 Qiándào) 1165-1173

    Chunxi (淳熙 Chúnxī) 1174-1189

    Jiakai (嘉泰 Jiākài) 1201-1204

    Kaixi (開禧 Kāixī) 1205-1207

    Jiading (嘉定 Jiādìng) 1208-1224

    Shaoding (紹定 Shàodìng) 1228-1233

    Duanping (端平 Duānpíng) 1234-1236

    Jiaxi (嘉熙 Jiāxī) 1237-1240

    Chunyou (淳祐 Chúnyòu) 1241-1252

    Baoyou (寶祐 Bǎoyòu) 1253-1258

    Kaiqing (開慶 Kāiqìng) 1259

    Jingding (景定 Jǐngdìng) 1260-1264

Related Articles

• Chinese sovereign
• Liao dynasty
• Jin dynasty
• Western Xia
• Mongols
• Gunpowder
• Printing press
• Battle of Yamen
• Wang Anshi
• Battle of Xiangyang
• Yue Fei
• Wen Tianxiang