His northern frontier remained still more insecure than the southern,

for Chu Ch'üan-chung did not succeed in destroying the Turkish general

Li K'o-yung; on the contrary, the latter continually widened the range

of his power. Fortunately he, too, had an enemy at his back--the Kitan

(or Khitan), whose ruler had made himself emperor in 916, and so staked

a claim to reign over all China. The first Kitan emperor held a middle

course between Chu and Li, and so was able to establish and expand his

empire in peace. The striking power of his empire, which from 937 onward

was officially called the Liao empire, grew steadily, because the old

tribal league of the Kitan was transformed into a centrally commanded

military organization.

To these dangers from abroad threatening the Later Liang state internal

troubles were added. Chu Ch'üan-chung's dynasty was one of the three

Chinese dynasties that have ever come to power through a popular rising.

He himself was of peasant origin, and so were a large part of his

subordinates and helpers. Many of them had originally been independent

peasant leaders; others had been under Huang Ch'ao. All of them were

opposed to the gentry, and the great slaughter of the gentry of the

capital, shortly before the beginning of Chu's rule, had been welcomed

by Chu and his followers. The gentry therefore would not co-operate with

Chu and preferred to join the Turk Li K'o-yung. But Chu could not

confidently rely on his old comrades. They were jealous of his success

in gaining the place they all coveted, and were ready to join in any

independent enterprise as opportunity offered. All of them, moreover, as

soon as they were given any administrative post, busied themselves with

the acquisition of money and wealth as quickly as possible. These abuses

not only ate into the revenues of the state but actually produced a

common front between the peasantry and the remnants of the gentry

against the upstarts.

In 917, after Li K'o-yung's death, the Sha-t'o Turks beat off an attack

from the Kitan, and so were safe for a time from the northern menace.

They then marched against the Liang state, where a crisis had been

produced in 912 after the murder of Chu Ch'üan-chung by one of his sons.

The Liang generals saw no reason why they should fight for the dynasty,

and all of them went over to the enemy. Thus the "Later T'ang dynasty"

(923-936) came into power in North China, under the son of Li K'o-yung.

The dominant element at this time was quite clearly the Chinese gentry,

especially in western and central China. The Sha-t'o themselves must

have been extraordinarily few in number, probably little more than

100,000 men. Most of them, moreover, were politically passive, being

simple soldiers. Only the ruling family and its following played any

active part, together with a few families related to it by marriage. The

whole state was regarded by the Sha-t'o rulers as a sort of family

enterprise, members of the family being placed in the most important

positions. As there were not enough of them, they adopted into the

family large numbers of aliens of all nationalities. Military posts were

given to faithful members of Li K'o-yung's or his successor's bodyguard,

and also to domestic servants and other clients of the family. Thus,

while in the Later Liang state elements from the peasantry had risen in

the world, some of these neo-gentry reaching the top of the social

pyramid in the centuries that followed, in the Sha-t'o state some of its

warriors, drawn from the most various peoples, entered the gentry class

through their personal relations with the ruler. But in spite of all

this the bulk of the officials came once more from the Chinese. These

educated Chinese not only succeeded in winning over the rulers

themselves to the Chinese cultural ideal, but persuaded them to adopt

laws that substantially restricted the privileges of the Sha-t'o and

brought advantages only to the Chinese gentry. Consequently all the

Chinese historians are enthusiastic about the "Later T'ang", and

especially about the emperor Ming Ti, who reigned from 927 onward, after

the assassination of his predecessor. They also abused the Liang because

they were against the gentry.

In 936 the Later T'ang dynasty gave place to the Later Chin dynasty

(936-946), but this involved no change in the structure of the empire.

The change of dynasty meant no more than that instead of the son

following the father the son-in-law had ascended the throne. It was of

more importance that the son-in-law, the Sha-t'o Turk Shih Ching-t'ang,

succeeded in doing this by allying himself with the Kitan and ceding to

them some of the northern provinces. The youthful successor, however, of

the first ruler of this dynasty was soon made to realize that the Kitan

regarded the founding of his dynasty as no more than a transition stage

on the way to their annexation of the whole of North China. The old

Sha-t'o nobles, who had not been sinified in the slightest, suggested a

preventive war; the actual court group, strongly sinified, hesitated,

but ultimately were unable to avoid war. The war was very quickly

decided by several governors in eastern China going over to the Kitan,

who had promised them the imperial title. In the course of 946-7 the

Kitan occupied the capital and almost the whole of the country. In 947

the Kitan ruler proclaimed himself emperor of the Kitan and the Chinese.

[Illustration: Map 6: The State of the later T'ang dynasty]

The Chinese gentry seem to have accepted this situation because a Kitan

emperor was just as acceptable to them as a Sha-t'o emperor; but the

Sha-t'o were not prepared to submit to the Kitan regime, because under

it they would have lost their position of privilege. At the head of this

opposition group stood the Sha-t'o general Liu Chih-yuan, who founded

the "Later Han dynasty" (947-950). He was able to hold out against the

Kitan only because in 947 the Kitan emperor died and his son had to

leave China and retreat to the north; fighting had broken out between

the empress dowager, who had some Chinese support, and the young heir to

the throne. The new Turkish dynasty, however, was unable to withstand

the internal Chinese resistance. Its founder died in 948, and his son,

owing to his youth, was entirely in the hands of a court clique. In his

effort to free himself from the tutelage of this group he made a

miscalculation, for the men on whom he thought he could depend were

largely supporters of the clique. So he lost his throne and his life,

and a Chinese general, Kuo Wei, took his place, founding the "Later Chou

dynasty" (951-959).

A feature of importance was that in the years of the short-lived "Later

Han dynasty" a tendency showed itself among the Chinese military leaders

to work with the states in the south. The increase in the political

influence of the south was due to its economic advance while the north

was reduced to economic chaos by the continual heavy fighting, and by

the complete irresponsibility of the Sha-t'o ruler in financial matters:

several times in this period the whole of the money in the state

treasury was handed out to soldiers to prevent them from going over to

some enemy or other. On the other hand, there was a tendency in the

south for the many neighbouring states to amalgamate, and as this

process took place close to the frontier of North China the northern

states could not passively look on. During the "Later Han" period there

were wars and risings, which continued in the time of the "Later Chou".

On the whole, the few years of the rule of the second emperor of the

"Later Chou" (954-958) form a bright spot in those dismal fifty-five

years. Sociologically regarded, that dynasty formed merely a transition

stage on the way to the Sung dynasty that now followed: the Chinese

gentry ruled under the leadership of an upstart who had risen from the

ranks, and they ruled in accordance with the old principles of gentry

rule. The Sha-t'o, who had formed the three preceding dynasties, had

been so reduced that they were now a tiny minority and no longer

counted. This minority had only been able to maintain its position

through the special social conditions created by the "Later Liang"

dynasty: the Liang, who had come from the lower classes of the

population, had driven the gentry into the arms of the Sha-t'o Turks. As

soon as the upstarts, in so far as they had not fallen again or been

exterminated, had more or less assimilated themselves to the old gentry,

and on the other hand the leaders of the Sha-t'o had become numerically

too weak, there was a possibility of resuming the old form of rule.

There had been certain changes in this period. The north-west of China,

the region of the old capital Ch'ang-an, had been so ruined by the

fighting that had gone on mainly there and farther north, that it was

eliminated as a centre of power for a hundred years to come; it had been

largely depopulated. The north was under the rule of the Kitan: its

trade, which in the past had been with the Huang-ho basin, was now

perforce diverted to Peking, which soon became the main centre of the

power of the Kitan. The south, particularly the lower Yangtze region and

the province of Szechwan, had made economic progress, at least in

comparison with the north; consequently it had gained in political

importance.

One other event of this time has to be mentioned: the great persecution

of Buddhism in 955, but not only because 30,336 temples and monasteries

were secularized and only some 2,700 with 61,200 monks were left.

Although the immediate reason for this action seems to have been that

too many men entered the monasteries in order to avoid being taken as

soldiers, the effect of the law of 955 was that from now on the

Buddhists were put under regulations which clarified once and for ever

their position within the framework of a society which had as its aim to

define clearly the status of each individual within each social class.

Private persons were no more allowed to erect temples and monasteries.

The number of temples per district was legally fixed. A person could

become monk only if the head of the family gave its permission. He had

to be over fifteen years of age and had to know by heart at least one

hundred pages of texts. The state took over the control of the

ordinations which could be performed only after a successful

examination. Each year a list of all monks had to be submitted to the

government in two copies. Monks had to carry six identification cards

with them, one of which was the ordination diploma for which a fee had

to be paid to the government (already since 755). The diploma was, in

the eleventh century, issued by the Bureau of Sacrifices, but the money

was collected by the Ministry of Agriculture. It can be regarded as a

payment _in lieu_ of land tax. The price was in the eleventh century 130

strings, which represented the value of a small farm or the value of

some 17,000 litres of grain. The price of the diploma went up to 220

strings in 1101, and the then government sold 30,000 diplomas per year

in order to get still more cash. But as diplomas could be traded, a

black market developed, on which they were sold for as little as twenty

strings.

(B) Period of Moderate Absolutism

(1) The Northern Sung dynasty

1 _Southward expansion_

The founder of the Sung dynasty, Chao K'uang-yin, came of a Chinese

military family living to the south of Peking. He advanced from general

to emperor, and so differed in no way from the emperors who had preceded

him. But his dynasty did not disappear as quickly as the others; for

this there were several reasons. To begin with, there was the simple

fact that he remained alive longer than the other founders of dynasties,

and so was able to place his rule on a firmer foundation. But in

addition to this he followed a new course, which in certain ways

smoothed matters for him and for his successors, in foreign policy.

This Sung dynasty, as Chao K'uang-yin named it, no longer turned against

the northern peoples, particularly the Kitan, but against the south.

This was not exactly an heroic policy: the north of China remained in

the hands of the Kitan. There were frequent clashes, but no real effort

was made to destroy the Kitan, whose dynasty was now called "Liao". The

second emperor of the Sung was actually heavily defeated several times

by the Kitan. But they, for their part, made no attempt to conquer the

whole of China, especially since the task would have become more and

more burdensome the farther south the Sung expanded. And very soon there

were other reasons why the Kitan should refrain from turning their whole

strength against the Chinese.

[Illustration: 10 Ladies of the Court: clay models which accompanied

the dead person to the grave. T'ang period. _In the collection of the

Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin_.]

[Illustration: 11 Distinguished founder: a temple banner found at

Khotcho, Turkestan. _Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin, No. 1B_ 4524,

_illustration B_ 408.]

As we said, the Sung turned at once against the states in the south.

Some of the many small southern states had made substantial economic and

cultural advance, but militarily they were not strong. Chao K'uang-yin

(named as emperor T'ai Tsu) attacked them in succession. Most of them

fell very quickly and without any heavy fighting, especially since the

Sung dealt mildly with the defeated rulers and their following. The

gentry and the merchants in these small states could not but realize the

advantages of a widened and well-ordered economic field, and they were

therefore entirely in favour of the annexation of their country so soon

as it proved to be tolerable. And the Sung empire could only endure and

gain strength if it had control of the regions along the Yangtze and

around Canton, with their great economic resources. The process of

absorbing the small states in the south continued until 980. Before it

was ended, the Sung tried to extend their influence in the south beyond

the Chinese border, and secured a sort of protectorate over parts of

Annam (973). This sphere of influence was politically insignificant and

not directly of any economic importance; but it fulfilled for the Sung

the same functions which colonial territories fulfilled for Europeans,

serving as a field of operation for the commercial class, who imported

raw materials from it--mainly, it is true, luxury articles such as

special sorts of wood, perfumes, ivory, and so on--and exported Chinese

manufactures. As the power of the empire grew, this zone of influence

extended as far as Indonesia: the process had begun in the T'ang period.

The trade with the south had not the deleterious effects of the trade

with Central Asia. There was no sale of refined metals, and none of

fabrics, as the natives produced their own textiles which sufficed for

their needs. And the export of porcelain brought no economic injury to

China, but the reverse.

This Sung policy was entirely in the interest of the gentry and of the

trading community which was now closely connected with them. Undoubtedly

it strengthened China. The policy of nonintervention in the north was

endurable even when peace with the Kitan had to be bought by the payment

of an annual tribute. From 1004 onwards, 100,000 ounces of silver and

200,000 bales of silk were paid annually to the Kitan, amounting in

value to about 270,000 strings of cash, each of 1,000 coins. The state

budget amounted to some 20,000,000 strings of cash. In 1038 the payments

amounted to 500,000 strings, but the budget was by then much larger. One

is liable to get a false impression when reading of these big payments

if one does not take into account what percentage they formed of the

total revenues of the state. The tribute to the Kitan amounted to less

than 2 per cent of the revenue, while the expenditure on the army

accounted for 25 per cent of the budget. It cost much less to pay

tribute than to maintain large armies and go to war. Financial

considerations played a great part during the Sung epoch. The taxation

revenue of the empire rose rapidly after the pacification of the south;

soon after the beginning of the dynasty the state budget was double that

of the T'ang. If the state expenditure in the eleventh century had not

continually grown through the increase in military expenditure--in spite

of everything!--there would have come a period of great prosperity in

the empire.

2 _Administration and army. Inflation_

The Sung emperor, like the rulers of the transition period, had gained

the throne by his personal abilities as military leader; in fact, he had

been made emperor by his soldiers as had happened to so many emperors in

later Imperial Rome. For the next 300 years we observe a change in the

position of the emperor. On the one hand, if he was active and

intelligent enough, he exercised much more personal influence than the

rulers of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, at the same time, the

emperors were much closer to their ministers as before. We hear of

ministers who patted the ruler on the shoulders when they retired from

an audience; another one fell asleep on the emperor's knee and was not

punished for this familiarity. The emperor was called "_kuan-chia_"

(Administrator) and even called himself so. And in the early twelfth

century an emperor stated "I do not regard the empire as my personal

property; my job is to guide the people". Financially-minded as the Sung

dynasty was, the cost of the operation of the palace was calculated, so

that the emperor had a budget: in 1068 the salaries of all officials in

the capital amounted to 40,000 strings of money per month, the armies

100,000, and the emperor's ordinary monthly budget was 70,000 strings.

For festivals, imperial birthdays, weddings and burials extra allowances

were made. Thus, the Sung rulers may be called "moderate absolutists"

and not despots.

One of the first acts of the new Sung emperor, in 963, was a fundamental

reorganization of the administration of the country. The old system of a

civil administration and a military administration independent of it was

brought to an end and the whole administration of the country placed in

the hands of civil officials. The gentry welcomed this measure and gave

it full support, because it enabled the influence of the gentry to grow

and removed the fear of competition from the military, some of whom did

not belong by birth to the gentry. The generals by whose aid the empire

had been created were put on pension, or transferred to civil

employment, as quickly as possible. The army was demobilized, and this

measure was bound up with the settlement of peasants in the regions

which war had depopulated, or on new land. Soon after this the revenue

noticeably increased. Above all, the army was placed directly under the

central administration, and the system of military governors was thus

brought to an end. The soldiers became mercenaries of the state, whereas

in the past there had been conscription. In 975 the army had numbered

only 378,000, and its cost had not been insupportable. Although the

numbers increased greatly, reaching 912,000 in 1017 and 1,259,000 in

1045, this implied no increase in military strength; for men who had

once been soldiers remained with the army even when they were too old

for service. Moreover, the soldiers grew more and more exacting; when

detachments were transferred to another region, for instance, the

soldiers would not carry their baggage; an army of porters had to be

assembled. The soldiers also refused to go to regions remote from their

homes until they were given extra pay. Such allowances gradually became

customary, and so the military expenditure grew by leaps and bounds

without any corresponding increase in the striking power of the army.

The government was unable to meet the whole cost of the army out of

taxation revenue. The attempt was made to cover the expenditure by

coining fresh money. In connection with the increase in commercial

capital described above, and the consequent beginning of an industry,

China's metal production had greatly increased. In 1050 thirteen times

as much silver, eight times as much copper, and fourteen times as much

iron was produced as in 800. Thus the circulation of the copper currency

was increased. The cost of minting, however, amounted in China to about

75 per cent and often over 100 per cent of the value of the money

coined. In addition to this, the metal was produced in the south, while

the capital was in the north. The coin had therefore to be carried a

long distance to reach the capital and to be sent on to the soldiers in

the north.

To meet the increasing expenditure, an unexampled quantity of new money

was put into circulation. The state budget increased from 22,200,000 in

A.D. 1000 to 150,800,000 in 1021. The Kitan state coined a great deal of

silver, and some of the tribute was paid to it in silver. The greatly

increased production of silver led to its being put into circulation in

China itself. And this provided a new field of speculation, through the

variations in the rates for silver and for copper. Speculation was also

possible with the deposit certificates, which were issued in quantities

by the state from the beginning of the eleventh century, and to which

the first true paper money was soon added. The paper money and the

certificates were redeemable at a definite date, but at a reduction of

at least 3 per cent of their value; this, too, yielded a certain revenue

to the state.

The inflation that resulted from all these measures brought profit to

the big merchants in spite of the fact that they had to supply directly

or indirectly all non-agricultural taxes (in 1160 some 40,000,000

strings annually), especially the salt tax (50 per cent), wine tax (36

per cent), tea tax (7 per cent) and customs (7 per cent). Although the

official economic thinking remained Confucian, i.e. anti-business and

pro-agrarian, we find in this time insight in price laws, for instance,

that peace times and/or decrease of population induce deflation. The

government had always attempted to manipulate the prices by

interference. Already in much earlier times, again and again, attempts

had been made to lower the prices by the so-called "ever-normal

granaries" of the government which threw grain on the market when prices

were too high and bought grain when prices were low. But now, in

addition to such measures, we also find others which exhibit a deeper

insight: in a period of starvation, the scholar and official Fan

Chung-yen instead of officially reducing grain prices, raised the prices

in his district considerably. Although the population got angry,

merchants started to import large amounts of grain; as soon as this

happened, Fan (himself a big landowner) reduced the price again. Similar

results were achieved by others by just stimulating merchants to import

grain into deficit areas.

With the social structure of medieval Europe, similar financial and

fiscal developments which gave new chances to merchants, eventually led

to industrial capitalism and industrial society. In China, however, the

gentry in their capacity of officials hindered the growth of independent

trade, and permitted its existence only in association with themselves.

As they also represented landed property, it was in land that the

newly-formed capital was invested. Thus we see in the Sung period, and

especially in the eleventh century, the greatest accumulation of estates

that there had ever been up to then in China.

Many of these estates came into origin as gifts of the emperor to

individuals or to temples, others were created on hillsides on land

which belonged to the villages. From this time on, the rest of the

village commons in China proper disappeared. Villagers could no longer

use the top-soil of the hills as fertilizer, or the trees as firewood

and building material. In addition, the hillside estates diverted the

water of springs and creeks, thus damaging severely the irrigation works

of the villagers in the plains. The estates (_chuang_) were controlled

by appointed managers who often became hereditary managers. The tenants

on the estates were quite often non-registered migrants, of whom we

spoke previously as "vagrants", and as such they depended upon the

managers who could always denounce them to the authorities which would

lead to punishment because nobody was allowed to leave his home without

officially changing his registration. Many estates operated mills and

even textile factories with non-registered weavers. Others seem to have

specialized in sheep breeding. Present-day village names ending with

-_chuang_ indicate such former estates. A new development in this period

were the "clan estates" (_i-chuang_), created by Fan Chung-yen

(989-1052) in 1048. The income of these clan estates were used for the

benefit of the whole clan, were controlled by clan-appointed managers

and had tax-free status, guaranteed by the government which regarded

them as welfare institutions. Technically, they might better be called

corporations because they were similar in structure to some of our

industrial corporations. Under the Chinese economic system, large-scale

landowning always proved socially and politically injurious. Up to very

recent times the peasant who rented his land paid 40-50 per cent of the

produce to the landowner, who was responsible for payment of the normal

land tax. The landlord, however, had always found means of evading

payment. As each district had to yield a definite amount of taxation,

the more the big landowners succeeded in evading payment the more had to

be paid by the independent small farmers. These independent peasants

could then either "give" their land to the big landowner and pay rent to

him, thus escaping from the attentions of the tax-officer, or simply

leave the district and secretly enter another one where they were not

registered. In either case the government lost taxes.

Large-scale landowning proved especially injurious in the Sung period,

for two reasons. To begin with, the official salaries, which had always

been small in China, were now totally inadequate, and so the officials

were given a fixed quantity of land, the yield of which was regarded as

an addition to salary. This land was free from part of the taxes. Before

long the officials had secured the liberation of the whole of their land

from the chief taxes. In the second place, the taxation system was

simplified by making the amount of tax proportional to the amount of

land owned. The lowest bracket, however, in this new system of taxation

comprised more land than a poor peasant would actually own, and this was

a heavy blow to the small peasant-owners, who in the past had paid a

proportion of their produce. Most of them had so little land that they

could barely live on its yield. Their liability to taxation was at all

times a very heavy burden to them while the big landowners got off

lightly. Thus this measure, though administratively a saving of

expense, proved unsocial.

All this made itself felt especially in the south with its great estates

of tax-evading landowners. Here the remaining small peasant-owners had

to pay the new taxes or to become tenants of the landowners and lose

their property. The north was still suffering from the war-devastation

of the tenth century. As the landlords were always the first sufferers

from popular uprisings as well as from war, they had disappeared,

leaving their former tenants as free peasants. From this period on, we

have enough data to observe a social "law ": as the capital was the

largest consumer, especially of high-priced products such as vegetables

which could not be transported over long distances, the gentry always

tried to control the land around the capital. Here, we find the highest

concentration of landlords and tenants. Production in this circle

shifted from rice and wheat to mulberry trees for silk, and vegetables

grown under the trees. These urban demands resulted in the growth of an

"industrial" quarter on the outskirts of the capital, in which

especially silk for the upper classes was produced. The next circle also

contained many landlords, but production was more in staple foods such

as wheat and rice which could be transported. Exploitation in this

second circle was not much less than in the first circle, because of

less close supervision by the authorities. In the third circle we find

independent subsistence farmers. Some provincial capitals, especially in

Szechwan, exhibited a similar pattern of circles. With the shift of the

capital, a complete reorganization appeared: landlords and officials

gave up their properties, cultivation changed, and a new system of

circles began to form around the new capital. We find, therefore, the

grotesque result that the thinly populated province of Shensi in the

north-west yielded about a quarter of the total revenues of the state:

it had no large landowners, no wealthy gentry, with their evasion of

taxation, only a mass of newly-settled small peasants' holdings. For

this reason the government was particularly interested in that province,

and closely watched the political changes in its neighbourhood. In 990 a

man belonging to a sinified Toba family, living on the border of Shensi,

had made himself king with the support of remnants of Toba tribes. In

1034 came severe fighting, and in 1038 the king proclaimed himself

emperor, in the Hsia dynasty, and threatened the whole of north-western

China. Tribute was now also paid to this state (250,000 strings), but

the fight against it continued, to save that important province.

These were the main events in internal and external affairs during the

Sung period until 1068. It will be seen that foreign affairs were of

much less importance than developments in the country.

3 _Reforms and Welfare schemes_

The situation just described was bound to produce a reaction. In spite

of the inflationary measures the revenue fell, partly in consequence of

the tax evasions of the great landowners. It fell from 150,000,000 in

1021 to 116,000,000 in 1065. Expenditure did not fall, and there was a

constant succession of budget deficits. The young emperor Shen Tsung

(1068-1085) became convinced that the policy followed by the ruling

clique of officials and gentry was bad, and he gave his adhesion to a

small group led by Wang An-shih (1021-1086). The ruling gentry clique

represented especially the interests of the large tea producers and

merchants in Szechwan and Kiangsi. It advocated a policy of

_laisser-faire_ in trade: it held that everything would adjust itself.

Wang An-shih himself came from Kiangsi and was therefore supported at

first by the government clique, within which the Kiangsi group was

trying to gain predominance over the Szechwan group. But Wang An-shih

came from a poor family, as did his supporters, for whom he quickly

secured posts. They represented the interests of the small landholders

and the small dealers. This group succeeded in gaining power, and in

carrying out a number of reforms, all directed against the monopolist

merchants. Credits for small peasants were introduced, and officials

were given bigger salaries, in order to make them independent and to

recruit officials who were not big landowners. The army was greatly

reduced, and in addition to the paid soldiery a national militia was

created. Special attention was paid to the province of Shensi, whose

conditions were taken more or less as a model.

It seems that one consequence of Wang's reforms was a strong fall in the

prices, i.e. a deflation; therefore, as soon as the first decrees were

issued, the large plantation owners and the merchants who were allied to

them, offered furious opposition. A group of officials and landlords who

still had large properties in the vicinity of Loyang--at that time a

quiet cultural centre--also joined them. Even some of Wang An-shih's

former adherents came out against him. After a few years the emperor was

no longer able to retain Wang An-shih and had to abandon the new policy.

How really economic interests were here at issue may be seen from the

fact that for many of the new decrees which were not directly concerned

with economic affairs, such, for instance, as the reform of the

examination system, Wang An-shih was strongly attacked though his

opponents had themselves advocated them in the past and had no practical

objection to offer to them. The contest, however, between the two groups

was not over. The monopolistic landowners and their merchants had the

upper hand from 1086 to 1102, but then the advocates of the policy

represented by Wang again came into power for a short time. They had but

little success to show, as they did not remain in power long enough and,

owing to the strong opposition, they were never able to make their

control really effective.

Basically, both groups were against allowing the developing middle class

and especially the merchants to gain too much freedom, and whatever

freedom they in fact gained, came through extra-legal or illegal

practices. A proverb of the time said "People hate their ruler as

animals hate the net (of the hunter)". The basic laws of medieval times

which had attempted to create stable social classes remained: down to

the nineteenth century there were slaves, different classes of serfs or

"commoners", and free burghers. Craftsmen remained under work

obligation. Merchants were second-class people. Each class had to wear

dresses of special colour and material, so that the social status of a

person, even if he was not an official and thus recognizable by his

insignia, was immediately clear when one saw him. The houses of

different classes differed from one another by the type of tiles, the

decorations of the doors and gates; the size of the main reception room

of the house was prescribed and was kept small for all non-officials;

and even size and form of the tombs was prescribed in detail for each

class. Once a person had a certain privilege, he and his descendants

even if they had lost their position in the bureaucracy, retained these

privileges over generations. All burghers were admitted to the

examinations and, thus, there was a certain social mobility allowed

within the leading class of the society, and a new "small gentry"

developed by this system.

Yet, the wars of the transition period had created a feeling of

insecurity within the gentry. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were

periods of extensive social legislation in order to give the lower

classes some degree of security and thus prevent them from attempting to

upset the status quo. In addition to the "ever-normal granaries" of the

state, "social granaries" were revived, into which all farmers of a

village had to deliver grain for periods of need. In 1098 a bureau for

housing and care was created which created homes for the old and

destitute; 1102 a bureau for medical care sent state doctors to homes

and hospitals as well as to private homes to care for poor patients;

from 1104 a bureau of burials took charge of the costs of burials of

poor persons. Doctors as craftsmen were under corvée obligation and

could easily be ordered by the state. Often, however, Buddhist priests

took charge of medical care, burial costs and hospitalization. The state

gave them premiums if they did good work. The Ministry of Civil Affairs

made the surveys of cases and costs, while the Ministry of Finances paid

the costs. We hear of state orphanages in 1247, a free pharmacy in 1248,

state hospitals were reorganized in 1143. In 1167 the government gave

low-interest loans to poor persons and (from 1159 on) sold cheap grain

from state granaries. Fire protection services in large cities were

organized. Finally, from 1141 on, the government opened up to

twenty-three geisha houses for the entertainment of soldiers who were

far from home in the capital and had no possibility for other

amusements. Public baths had existed already some centuries ago; now

Buddhist temples opened public baths as social service.

Social services for the officials were also extended. Already from the

eighth century on, offices were closed every tenth day and during

holidays, a total of almost eighty days per year. Even criminals got

some leave and exiles had the right of a home leave once every three

years. The pensions for retired officials after the age of seventy which

amounted to 50 per cent of the salary from the eighth century on, were

again raised, though widows did not receive benefits.

4 _Cultural situation (philosophy, religion, literature, painting_)

Culturally the eleventh century was the most active period China had so

far experienced, apart from the fourth century B.C. As a consequence of

the immensely increased number of educated people resulting from the

invention of printing, circles of scholars and private schools set up by

scholars were scattered all over the country. The various philosophical

schools differed in their political attitude and in the choice of

literary models with which they were politically in sympathy. Thus Wang

An-shih and his followers preferred the rigid classic style of Han Yü

(768-825) who lived in the T'ang period and had also been an opponent of

the monopolistic tendencies of pre-capitalism. For the Wang An-shih

group formed itself into a school with a philosophy of its own and with

its own commentaries on the classics. As the representative of the small

merchants and the small landholders, this school advocated policies of

state control and specialized in the study and annotation of classical

books which seemed to favour their ideas.

But the Wang An-shih school was unable to hold its own against the

school that stood for monopolist trade capitalism, the new philosophy

described as Neo-Confucianism or the Sung school. Here Confucianism and

Buddhism were for the first time united. In the last centuries,

Buddhistic ideas had penetrated all of Chinese culture: the slaughtering

of animals and the executions of criminals were allowed only on certain

days, in accordance with Buddhist rules. Formerly, monks and nuns had to

greet the emperor as all citizens had to do; now they were exempt from

this rule. On the other hand, the first Sung emperor was willing to

throw himself to the earth in front of the Buddha statues, but he was

told he did not have to do it because he was the "Buddha of the present

time" and thus equal to the God. Buddhist priests participated in the

celebrations on the emperor's birthday, and emperors from time to time

gave free meals to large crowds of monks. Buddhist thought entered the

field of justice: in Sung time we hear complaints that judges did not

apply the laws and showed laxity, because they hoped to gain religious

merit by sparing the lives of criminals. We had seen how the main

current of Buddhism had changed from a revolutionary to a reactionary

doctrine. The new greater gentry of the eleventh century adopted a

number of elements of this reactionary Buddhism and incorporated them in

the Confucianist system. This brought into Confucianism a metaphysic

which it had lacked in the past, greatly extending its influence on the

people and at the same time taking the wind out of the sails of

Buddhism. The greater gentry never again placed themselves on the side

of the Buddhist Church as they had done in the T'ang period. When they

got tired of Confucianism, they interested themselves in Taoism of the

politically innocent, escapist, meditative Buddhism.

Men like Chou Tun-i (1017-1073) and Chang Tsai (1020-1077) developed a

cosmological theory which could measure up with Buddhistic cosmology and

metaphysics. But perhaps more important was the attempt of the

Neo-Confucianists to explain the problem of evil. Confucius and his

followers had believed that every person could perfect himself by

overcoming the evil in him. As the good persons should be the _élite_

and rule the others, theoretically everybody who was a member of human

society, could move up and become a leader. It was commonly assumed that

human nature is good or indifferent, and that human feelings are evil

and have to be tamed and educated. When in Han time with the

establishment of the gentry society and its social classes, the idea

that any person could move up to become a leader if he only perfected

himself, appeared to be too unrealistic, the theory of different grades

of men was formed which found its clearest formulation by Han Yü: some

people have a good, others a neutral, and still others a bad nature;

therefore, not everybody can become a leader. The Neo-Confucianists,

especially Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085) and Ch'eng I (1033-1107), tried to

find the reasons for this inequality. According to them, nature is

neutral; but physical form originates with the combination of nature

with Material Force (_ch'i_). This combination produces individuals in

which there is a lack of balance or harmony. Man should try to transform

physical form and recover original nature. The creative force by which

such a transformation is possible is _jen_, love, the creative,

life-giving quality of nature itself.

It should be remarked that Neo-Confucianism accepts an inequality of

men, as early Confucianism did; and that _jen_, love, in its practical

application has to be channelled by _li_, the system of rules of

behaviour. The _li_, however, always started from the idea of a

stratified class society. Chu Hsi (1130-1200), the famous scholar and

systematizer of Neo-Confucian thoughts, brought out rules of behaviour

for those burghers who did not belong to the gentry and could not,

therefore, be expected to perform all _li_; his "simplified _li_"

exercised a great influence not only upon contemporary China, but also

upon Korea and Annam and there strengthened a hitherto looser

patriarchal, patrilinear family system.

The Neo-Confucianists also compiled great analytical works of history

and encyclopaedias whose authority continued for many centuries. They

interpreted in these works all history in accordance with their outlook;

they issued new commentaries on all the classics in order to spread

interpretations that served their purposes. In the field of commentary

this school of thought was given perfect expression by Chu Hsi, who also

wrote one of the chief historical works. Chu Hsi's commentaries became

standard works for centuries, until the beginning of the twentieth

century. Yet, although Chu became the symbol of conservatism, he was

quite interested in science, and in this field he had an open eye for

changes.

The Sung period is so important, because it is also the time of the

greatest development of Chinese science and technology. Many new

theories, but also many practical, new inventions were made. Medicine

made substantial progress. About 1145 the first autopsy was made, on the

body of a South Chinese captive. In the field of agriculture, new

varieties of rice were developed, new techniques applied, new plants

introduced.

The Wang An-shih school of political philosophy had opponents also in

the field of literary style, the so-called Shu Group (Shu means the

present province of Szechwan), whose leaders were the famous Three Sus.

The greatest of the three was Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101); the others were

his father, Su Shih, and his brother, Su Che. It is characteristic of

these Shu poets, and also of the Kiangsi school associated with them,

that they made as much use as they could of the vernacular. It had not

been usual to introduce the phrases of everyday life into poetry, but Su

Tung-p'o made use of the most everyday expressions, without diminishing

his artistic effectiveness by so doing; on the contrary, the result was

to give his poems much more genuine feeling than those of other poets.

These poets were in harmony with the writings of the T'ang period poet

Po Chü-i (772-846) and were supported, like Neo-Confucianism, by

representatives of trade capitalism. Politically, in their conservatism

they were sharply opposed to the Wang An-shih group. Midway between the

two stood the so-called Loyang-School, whose greatest leaders were the

historian and poet Ss[)u]-ma Kuang (1019-1086) and the philosopher-poet

Shao Yung (1011-1077).

In addition to its poems, the Sung literature was famous for the

so-called _pi-chi_ or miscellaneous notes. These consist of short notes

of the most various sort, notes on literature, art, politics,

archaeology, all mixed together. The _pi-chi_ are a treasure-house for

the history of the culture of the time; they contain many details, often

of importance, about China's neighbouring peoples. They were intended to

serve as suggestions for learned conversation when scholars came

together; they aimed at showing how wide was a scholar's knowledge. To

this group we must add the accounts of travel, of which some of great

value dating from the Sung period are still extant; they contain

information of the greatest importance about the early Mongols and also

about Turkestan and South China.

While the Sung period was one of perfection in all fields of art,

painting undoubtedly gained its highest development in this time. We

find now two main streams in painting: some painters preferred the

decorative, pompous, but realistic approach, with great attention to the

detail. Later theoreticians brought this school in connection with one

school of meditative Buddhism, the so-called northern school. Men who

belonged to this school of painting often were active court officials or

painted for the court and for other representative purposes. One of the

most famous among them, Li Lung-mien (ca. 1040-1106), for instance

painted the different breeds of horses in the imperial stables. He was

also famous for his Buddhistic figures. Another school, later called the

southern school, regarded painting as an intimate, personal expression.

They tried to paint inner realities and not outer forms. They, too, were

educated, but they did not paint for anybody. They painted in their

country houses when they felt in the mood for expression. Their

paintings did not stress details, but tried to give the spirit of a

landscape, for in this field they excelled most. Best known of them is

Mi Fei (ca. 1051-1107), a painter as well as a calligrapher, art

collector, and art critic. Typically, his paintings were not much liked

by the emperor Hui Tsung (ruled 1101-1125) who was one of the greatest

art collectors and whose catalogue of his collection became very famous.

He created the Painting Academy, an institution which mainly gave

official recognition to painters in form of titles which gave the

painter access to and status at court. Ma Yüan (_c_. 1190-1224), member

of a whole painter's family, and Hsia Kui (_c_. 1180-1230) continued the

more "impressionistic" tradition. Already in Sung time, however, many

painters could and did paint in different styles, "copying", i.e.

painting in the way of T'ang painters, in order to express their

changing emotions by changed styles, a fact which often makes the dating

of Chinese paintings very difficult.

Finally, art craft has left us famous porcelains of the Sung period. The

most characteristic production of that time is the green porcelain known

as "Celadon". It consists usually of a rather solid paste, less like

porcelain than stoneware, covered with a green glaze; decoration is

incised, not painted, under the glaze. In the Sung period, however, came

the first pure white porcelain with incised ornamentation under the

glaze, and also with painting on the glaze. Not until near the end of

the Sung period did the blue and white porcelain begin (blue painting on

a white ground). The cobalt needed for this came from Asia Minor. In

exchange for the cobalt, Chinese porcelain went to Asia Minor. This

trade did not, however, grow greatly until the Mongol epoch; later

really substantial orders were placed in China, the Chinese executing

the patterns wanted in the West.

5 _Military collapse_

In foreign affairs the whole eleventh century was a period of diplomatic

manoeuvring, with every possible effort to avoid war. There was

long-continued fighting with the Kitan, and at times also with the

Turco-Tibetan Hsia, but diplomacy carried the day: tribute was paid to

both enemies, and the effort was made to stir up the Kitan against the

Hsia and vice versa; the other parties also intrigued in like fashion.

In 1110 the situation seemed to improve for the Sung in this game, as a

new enemy appeared in the rear of the Liao (Kitan), the Tungusic Juchên

(Jurchen), who in the past had been more or less subject to the Kitan.

In 1114 the Juchên made themselves independent and became a political

factor. The Kitan were crippled, and it became an easy matter to attack

them. But this pleasant situation did not last long. The Juchên

conquered Peking, and in 1125 the Kitan empire was destroyed; but in the

same year the Juchên marched against the Sung. In 1126 they captured

the Sung capital; the emperor and his art-loving father, who had retired

a little earlier, were taken prisoner, and the Northern Sung dynasty was

at an end.

The collapse came so quickly because the whole edifice of security

between the Kitan and the Sung was based on a policy of balance and of

diplomacy. Neither state was armed in any way, and so both collapsed at

the first assault from a military power.

(2) The Liao (Kitan) dynasty in the north (937-1125)

1 _Social structure. Claim to the Chinese imperial throne_

The Kitan, a league of tribes under the leadership of an apparently

Mongol tribe, had grown steadily stronger in north-eastern Mongolia

during the T'ang epoch. They had gained the allegiance of many tribes in

the west and also in Korea and Manchuria, and in the end, about A.D.

900, had become the dominant power in the north. The process of growth

of this nomad power was the same as that of other nomad states, such as

the Toba state, and therefore need not be described again in any detail

here. When the T'ang dynasty was deposed, the Kitan were among the

claimants to the Chinese throne, feeling fully justified in their claim

as the strongest power in the Far East. Owing to the strength of the

Sha-t'o Turks, who themselves claimed leadership in China, the expansion

of the Kitan empire slowed down. In the many battles the Kitan suffered

several setbacks. They also had enemies in the rear, a state named

Po-hai, ruled by Tunguses, in northern Korea, and the new Korean state

of Kao-li, which liberated itself from Chinese overlordship in 919.

In 927 the Kitan finally destroyed Po-hai. This brought many Tungus

tribes, including the Jurchen (Juchên), under Kitan dominance. Then, in

936, the Kitan gained the allegiance of the Turkish general Shih

Ching-t'ang, and he was set on the Chinese throne as a feudatory of the

Kitan. It was hoped now to secure dominance over China, and accordingly

the Mongol name of the dynasty was altered to "Liao dynasty" in 937,

indicating the claim to the Chinese throne. Considerable regions of

North China came at once under the direct rule of the Liao. As a whole,

however, the plan failed: the feudatory Shih Ching-t'ang tried to make

himself independent; Chinese fought the Liao; and the Chinese sceptre

soon came back into the hands of a Sha-t'o dynasty (947). This ended the

plans of the Liao to conquer the whole of China.

For this there were several reasons. A nomad people was again ruling

the agrarian regions of North China. This time the representatives of

the ruling class remained military commanders, and at the same time

retained their herds of horses. As early as 1100 they had well over

10,000 herds, each of more than a thousand animals. The army commanders

had been awarded large regions which they themselves had conquered. They

collected the taxes in these regions, and passed on to the state only

the yield of the wine tax. On the other hand, in order to feed the

armies, in which there were now many Chinese soldiers, the frontier

regions were settled, the soldiers working as peasants in times of

peace, and peasants being required to contribute to the support of the

army. Both processes increased the interest of the Kitan ruling class in

the maintenance of peace. That class was growing rich, and preferred

living on the income from its properties or settlements to going to war,

which had become a more and more serious matter after the founding of

the great Sung empire, and was bound to be less remunerative. The herds

of horses were a further excellent source of income, for they could be

sold to the Sung, who had no horses. Then, from 1004 onward, came the

tribute payments from China, strengthening the interest in the

maintenance of peace. Thus great wealth accumulated in Peking, the

capital of the Liao; in this wealth the whole Kitan ruling class

participated, but the tribes in the north, owing to their remoteness,

had no share in it. In 988 the Chinese began negotiations, as a move in

their diplomacy, with the ruler of the later realm of the Hsia; in 990

the Kitan also negotiated with him, and they soon became a third partner

in the diplomatic game. Delegations were continually going from one to

another of the three realms, and they were joined by trade missions.

Agreement was soon reached on frontier questions, on armament, on

questions of demobilization, on the demilitarization of particular

regions, and so on, for the last thing anyone wanted was to fight.

Then came the rising of the tribes of the north. They had remained

military tribes; of all the wealth nothing reached them, and they were

given no military employment, so that they had no hope of improving

their position. The leadership was assumed by the tribe of the Juchên

(1114). In a campaign of unprecedented rapidity they captured Peking,

and the Liao dynasty was ended (1125), a year earlier, as we know, than

the end of the Sung.

2 _The State of the Kara-Kitai_

A small troop of Liao, under the command of a member of the ruling

family, fled into the west. They were pursued without cessation, but

they succeeded in fighting their way through. After a few years of

nomad life in the mountains of northern Turkestan, they were able to

gain the collaboration of a few more tribes, and with them they then

invaded western Turkestan. There they founded the "Western Liao" state,

or, as the western sources call it, the "Kara-Kitai" state, with its

capital at Balasagun. This state must not be regarded as a purely Kitan

state. The Kitan formed only a very thin stratum, and the real power was

in the hands of autochthonous Turkish tribes, to whom the Kitan soon

became entirely assimilated in culture. Thus the history of this state

belongs to that of western Asia, especially as the relations of the

Kara-Kitai with the Far East were entirely broken off. In 1211 the state

was finally destroyed.

(3) The Hsi-Hsia State in the north (1038-1227)

1 _Continuation of Turkish traditions_

After the end of the Toba state in North China in 550, some tribes of

the Toba, including members of the ruling tribe with the tribal name

Toba, withdrew to the borderland between Tibet and China, where they

ruled over Tibetan and Tangut tribes. At the beginning of the T'ang

dynasty this tribe of Toba joined the T'ang. The tribal leader received

in return, as a distinction, the family name of the T'ang dynasty, Li.

His dependence on China was, however, only nominal and soon came

entirely to an end. In the tenth century the tribe gained in strength.

It is typical of the long continuance of old tribal traditions that a

leader of the tribe in the tenth century married a woman belonging to

the family to which the khans of the Hsiung-nu and all Turkish ruling

houses had belonged since 200 B.C. With the rise of the Kitan in the

north and of the Tibetan state in the south, the tribe decided to seek

the friendship of China. Its first mission, in 982, was well received.

Presents were sent to the chieftain of the tribe, he was helped against

his enemies, and he was given the status of a feudatory of the Sung; in

988 the family name of the Sung, Chao, was conferred on him. Then the

Kitan took a hand. They over-trumped the Sung by proclaiming the tribal

chieftain king of Hsia (990). Now the small state became interesting. It

was pampered by Liao and Sung in the effort to win it over or to keep

its friendship. The state grew; in 1031 its ruler resumed the old family

name of the Toba, thus proclaiming his intention to continue the Toba

empire; in 1034 he definitely parted from the Sung, and in 1038 he

proclaimed himself emperor in the Hsia dynasty, or, as the Chinese

generally called it, the "Hsi-Hsia", which means the Western Hsia. This

name, too, had associations with the old Hun tradition; it recalled the

state of Ho-lien P'o-p'o in the early fifth century. The state soon

covered the present province of Kansu, small parts of the adjoining

Tibetan territory, and parts of the Ordos region. It attacked the

province of Shensi, but the Chinese and the Liao attached the greatest

importance to that territory. Thus that was the scene of most of the

fighting.

[Illustration: 12 Ancient tiled pagoda at Chengting (Hopei). _Photo H.

Hammer-Morrisson_.]

[Illustration: 13 Horse-training. Painting by Li Lung-mien. Late Sung

period. _Manchu Royal House Collection_.] The Hsia state had a ruling

group of Toba, but these Toba had become entirely tibetanized. The

language of the country was Tibetan; the customs were those of the

Tanguts. A script was devised, in imitation of the Chinese script. Only

in recent years has it begun to be studied.

In 1125, when the Tungusic Juchên destroyed the Liao, the Hsia also lost

large territories in the east of their country, especially the province

of Shensi, which they had conquered; but they were still able to hold

their own. Their political importance to China, however, vanished, since

they were now divided from southern China and as partners were no longer

of the same value to it. Not until the Mongols became a power did the

Hsia recover some of their importance; but they were among the first

victims of the Mongols: in 1209 they had to submit to them, and in 1227,

the year of the death of Genghiz Khan, they were annihilated.

(4) The empire of the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279)

1 _Foundation_

In the disaster of 1126, when the Juchên captured the Sung capital and

destroyed the Sung empire, a brother of the captive emperor escaped. He

made himself emperor in Nanking and founded the "Southern Sung" dynasty,

whose capital was soon shifted to the present Hangchow. The foundation

of the new dynasty was a relatively easy matter, and the new state was

much more solid than the southern kingdoms of 800 years earlier, for the

south had already been economically supreme, and the great families that

had ruled the state were virtually all from the south. The loss of the

north, i.e. the area north of the Yellow River and of parts of Kiangsu,

was of no importance to this governing group and meant no loss of

estates to it. Thus the transition from the Northern to the Southern

Sung was not of fundamental importance. Consequently the Juchên had no

chance of success when they arranged for Liu Yü, who came of a northern

Chinese family of small peasants and had become an official, to be

proclaimed emperor in the "Ch'i" dynasty in 1130. They hoped that this

puppet might attract the southern Chinese, but seven years later they

dropped him.

2 _Internal situation_

As the social structure of the Southern Sung empire had not been

changed, the country was not affected by the dynastic development. Only

the policy of diplomacy could not be pursued at once, as the Juchên were

bellicose at first and would not negotiate. There were therefore several

battles at the outset (in 1131 and 1134), in which the Chinese were

actually the more successful, but not decisively. The Sung military

group was faced as early as in 1131 with furious opposition from the

greater gentry, led by Ch'in K'ui, one of the largest landowners of all.

His estates were around Nanking, and so in the deployment region and the

region from which most of the soldiers had to be drawn for the defensive

struggle. Ch'in K'ui secured the assassination of the leader of the

military party, General Yo Fei, in 1141, and was able to conclude peace

with the Juchên. The Sung had to accept the status of vassals and to pay

annual tribute to the Juchên. This was the situation that best pleased

the greater gentry. They paid hardly any taxes (in many districts the

greater gentry directly owned more than 30 per cent of the land, in

addition to which they had indirect interests in the soil), and they

were now free from the war peril that ate into their revenues. The

tribute amounted only to 500,000 strings of cash. Popular literature,

however, to this day represents Ch'in K'ui as a traitor and Yo Fei as a

national hero.

In 1165 it was agreed between the Sung and the Juchên to regard each

other as states with equal rights. It is interesting to note here that

in the treaties during the Han time with the Hsiung-nu, the two

countries called one another brothers--with the Chinese ruler as the

older and thus privileged brother; but the treaties since the T'ang time

with northern powers and with Tibetans used the terms father-in-law and

son-in-law. The foreign power was the "father-in-law", i.e. the older

and, therefore, in a certain way the more privileged; the Chinese were

the "son-in-law", the representative of the paternal lineage and,

therefore, in another respect also the more privileged! In spite of such

agreements with the Juchên, fighting continued, but it was mainly of the

character of frontier engagements. Not until 1204 did the military

party, led by Han T'o-wei, regain power; it resolved upon an active

policy against the north. In preparation for this a military reform was

carried out. The campaign proved a disastrous failure, as a result of

which large territories in the north were lost. The Sung sued for

peace; Han T'o-wei's head was cut off and sent to the Juchên. In this

way peace was restored in 1208. The old treaty relationship was now

resumed, but the relations between the two states remained tense.

Meanwhile the Sung observed with malicious pleasure how the Mongols were

growing steadily stronger, first destroying the Hsia state and then

aiming the first heavy blows against the Juchên. In the end the Sung

entered into alliance with the Mongols (1233) and joined them in

attacking the Juchên, thus hastening the end of the Juchên state.

The Sung now faced the Mongols, and were defenceless against them. All

the buffer states had gone. The Sung were quite without adequate

military defence. They hoped to stave off the Mongols in the same way as

they had met the Kitan and the Juchên. This time, however, they

misjudged the situation. In the great operations begun by the Mongols in

1273 the Sung were defeated over and over again. In 1276 their capital

was taken by the Mongols and the emperor was made prisoner. For three

years longer there was a Sung emperor, in flight from the Mongols, until

the last emperor perished near Macao in South China.

3 _Cultural situation; reasons for the collapse_

The Southern Sung period was again one of flourishing culture. The

imperial court was entirely in the power of the greater gentry; several

times the emperors, who personally do not deserve individual mention,

were compelled to abdicate. They then lived on with a court of their

own, devoting themselves to pleasure in much the same way as the

"reigning" emperor. Round them was a countless swarm of poets and

artists. Never was there a time so rich in poets, though hardly one of

them was in any way outstanding. The poets, unlike those of earlier

times, belonged to the lesser gentry who were suffering from the

prevailing inflation. Salaries bore no relation to prices. Food was not

dear, but the things which a man of the upper class ought to have were

far out of reach: a big house cost 2,000 strings of cash, a concubine

800 strings. Thus the lesser gentry and the intelligentsia all lived on

their patrons among the greater gentry--with the result that they were

entirely shut out of politics. This explains why the literature of the

time is so unpolitical, and also why scarcely any philosophical works

appeared. The writers took refuge more and more in romanticism and

flight from realities.

The greater gentry, on the other hand, led a very elegant life, building

themselves magnificent palaces in the capital. They also speculated in

every direction. They speculated in land, in money, and above all in

the paper money that was coming more and more into use. In 1166 the

paper circulation exceeded the value of 10,000,000 strings!

It seems that after 1127 a good number of farmers had left Honan and the

Yellow River plains when the Juchên conquered these places and showed

little interest in fostering agriculture; more left the border areas of

Southern Sung because of permanent war threat. Many of these lived

miserably as tenants on the farms of the gentry between Nanking and

Hangchow. Others migrated farther to the south, across Kiangsi into

southern Fukien. These migrants seem to have been the ancestors of the

Hakka which in the following centuries continued their migration towards

the south and who from the nineteenth century on were most strongly

concentrated in Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces as free farmers on hill

slopes or as tenants of local landowners in the plains.

The influx of migrants and the increase of tenants and their poverty

seriously threatened the state and cut down its defensive strength more

and more.

At this stage, Chia Ssu-tao drafted a reform law. Chia had come to the

court through his sister becoming the emperor's concubine, but he

himself belonged to the lesser gentry. His proposal was that state funds

should be applied to the purchase of land in the possession of the

greater gentry over and above a fixed maximum. Peasants were to be

settled on this land, and its yield was to belong to the state, which

would be able to use it to meet military expenditure. In this way the

country's military strength was to be restored. Chia's influence lasted

just ten years, until 1275. He began putting the law into effect in the

region south of Nanking, where the principal estates of the greater

gentry were then situated. He brought upon himself, of course, the

mortal hatred of the greater gentry, and paid for his action with his

life. The emperor, in entering upon this policy, no doubt had hoped to

recover some of his power, but the greater gentry brought him down. The

gentry now openly played into the hands of the approaching Mongols, so

hastening the final collapse of the Sung. The peasants and the lesser

gentry would have fought the Mongols if it had been possible; but the

greater gentry enthusiastically went over to the Mongols, hoping to save

their property and so their influence by quickly joining the enemy. On a

long view they had not judged badly. The Mongols removed the members of

the gentry from all political posts, but left them their estates; and

before long the greater gentry reappeared in political life. And when,

later, the Mongol empire in China was brought down by a popular rising,

the greater gentry showed themselves to be the most faithful allies of

the Mongols!

(5) The empire of the Juchên in the north (1115-1234)

1 _Rapid expansion from northern Korea to the Yangtze_

The Juchên in the past had been only a small league of Tungus tribes,

whose name is preserved in that of the present Tungus tribe of the

Jurchen, which came under the domination of the Kitan after the collapse

of the state of Po-hai in northern Korea. We have already briefly

mentioned the reasons for their rise. After their first successes

against the Kitan (1114), their chieftain at once proclaimed himself

emperor (1115), giving his dynasty the name "Chin" (The Golden). The

Chin quickly continued their victorious progress. In 1125 the Kitan

empire was destroyed. It will be remembered that the Sung were at once

attacked, although they had recently been allied with the Chin against

the Kitan. In 1126 the Sung capital was taken. The Chin invasions were

pushed farther south, and in 1130 the Yangtze was crossed. But the Chin

did not hold the whole of these conquests. Their empire was not yet

consolidated. Their partial withdrawal closed the first phase of the

Chin empire.

2 _United front of all Chinese_

But a few years after this maximum expansion, a withdrawal began which

went on much more quickly than usual in such cases. The reasons were to

be found both in external and in internal politics. The Juchên had

gained great agrarian regions in a rapid march of conquest. Once more

great cities with a huge urban population and immense wealth had fallen

to alien conquerors. Now the Juchên wanted to enjoy this wealth as the

Kitan had done before them. All the Juchên people counted as citizens of

the highest class; they were free from taxation and only liable to

military service. They were entitled to take possession of as much

cultivable land as they wanted; this they did, and they took not only

the "state domains" actually granted to them but also peasant

properties, so that Chinese free peasants had nothing left but the worst

fields, unless they became tenants on Juchên estates. A united front was

therefore formed between all Chinese, both peasants and landowning

gentry, against the Chin, such as it had not been possible to form

against the Kitan. This made an important contribution later to the

rapid collapse of the Chin empire.

The Chin who had thus come into possession of the cultivable land and

at the same time of the wealth of the towns, began a sort of competition

with each other for the best winnings, especially after the government

had returned to the old Sung capital, Pien-liang (now K'ai-feng, in

eastern Honan). Serious crises developed in their own ranks. In 1149 the

ruler was assassinated by his chancellor (a member of the imperial

family), who in turn was murdered in 1161. The Chin thus failed to

attain what had been secured by all earlier conquerors, a reconciliation

of the various elements of the population and the collaboration of at

least one group of the defeated Chinese.

3 _Start of the Mongol empire_

The cessation of fighting against the Sung brought no real advantage in

external affairs, though the tribute payments appealed to the greed of

the rulers and were therefore welcomed. There could be no question of

further campaigns against the south, for the Hsia empire in the west had

not been destroyed, though some of its territory had been annexed; and a

new peril soon made its appearance in the rear of the Chin. When in the

tenth century the Sha-t'o Turks had to withdraw from their dominating

position in China, because of their great loss of numbers and

consequently of strength, they went back into Mongolia and there united

with the Ta-tan (Tatars), among whom a new small league of tribes had

formed towards the end of the eleventh century, consisting mainly of

Mongols and Turks. In 1139 one of the chieftains of the Juchên rebelled

and entered into negotiations with the South Chinese. He was killed, but

his sons and his whole tribe then rebelled and went into Mongolia, where

they made common cause with the Mongols. The Chin pursued them, and

fought against them and against the Mongols, but without success.

Accordingly negotiations were begun, and a promise was given to deliver

meat and grain every year and to cede twenty-seven military strongholds.

A high title was conferred on the tribal leader of the Mongols, in the

hope of gaining his favour. He declined it, however, and in 1147 assumed

the title of emperor of the "greater Mongol empire". This was the

beginning of the power of the Mongols, who remained thereafter a

dangerous enemy of the Chin in the north, until in 1189 Genghiz Khan

became their leader and made the Mongols the greatest power of central

Asia. In any case, the Chin had reason to fear the Mongols from 1147

onward, and therefore were the more inclined to leave the Sung in peace.

In 1210 the Mongols began the first great assault against the Chin, the

moment they had conquered the Hsia. In the years 1215-17 the Mongols

took the military key-positions from the Chin. After that there could be

no serious defence of the Chin empire. There came a respite only because

the Mongols had turned against the West. But in 1234 the empire finally

fell to the Mongols.

Many of the Chin entered the service of the Mongols, and with their

permission returned to Manchuria; there they fell back to the cultural

level of a warlike nomad people. Not until the sixteenth century did

these Tunguses recover, reorganize, and appear again in history this

time under the name of Manchus.

The North Chinese under Chin rule did not regard the Mongols as enemies

of their country, but were ready at once to collaborate with them. The

Mongols were even more friendly to them than to the South Chinese, and

treated them rather better.

Chapter Ten

THE PERIOD OF ABSOLUTISM

(A) The Mongol Epoch (1280-1368)

1 _Beginning of new foreign rules_

During more than half of the third period of "Modern Times" which now

began, China was under alien rule. Of the 631 years from 1280 to 1911,

China was under national rulers for 276 years and under alien rule for

355. The alien rulers were first the Mongols, and later the Tungus

Manchus. It is interesting to note that the alien rulers in the earlier

period came mainly from the north-west, and only in modern times did

peoples from the north-east rule over China. This was due in part to the

fact that only peoples who had attained a certain level of civilization

were capable of dominance. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, eastern

Mongolia and Manchuria were at a relatively low level of civilization,

from which they emerged only gradually through permanent contact with

other nomad peoples, especially Turks. We are dealing here, of course,

only with the Mongol epoch in China and not with the great Mongol

empire, so that we need not enter further into these questions.

Yet another point is characteristic: the Mongols were the first alien

people to rule the whole of China; the Manchus, who appeared in the

seventeenth century, were the second and last. All alien peoples before

these two ruled only parts of China. Why was it that the Mongols were

able to be so much more successful than their predecessors? In the first

place the Mongol political league was numerically stronger than those of

the earlier alien peoples; secondly, the military organization and

technical equipment of the Mongols were exceptionally advanced for their

day. It must be borne in mind, for instance, that during their many

years of war against the Sung dynasty in South China the Mongols already

made use of small cannon in laying siege to towns. We have no exact

knowledge of the number of Mongols who invaded and occupied China, but

it is estimated that there were more than a million Mongols living in

China. Not all of them, of course, were really Mongols! The name covered

Turks, Tunguses, and others; among the auxiliaries of the Mongols were

Uighurs, men from Central Asia and the Middle East, and even Europeans.

When the Mongols attacked China they had the advantage of all the arts

and crafts and all the new technical advances of western and central

Asia and of Europe. Thus they had attained a high degree of technical

progress, and at the same time their number was very great.

2 "_Nationality legislation_"

It was only after the Hsia empire in North China, and then the empire of

the Juchên, had been destroyed by the Mongols, and only after long and

remarkably modern tactical preparation, that the Mongols conquered South

China, the empire of the Sung dynasty. They were now faced with the

problem of ruling their great new empire. The conqueror of that empire,

Kublai, himself recognized that China could not be treated in quite the

same way as the Mongols' previous conquests; he therefore separated the

empire in China from the rest of the Mongol empire. Mongol China became

an independent realm within the Mongol empire, a sort of Dominion. The

Mongol rulers were well aware that in spite of their numerical strength

they were still only a minority in China, and this implied certain

dangers. They therefore elaborated a "nationality legislation", the

first of its kind in the Far East. The purpose of this legislation was,

of course, to be the protection of the Mongols. The population of

conquered China was divided into four groups--(1) Mongols, themselves

falling into four sub-groups (the oldest Mongol tribes, the White

Tatars, the Black Tatars, the Wild Tatars); (2) Central Asian

auxiliaries (Naimans, Uighurs, and various other Turkish people,

Tanguts, and so on); (3) North Chinese; (4) South Chinese. The Mongols

formed the privileged ruling class. They remained militarily organized,

and were distributed in garrisons over all the big towns of China as

soldiers, maintained by the state. All the higher government posts were

reserved for them, so that they also formed the heads of the official

staffs. The auxiliary peoples were also admitted into the government

service; they, too, had privileges, but were not all soldiers but in

many cases merchants, who used their privileged position to promote

business. Not a few of these merchants were Uighurs and Mohammedans;

many Uighurs were also employed as clerks, as the Mongols were very

often unable to read and write Chinese, and the government offices were

bilingual, working in Mongolian and Chinese. The clever Uighurs quickly

learned enough of both languages for official purposes, and made

themselves indispensable assistants to the Mongols. Persian, the main

language of administration in the western parts of the Mongol empire

besides Uighuric, also was a _lingua franca_ among the new rulers of

China.

In the Mongol legislation the South Chinese had the lowest status, and

virtually no rights. Intermarriage with them was prohibited. The Chinese

were not allowed to carry arms. For a time they were forbidden even to

learn the Mongol or other foreign languages. In this way they were to be

prevented from gaining official positions and playing any political

part. Their ignorance of the languages of northern, central, and western

Asia also prevented them from engaging in commerce like the foreign

merchants, and every possible difficulty was put in the way of their

travelling for commercial purposes. On the other hand, foreigners were,

of course, able to learn Chinese, and so to gain a footing in Chinese

internal trade.

Through legislation of this type the Mongols tried to build up and to

safeguard their domination over China. Yet their success did not last a

hundred years.

3 _Military position_

In foreign affairs the Mongol epoch was for China something of a

breathing space, for the great wars of the Mongols took place at a

remote distance from China and without any Chinese participation. Only a

few concluding wars were fought under Kublai in the Far East. The first

was his war against Japan (1281): it ended in complete failure, the

fleet being destroyed by a storm. In this campaign the Chinese furnished

ships and also soldiers. The subjection of Japan would have been in the

interest of the Chinese, as it would have opened a market which had been

almost closed against them in the Sung period. Mongol wars followed in

the south. In 1282 began the war against Burma; in 1284 Annam and

Cambodia were conquered; in 1292 a campaign was started against Java. It

proved impossible to hold Java, but almost the whole of Indo-China came

under Mongol rule, to the satisfaction of the Chinese, for Indo-China

had already been one of the principal export markets in the Sung period.

After that, however, there was virtually no more warfare, apart from

small campaigns against rebellious tribes. The Mongol soldiers now lived

on their pay in their garrisons, with nothing to do. The old campaigners

died and were followed by their sons, brought up also as soldiers; but

these young Mongols were born in China, had seen nothing of war, and

learned of the soldiers' trade either nothing or very little; so that

after about 1320 serious things happened. An army nominally 1,000 strong

was sent against a group of barely fifty bandits and failed to defeat

them. Most of the 1,000 soldiers no longer knew how to use their

weapons, and many did not even join the force. Such incidents occurred

again and again.

4 _Social situation_

The results, however, of conditions within the country were of much more

importance than events abroad. The Mongols made Peking their capital as

was entirely natural, for Peking was near their homeland Mongolia. The

emperor and his entourage could return to Mongolia in the summer, when

China became too hot or too humid for them; and from Peking they were

able to maintain contact with the rest of the Mongol empire. But as the

city had become the capital of a vast empire, an enormous staff of

officials had to be housed there, consisting of persons of many

different nationalities. The emperor naturally wanted to have a

magnificent capital, a city really worthy of so vast an empire. As the

many wars had brought in vast booty, there was money for the building of

great palaces, of a size and magnificence never before seen in China.

They were built by Chinese forced labour, and to this end men had to be

brought from all over the empire--poor peasants, whose fields went out

of cultivation while they were held in bondage far away. If they ever

returned home, they were destitute and had lost their land. The rich

gentry, on the other hand, were able to buy immunity from forced labour.

The immense increase in the population of Peking (the huge court with

its enormous expenditure, the mass of officials, the great merchant

community, largely foreigners, and the many servile labourers),

necessitated vast supplies of food. Now, as mentioned in earlier

chapters, since the time of the Later T'ang the region round Nanking had

become the main centre of production in China, and the Chinese

population had gone over more and more to the consumption of rice

instead of pulse or wheat. As rice could not be grown in the north,

practically the whole of the food supplies for the capital had to be

brought from the south. The transport system taken over by the Mongols

had not been created for long-distance traffic of this sort. The capital

of the Sung had lain in the main centre of production. Consequently, a

great fleet had suddenly to be built, canals and rivers had to be

regulated, and some new canals excavated. This again called for a vast

quantity of forced labour, often brought from afar to the points at

which it was needed. The Chinese peasants had suffered in the Sung

period. They had been exploited by the large landowners. The Mongols had

not removed these landowners, as the Chinese gentry had gone over to

their side. The Mongols had deprived them of their political power, but

had left them their estates, the basis of their power. In past changes

of dynasty the gentry had either maintained their position or been

replaced by a new gentry: the total number of their class had remained

virtually unchanged. Now, however, in addition to the original gentry

there were about a million Mongols, for whose maintenance the peasants

had also to provide, and their standard of maintenance was high. This

was an enormous increase in the burdens of the peasantry.

Two other elements further pressed on the peasants in the Mongol

epoch--organized religion and the traders. The upper classes among the

Chinese had in general little interest in religion, but the Mongols,

owing to their historical development, were very religious. Some of them

and some of their allies were Buddhists, some were still shamanists. The

Chinese Buddhists and the representatives of popular Taoism approached

the Mongols and the foreign Buddhist monks trying to enlist the interest

of the Mongols and their allies. The old shamanism was unable to compete

with the higher religions, and the Mongols in China became Buddhist or

interested themselves in popular Taoism. They showed their interest

especially by the endowment of temples and monasteries. The temples were

given great estates, and the peasants on those estates became temple

servants. The land belonging to the temples was free from taxation.

We have as yet no exact statistics of the Mongol epoch, only

approximations. These set the total area under cultivation at some six

million _ch'ing_ (a _ch'ing_ is the ideal size of the farm worked by a

peasant family, but it was rarely held in practice); the population

amounted to fourteen or fifteen million families. Of this total tillage

some 170,000 _ch'ing_ were allotted to the temples; that is to say, the

farms for some 400,000 peasant families were taken from the peasants and

no longer paid taxes to the state. The peasants, however, had to make

payments to the temples. Some 200,000 _ch'ing_ with some 450,000 peasant

families were turned into military settlements; that is to say, these

peasants had to work for the needs of the army. Their taxes went not to

the state but to the army. Moreover, in the event of war they had to

render service to the army. In addition to this, all higher officials

received official properties, the yield of which represented part

payment of their salaries. Then, Mongol nobles and dignitaries received

considerable grants of land, which was taken away from the free

peasants; the peasants had then to work their farms as tenants and to

pay dues to their landlords, no longer to the state. Finally, especially

in North China, many peasants were entirely dispossessed, and their land

was turned into pasturage for the Mongols' horses; the peasants

themselves were put to forced labour. On top of this came the

exploitation of the peasants by the great landowners of the past. All

this meant an enormous diminution in the number of free peasants and

thus of taxpayers. As the state was involved in more expenditure than in

the past owing to the large number of Mongols who were its virtual

pensioners, the taxes had to be continually increased. Meanwhile the

many peasants working as tenants of the great landlords, the temples,

and the Mongol nobles were entirely at their mercy. In this period, a

second migration of farmers into the southern provinces, mainly Fukien

and Kwangtung, took place; it had its main source in the lower Yangtze

valley. A few gentry families whose relatives had accompanied the Sung

emperor on their flight to the south, also settled with their followers

in the Canton basin.

The many merchants from abroad, especially those belonging to the

peoples allied to the Mongols, also had in every respect a privileged

position in China. They were free of taxation, free to travel all over

the country, and received privileged treatment in the use of means of

transport. They were thus able to accumulate great wealth, most of which

went out of China to their own country. This produced a general

impoverishment of China. Chinese merchants fell more and more into

dependence on the foreign merchants; the only field of action really

remaining to them was the local trade within China and the trade with

Indo-China, where the Chinese had the advantage of knowing the language.

The impoverishment of China began with the flow abroad of her metallic

currency. To make up for this loss, the government was compelled to

issue great quantities of paper money, which very quickly depreciated,

because after a few years the government would no longer accept the

money at its face value, so that the population could place no faith in

it. The depreciation further impoverished the people.

Thus we have in the Mongol epoch in China the imposing picture of a

commerce made possible with every country from Europe to the Pacific;

this, however, led to the impoverishment of China. We also see the

rising of mighty temples and monumental buildings, but this again only

contributed to the denudation of the country. The Mongol epoch was thus

one of continual and rapid impoverishment in China, simultaneously with

a great display of magnificence. The enthusiastic descriptions of the

Mongol empire in China offered by travellers from the Near East or from

Europe, such as Marco Polo, give an entirely false picture: as

foreigners they had a privileged position, living in the cities and

seeing nothing of the situation of the general population.

5 _Popular risings: National rising_

It took time for the effects of all these factors to become evident. The

first popular rising came in 1325. Statistics of 1329 show that there

were then some 7,600,000 persons in the empire who were starving; as

this was only the figure of the officially admitted sufferers, the

figure may have been higher. In any case, seven-and-a-half millions were

a substantial percentage of the total population, estimated at

45,000,000. The risings that now came incessantly were led by men of the

lower orders--a cloth-seller, a fisherman, a peasant, a salt smuggler,

the son of a soldier serving a sentence, an office messenger, and so on.

They never attacked the Mongols as aliens, but always the rich in

general, whether Chinese or foreign. Wherever they came, they killed all

the rich and distributed their money and possessions.

As already mentioned, the Mongol garrisons were unable to cope with

these risings. But how was it that the Mongol rule did not collapse

until some forty years later? The Mongols parried the risings by raising

loans from the rich and using the money to recruit volunteers to fight

the rebels. The state revenues would not have sufficed for these

payments, and the item was not one that could be included in the

military budget. What was of much more importance was that the gentry

themselves recruited volunteers and fought the rebels on their own

account, without the authority or the support of the government. Thus it

was the Chinese gentry, in their fear of being killed by the insurgents,

who fought them and so bolstered up the Mongol rule.

In 1351 the dykes along the Yellow River burst. The dykes had to be

reconstructed and further measures of conservancy undertaken. To this

end the government impressed 170,000 men. Following this action, great

new revolts broke out. Everywhere in Honan, Kiangsu, and Shantung, the

regions from which the labourers were summoned, revolutionary groups

were formed, some of them amounting to 100,000 men. Some groups had a

religious tinge; others declared their intention to restore the emperors

of the Sung dynasty. Before long great parts of central China were

wrested from the hands of the government. The government recognized the

menace to its existence, but resorted to contradictory measures. In 1352

southern Chinese were permitted to take over certain official positions.

In this way it was hoped to gain the full support of the gentry, who had

a certain interest in combating the rebel movements. On the other hand,

the government tightened up its nationality laws. All the old

segregation laws were brought back into force, with the result that in a

few years the aim of the rebels became no longer merely the expulsion of

the rich but also the expulsion of the Mongols: a social movement thus

became a national one. A second element contributed to the change in the

character of the popular rising. The rebels captured many towns. Some of

these towns refused to fight and negotiated terms of submission. In

these cases the rebels did not murder the whole of the gentry, but took

some of them into their service. The gentry did not agree to this out of

sympathy with the rebels, but simply in order to save their own lives.

Once they had taken the step, however, they could not go back; they had

no alternative but to remain on the side of the rebels.

In 1352 Kuo Tz[)u]-hsing rose in southern Honan. Kuo was the son of a

wandering soothsayer and a blind beggar-woman. He had success; his group

gained control of a considerable region round his home. There was no

longer any serious resistance from the Mongols, for at this time the

whole of eastern China was in full revolt. In 1353 Kuo was joined by a

man named Chu Yüan-chang, the son of a small peasant, probably a tenant

farmer. Chu's parents and all his relatives had died from a plague,

leaving him destitute. He had first entered a monastery and become a

monk. This was a favourite resource--and has been almost to the present

day--for poor sons of peasants who were threatened with starvation. As a

monk he had gone about begging, until in 1353 he returned to his home

and collected a group, mostly men from his own village, sons of peasants

and young fellows who had already been peasant leaders. Monks were often

peasant leaders. They were trusted because they promised divine aid, and

because they were usually rather better educated than the rest of the

peasants. Chu at first also had contacts with a secret society, a branch

of the White Lotus Society which several times in the course of Chinese

history has been the nucleus of rebellious movements. Chu took his small

group which identified itself by a red turban and a red banner to Kuo,

who received him gladly, entered into alliance with him, and in sign of

friendship gave him his daughter in marriage. In 1355 Kuo died, and Chu

took over his army, now many thousands strong. In his campaigns against

towns in eastern China, Chu succeeded in winning over some capable

members of the gentry. One was the chairman of a committee that yielded

a town to Chu; another was a scholar whose family had always been

opposed to the Mongols, and who had himself suffered injustice several

times in his official career, so that he was glad to join Chu out of

hatred of the Mongols.

These men gained great influence over Chu, and persuaded him to give up

attacking rich individuals, and instead to establish an assured control

over large parts of the country. He would then, they pointed out, be

permanently enriched, while otherwise he would only be in funds at the

moment of the plundering of a town. They set before him strategic plans

with that aim. Through their counsel Chu changed from the leader of a

popular rising into a fighter against the dynasty. Of all the peasant

leaders he was now the only one pursuing a definite aim. He marched

first against Nanking, the great city of central China, and captured it

with ease. He then crossed the Yangtze, and conquered the rich provinces

of the south-east. He was a rebel who no longer slaughtered the rich or

plundered the towns, and the whole of the gentry with all their

followers came over to him _en masse_. The armies of volunteers went

over to Chu, and the whole edifice of the dynasty collapsed.

The years 1355-1368 were full of small battles. After his conquest of

the whole of the south, Chu went north. In 1368 his generals captured

Peking almost without a blow. The Mongol ruler fled on horseback with

his immediate entourage into the north of China, and soon after into

Mongolia. The Mongol dynasty had been brought down, almost without

resistance. The Mongols in the isolated garrisons marched northward

wherever they could. A few surrendered to the Chinese and were used in

southern China as professional soldiers, though they were always

regarded with suspicion. The only serious resistance offered came from

the regions in which other Chinese popular leaders had established

themselves, especially the remote provinces in the west and south-west,

which had a different social structure and had been relatively little

affected by the Mongol regime.

Thus the collapse of the Mongols came for the following reasons: (1)

They had not succeeded in maintaining their armed strength or that of

their allies during the period of peace that followed Kublai's conquest.

The Mongol soldiers had become effeminate through their life of idleness

in the towns. (2) The attempt to rule the empire through Mongols or

other aliens, and to exclude the Chinese gentry entirely from the

administration, failed through insufficient knowledge of the sources of

revenue and through the abuses due to the favoured treatment of aliens.

The whole country, and especially the peasantry, was completely

impoverished and so driven into revolt. (3) There was also a

psychological reason. In the middle of the fourteenth century it was

obvious to the Mongols that their hold over China was growing more and

more precarious, and that there was little to be got out of the

impoverished country: they seem in consequence to have lost interest in

the troublesome task of maintaining their rule, preferring, in so far as

they had not already entirely degenerated, to return to their old home

in the north. It is important to bear in mind these reasons for the

collapse of the Mongols, so that we may compare them later with the

reasons for the collapse of the Manchus.

No mention need be made here of the names of the Mongol rulers in China

after Kublai. After his death in 1294, grandsons and great-grandsons of

his followed each other in rapid succession on the throne; not one of

them was of any personal significance. They had no influence on the

government of China. Their life was spent in intriguing against one

another. There were seven Mongol emperors after Kublai.

6 _Cultural_

During the Mongol epoch a large number of the Chinese scholars withdrew

from official life. They lived in retirement among their friends, and

devoted themselves mainly to the pursuit of the art of poetry, which had

been elaborated in the Later Sung epoch, without themselves arriving at

any important innovations in form. Their poems were built up

meticulously on the rules laid down by the various schools; they were

routine productions rather than the outcome of any true poetic

inspiration. In the realm of prose the best achievements were the

"miscellaneous notes" already mentioned, collections of learned essays.

The foreigners who wrote in Chinese during this epoch are credited with

no better achievements by the Chinese historians of literature. Chief of

them were a statesman named Yeh-lü Ch'u-ts'ai, a Kitan in the service of

the Mongols; and a Mongol named T'o-t'o (Tokto). The former accompanied

Genghiz Khan in his great campaign against Turkestan, and left a very

interesting account of his journeys, together with many poems about

Samarkand and Turkestan. His other works were mainly letters and poems

addressed to friends. They differ in no way in style from the Chinese

literary works of the time, and are neither better nor worse than those

works. He shows strong traces of Taoist influence, as do other

contemporary writers. We know that Genghiz Khan was more or less

inclined to Taoism, and admitted a Taoist monk to his camp (1221-1224).

This man's account of his travels has also been preserved, and with the

numerous European accounts of Central Asia written at this time it forms

an important source. The Mongol Tokto was the head of an historical

commission that issued the annals of the Sung dynasty, the Kitan, and

the Juchên dynasty. The annals of the Sung dynasty became the largest of

all the historical works, but they were fiercely attacked from the first

by Chinese critics on account of their style and their hasty

composition, and, together with the annals of the Mongol dynasty, they

are regarded as the worst of the annals preserved. Tokto himself is less

to blame for this than the circumstance that he was compelled to work in

great haste, and had not time to put into order the overwhelming mass of

his material.

The greatest literary achievements, however, of the Mongol period belong

beyond question to the theatre (or, rather, opera). The emperors were

great theatre-goers, and the wealthy private families were also

enthusiasts, so that gradually people of education devoted themselves to

writing librettos for the operas, where in the past this work had been

left to others. Most of the authors of these librettos remained unknown:

they used pseudonyms, partly because playwriting was not an occupation

that befitted a scholar, and partly because in these works they

criticized the conditions of their day. These works are divided in

regard to style into two groups, those of the "southern" and the

"northern" drama; these are distinguished from each other in musical

construction and in their intellectual attitude: in general the northern

works are more heroic and the southern more sentimental, though there

are exceptions. The most famous northern works of the Mongol epoch are

_P'i-p'a-chi_ ("The Story of a Lute"), written about 1356, probably by

Kao Ming, and _Chao-shih ku-erh-chi_ ("The Story of the Orphan of Chao

"), a work that enthralled Voltaire, who made a paraphrase of it; its

author was the otherwise unknown Chi Chün-hsiang. One of the most famous

of the southern dramas is _Hsi-hsiang-chi_ ("The Romance of the Western

Chamber"), by Wang Shih-fu and Kuan Han-ch'ing. Kuan lived under the

Juchên dynasty as a physician, and then among the Mongols. He is said to

have written fifty-eight dramas, many of which became famous.

In the fine arts, foreign influence made itself felt during the Mongol

epoch much more than in literature. This was due in part to the Mongol

rulers' predilection for the Lamaism that was widespread in their

homeland. Lamaism is a special form of Buddhism which developed in

Tibet, where remnants of the old national Tibetan cult (_Bon_) were

fused with Buddhism into a distinctive religion. During the rise of the

Mongols this religion, which closely resembled the shamanism of the

ancient Mongols, spread in Mongolia, and through the Mongols it made

great progress in China, where it had been insignificant until their

time. Religious sculpture especially came entirely under Tibetan

influence (particularly that of the sculptor Aniko, who came from Nepal,

where he was born in 1244). This influence was noticeable in the Chinese

sculptor Liu Yüan; after him it became stronger and stronger, lasting

until the Manchu epoch.

In architecture, too, Indian and Tibetan influence was felt in this

period. The Tibetan pagodas came into special prominence alongside the

previously known form of pagoda, which has many storeys, growing smaller

as they go upward; these towers originally contained relics of Buddha

and his disciples. The Tibetan pagoda has not this division into

storeys, and its lower part is much larger in circumference, and often

round. To this day Peking is rich in pagodas in the Tibetan style.

The Mongols also developed in China the art of carpet-knotting, which to

this day is found only in North China in the zone of northern influence.

There were carpets before these, but they were mainly of felt. The

knotted carpets were produced in imperial workshops--only, of course,

for the Mongols, who were used to carpets. A further development

probably also due to West Asian influence was that of cloisonné

technique in China in this period.

Painting, on the other hand, remained free from alien influence, with

the exception of the craft painting for the temples. The most famous

painters of the Mongol epoch were Chao Mêng-fu (also called Chao

Chung-mu, 1254-1322), a relative of the deposed imperial family of the

Sung dynasty, and Ni Tsan (1301-1374).

(B) The Ming Epoch (1368-1644)

1 _Start. National feeling_

It was necessary to give special attention to the reasons for the

downfall of Mongol rule in China, in order to make clear the cause and

the character of the Ming epoch that followed it. It is possible that

the erroneous impression might be gained that the Mongol epoch in China

was entirely without merits, and that the Mongol rule over China

differed entirely from the Mongol rule over other countries of Asia.

Chinese historians have no good word to say of the Mongol epoch and

avoid the subject as far as they can. It is true that the union of the

national Mongol culture with Chinese culture, as envisaged by the Mongol

rulers, was not a sound conception, and consequently did not endure for

long. Nevertheless, the Mongol epoch in China left indelible traces, and

without it China's further development would certainly have taken a

different course.

The many popular risings during the latter half of the period of Mongol

rule in China were all of a purely economic and social character, and at

first they were not directed at all against the Mongols as

representatives of an alien people. The rising under Chu Yüan-chang,

which steadily gained impetus, was at first a purely social movement;

indeed, it may fairly be called revolutionary. Chu was of the humblest

origin; he became a monk and a peasant leader at one and the same time.

Only three times in Chinese history has a man of the peasantry become

emperor and founder of a dynasty. The first of these three men founded

the Han dynasty; the second founded the first of the so-called "Five

Dynasties" in the tenth century; Chu was the third.

Not until the Mongols had answered Chu's rising with a tightening of the

nationality laws did the revolutionary movement become a national

movement, directed against the foreigners as such. And only when Chu

came under the influence of the first people of the gentry who joined

him, whether voluntarily or perforce, did what had been a revolutionary

movement become a struggle for the substitution of one dynasty for

another without interfering with the existing social system. Both these

points were of the utmost importance to the whole development of the

Ming epoch.

The Mongols were driven out fairly quickly and without great difficulty.

The Chinese drew from the ease of their success a sense of superiority

and a clear feeling of nationalism. This feeling should not be

confounded with the very old feeling of Chinese as a culturally superior

group according to which, at least in theory though rarely in practice,

every person who assimilated Chinese cultural values and traits was a

"Chinese". The roots of nationalism seem to lie in the Southern Sung

period, growing up in the course of contacts with the Juchên and

Mongols; but the discriminatory laws of the Mongols greatly fostered

this feeling. From now on, it was regarded a shame to serve a foreigner

as official, even if he was a ruler of China.

2 _Wars against Mongols and Japanese_

It had been easy to drive the Mongols out of China, but they were never

really beaten in their own country. On the contrary, they seem to have

regained strength after their withdrawal from China: they reorganized

themselves and were soon capable of counter-thrusts, while Chinese

offensives had as a rule very little success, and at all events no

decisive success. In the course of time, however, the Chinese gained a

certain influence over Turkestan, but it was never absolute, always

challenged. After the Mongol empire had fallen to pieces, small states

came into existence in Turkestan, for a long time with varying fortunes;

the most important one during the Ming epoch was that of Hami, until in

1473 it was occupied by the city-state of Turfan. At this time China

actively intervened in the policy of Turkestan in a number of combats

with the Mongols. As the situation changed from time to time, these

city-states united more or less closely with China or fell away from her

altogether. In this period, however, Turkestan was of no military or

economic importance to China.

In the time of the Ming there also began in the east and south the

plague of Japanese piracy. Japanese contacts with the coastal provinces

of China (Kiangsu, Chekiang and Fukien) had a very long history:

pilgrims from Japan often went to these places in order to study

Buddhism in the famous monasteries of Central China; businessmen sold at

high prices Japanese swords and other Japanese products here and bought

Chinese products; they also tried to get Chinese copper coins which had

a higher value in Japan. Chinese merchants co-operated with Japanese

merchants and also with pirates in the guise of merchants. Some Chinese

who were or felt persecuted by the government, became pirates

themselves. This trade-piracy had started already at the end of the Sung

dynasty, when Japanese navigation had become superior to Korean shipping

which had in earlier times dominated the eastern seaboard. These

conditions may even have been one of the reasons why the Mongols tried

to subdue Japan. As early as 1387 the Chinese had to begin the building

of fortifications along the eastern and southern coasts of the country;

The Japanese attacks now often took the character of organized raids: a

small, fast-sailing flotilla would land in a bay, as far as possible

without attracting notice; the soldiers would march against the nearest

town, generally overcoming it, looting, and withdrawing. The defensive

measures adopted from time to time during the Ming epoch were of little

avail, as it was impossible effectively to garrison the whole coast.

Some of the coastal settlements were transferred inland, to prevent the

Chinese from co-operating with the Japanese, and to give the Japanese so

long a march inland as to allow time for defensive measures. The

Japanese pirates prevented the creation of a Chinese navy in this period

by their continual threats to the coastal cities in which the shipyards

lay. Not until much later, at a time of unrest in Japan in 1467, was

there any peace from the Japanese pirates.

The Japanese attacks were especially embarrassing for the Chinese

government for one other reason. Large armies had to be kept all along

China's northern border, from Manchuria to Central Asia. Food supplies

could not be collected in north China which did not have enough

surplusses. Canal transportation from Central China was not reliable, as

the canals did not always have enough water and were often clogged by

hundreds of ships. And even if canals were used, grain still had to be

transported by land from the end of the canals to the frontier. The Ming

government therefore, had organized an overseas flotilla of grain ships

which brought grain from Central China directly to the front in

Liao-tung and Manchuria. And these ships, vitally important, were so

often attacked by the pirates, that this plan later had to be given up

again.

These activities along the coast led the Chinese to the belief that

basically all foreigners who came by ships were "barbarians"; when

towards the end of the Ming epoch the Japanese were replaced by

Europeans who did not behave much differently and were also

pirate-merchants, the nations of Western Europe, too, were regarded as

"barbarians" and were looked upon with great suspicion. On the other

side, continental powers, even if they were enemies, had long been

regarded as "states", sometimes even as equals. Therefore, when at a

much later time the Chinese came into contact with Russians, their

attitude towards them was similar to that which they had taken towards

other Asian continental powers.

3 _Social legislation within the existing order_

At the time when Chu Yüan-chang conquered Peking, in 1368, becoming the

recognized emperor of China (Ming dynasty), it seemed as though he would

remain a revolutionary in spite of everything. His first laws were

directed against the rich. Many of the rich were compelled to migrate to

the capital, Nanking, thus losing their land and the power based on it.

Land was redistributed among poor peasants; new land registers were also

compiled, in order to prevent the rich from evading taxation. The number

of monks living in idleness was cut down and precisely determined; the

possessions of the temples were reduced, land exempted from taxation

being thus made taxable--all this, incidentally, although Chu had

himself been a monk! These laws might have paved the way to social

harmony and removed the worst of the poverty of the Mongol epoch. But

all this was frustrated in the very first years of Chu's reign. The laws

were only half carried into effect or not at all, especially in the

hinterland of the present Shanghai. That region had been conquered by

Chu at the very beginning of the Ming epoch; in it lived the wealthy

landowners who had already been paying the bulk of the taxes under the

Mongols. The emperor depended on this wealthy class for the financing of

his great armies, and so could not be too hard on it.

Chu Yüan-chang and his entourage were also unable to free themselves

from some of the ideas of the Mongol epoch. Neither Chu, nor anybody

else before and long after him discussed the possibility of a form of

government other than that of a monarchy. The first ever to discuss this

question, although very timidly, was Huang Tsung-hsi (1610-1695), at the

end of the Ming dynasty. Chu's conception of an emperor was that of an

absolute monarch, master over life and death of his subjects; it was

formed by the Mongol emperors with their magnificence and the huge

expenditure of their life in Peking; Chu was oblivious of the fact that

Peking had been the capital of a vast empire embracing almost the whole

of Asia, and expenses could well be higher than for a capital only of

China. It did not occur to Chu and his supporters that they could have

done without imperial state and splendour; on the contrary, they felt

compelled to display it. At first Chu personally showed no excessive

signs of this tendency, though they emerged later; but he conferred

great land grants on all his relatives, friends, and supporters; he

would give to a single person land sufficient for 20,000 peasant

families; he ordered the payment of state pensions to members of the

imperial family, just as the Mongols had done, and the total of these

pension payments was often higher than the revenue of the region

involved. For the capital alone over eight million _shih_ of grain had

to be provided in payment of pensions--that is to say, more than 160,000

tons! These pension payments were in themselves a heavy burden on the

state; not only that, but they formed a difficult transport problem! We

have no close figure of the total population at the beginning of the

Ming epoch; about 1500 it is estimated to have been 53,280,000, and this

population had to provide some 266,000,000 _shih_ in taxes. At the

beginning of the Ming epoch the population and revenue must, however,

have been smaller.

The laws against the merchants and the restrictions under which the

craftsmen worked, remained essentially as they had been under the Sung,

but now the remaining foreign merchants of Mongol time also fell under

these laws, and their influence quickly diminished. All craftsmen, a

total of some 300,000 men with families, were still registered and had

to serve the government in the capital for three months once every three

years; others had to serve ten days per month, if they lived close by.

They were a hereditary caste as were the professional soldiers, and not

allowed to change their occupation except by special imperial

permission. When a craftsman or soldier died, another family member had

to replace him; therefore, families of craftsmen were not allowed to

separate into small nuclear families, in which there might not always be

a suitable male. Yet, in an empire as large as that of the Ming, this

system did not work too well: craftsmen lost too much time in travelling

and often succeeded in running away while travelling. Therefore, from

1505 on, they had to pay a tax instead of working for the government,

and from then on the craftsmen became relatively free.

4 _Colonization and agricultural developments_

As already mentioned, the Ming had to keep a large army along the

northern frontiers. But they also had to keep armies in south China,

especially in Yünnan. Here, the Mongol invasions of Burma and Thailand

had brought unrest among the tribes, especially the Shan. The Ming did

not hold Burma but kept it in a loose dependency as "tributary nation".

In order to supply armies so far away from all agricultural surplus

centres, the Ming resorted to the old system of "military colonies"

which seems to have been invented in the second century B.C. and is

still used even today (in Sinkiang). Soldiers were settled in camps

called _ying_, and therefore there are so many place names ending with

_ying_ in the outlying areas of China. They worked as state farmers and

accumulated surplusses which were used in case of war in which these

same farmers turned soldiers again. Many criminals were sent to these

state farms, too. This system, especially in south China, transformed

territories formerly inhabited by native tribes or uninhabited, into

solidly Chinese areas. In addition to these military colonies, a steady

stream of settlers from Central China and the coast continued to move

into Kwangtung and Hunan provinces. They felt protected by the army

against attacks by natives. Yet Ming texts are full of reports on major

and minor clashes with the natives, from Kiangsi and Fukien to Kwangtung

and Kwangsi.

But the production of military colonies was still not enough to feed the

armies, and the government in Chu's time resorted to a new design. It

promised to give merchants who transported grain from Central China to

the borders, government salt certificates. Upon the receipt, the

merchants could acquire a certain amount of salt and sell it with high

profits. Soon, these merchants began to invest some of their capital in

local land which was naturally cheap. They then attracted farmers from

their home countries as tenants. The rent of the tenants, paid in form

of grain, was then sold to the army, and the merchant's gains

increased. Tenants could easily be found: the density of population in

the Yangtze plains had further increased since the Sung time. This

system of merchant colonization did not last long, because soon, in

order to curb the profits of the merchants, money was given instead of

salt certificates, and the merchants lost interest in grain transports.

Thus, grain prices along the frontiers rose and the effectiveness of the

armies was diminished.

Although the history of Chinese agriculture is as yet only partially

known, a number of changes in this field, which began to show up from

Sung time on, seem to have produced an "agricultural revolution" in Ming

time. We have already mentioned the Sung attempts to increase production

near the big cities by deep-lying fields, cultivation on and in lakes.

At the same time, there was an increase in cultivation of mountain

slopes by terracing and by distributing water over the terraces in

balanced systems. New irrigation machines, especially the so-called

Persian wheel, were introduced in the Ming time. Perhaps the most

important innovation, however, was the introduction of rice from

Indo-China's kingdom Champa in 1012 into Fukien from where it soon

spread. This rice had three advantages over ordinary Chinese rice: it

was drought-resistant and could, therefore, be planted in areas with

poor or even no irrigation. It had a great productivity, and it could be

sown very early in the year. At first it had the disadvantage that it

had a vegetation period of a hundred days. But soon, the Chinese

developed a quick-growing Champa rice, and the speediest varieties took

only sixty days from transplantation into the fields to the harvest.

This made it possible to grow two rice harvests instead of only one and

more than doubled the production. Rice varieties which grew again after

being cut and produced a second, but very much smaller harvest,

disappeared from now on. Furthermore, fish were kept in the ricefields

and produced not only food for the farmers but also fertilized the

fields, so that continuous cultivation of ricefields without any

decrease in fertility became possible. Incidentally, fish control the

malaria mosquitoes; although the Chinese did not know this fact, large

areas in South China which had formerly been avoided by Chinese because

of malaria, gradually became inhabitable.

The importance of alternating crops was also discovered and from now on,

the old system of fallow cultivation was given up and continuous

cultivation with, in some areas, even more than one harvest per field

per year, was introduced even in wheat-growing areas. Considering that

under the fallow system from one half to one third of all fields

remained uncultivated each year, the increase in production under the

new system must have been tremendous. We believe that the population

revolution which in China started about 1550, was the result of this

earlier agrarian revolution. From the eighteenth century on we get

reports on depletion of fields due to wrong application of the new

system.

Another plant deeply affected Chinese agriculture: cotton. It is often

forgotten that, from very early times, the Chinese in the south had used

kapok and similar fibres, and that the cocoons of different kinds of

worms had been used for silk. Real cotton probably came from Bengal over

South-East Asia first to the coastal provinces of China and spread

quickly into Fukien and Kwangtung in Sung time.

On the other side, cotton reached China through Central Asia, and

already in the thirteenth century we find it in Shensi in north-western

China. Farmers in the north could in many places grow cotton in summer

and wheat in winter, and cotton was a high-priced product. They ginned

the cotton with iron rods; a mechanical cotton gin was introduced not

until later. The raw cotton was sold to merchants who transported it

into the industrial centre of the time, the Yangtze valley, and who

re-exported cotton cloth to the north. Raw cotton, loosened by the

string of the bow (a method which was known since Sung), could now in

the north also be used for quilts and padded winter garments.

5 _Commercial and industrial developments_

Intensivation and modernization of agriculture led to strong population

increases especially in the Yangtze valley from Sung time on. Thus, in

this area commerce and industry also developed most quickly.

Urbanization was greatest here. Nanking, the new Ming capital, grew

tremendously because of the presence of the court and administration,

and even when later the capital was moved, Nanking continued to remain

the cultural capital of China. The urban population needed textiles and

food. From Ming time on, fashions changed quickly as soon as government

regulations which determined colour and material of the dress of each

social class were relaxed or as soon as they could be circumvented by

bribery or ingenious devices. Now, only factories could produce the

amounts which the consumers wanted. We hear of many men who started out

with one loom and later ended up with over forty looms, employing many

weavers. Shanghai began to emerge as a centre of cotton cloth

production. A system of middle-men developed who bought raw cotton and

raw silk from the producers and sold it to factories.

Consumption in the Yangtze cities raised the value of the land around

the cities. The small farmers who were squeezed out, migrated to the

south. Absentee landlords in cities relied partly on migratory, seasonal

labour supplied by small farmers from Chekiang who came to the Yangtze

area after they had finished their own harvest. More and more,

vegetables and mulberries or cotton were planted in the vicinity of the

cities. As rice prices went up quickly a large organization of rice

merchants grew up. They ran large ships up to Hankow where they bought

rice which was brought down from Hunan in river boats by smaller

merchants. The small merchants again made contracts with the local

gentry who bought as much rice from the producers as they could and sold

it to these grain merchants. Thus, local grain prices went up and we

hear of cases where the local population attacked the grain boats in

order to prevent the depletion of local markets.