Chinese History for White People - Five Dynasties and Song Dynasty

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period

There's not much of interest to say about this 72 year interregnum. In the final years of Tang dynasty, the government was too inept and helpless to respond to a series of natural disasters—considered a portent of the Mandate of Heaven. A series of rebellions broke out, but none were comparable in scale to the An Lushan rebellion. Yet historians consider the Huang Chao rebellion to have ultimately dealt the deathblow. Huang Chao managed to ravage south China, and, in the Guangzhou massacre, committed genocide against all foreign peoples. A contemporary source claims 8 million deaths. Although it was successfully suppressed, the dynasty only managed to limp along for a for a couple more decades while bandits and pirates ran amok unchallenged. The warlord who suppressed the Huang Chao rebellion, Zhu Wen¹, seized and executed the royal family, deposed the Emperor in 907AD (poisoning him a year later), and founded the Liang Dynasty.

Another warlord, Li Cunxu², wouldn't abide the usurpation, and crowned himself the continuation of Tang. He managed to topple the Liang dynasty in a single year³, but while he was a great warlord, he was a terrible ruler. He'd only last 3 out of his Dynasty's 13 years himself, before another warlord—Shi Jingtang—would overthrow him and start the “Later Jin”⁴ dynasty. They managed to last 11 years before being invaded and conquered by the Khitan⁵, who promptly Sinicized themselves as much as possible and founded the Liao dynasty. Liao is not considered one of the 5 Chinese dynasties though—it's a foreign nation that continued to exist in parallel to the Song dynasty for centuries.

Unwilling to bow to a foreign emperor, yet another warlord—Liu Zhiyuan⁶—declared himself Emperor of the Later Han Dynasty. This chuckle-fuck lasted all 4 years before falling to a coup by Guo Wei⁷. Thus began the Later Zhou Dynasty, which managed to repel Liao invasions and make substantial progress on reunifying China. The dynasty ends with the coup that begins Song Dynasty.

While North China played musical chair with the Imperial throne, the warlords of South China split the territory into various⁸ relatively stable kingdoms. They were also relatively prosperous, addressing a currency shortage by developing bank drafts and certificates of deposit. For the sake of completion, the Ten Kingdoms and their conquerors were Wu Yue (Song), Yang Wu (coup, became Southern Tang), Southern Tang (Later Zhou Dynasty/Song), Min (Southern Tang), Ma Chu (Song), Jingnan (Song), Former Shu (Late Tang Dynasty), Later Shu (Song), Southern Han (Song), and Northern Han (Song).

Although not counted among the 10 Kingdoms and not formally declaring itself sovereign for another century, I think it's parsimonious to mention the Western Xia Kingdom of the Tangut here as well. The warlord in the silk road region did petty raids and politics until their dynasty eventually formalized into a Tangut nation that would last centuries until it was thoroughly genocided and largely erased from history by Genghis Khan.

Song Dynasty

Song dynasty is difficult to write about. Not because it was especially more tragic than the An Lushan rebellion, but because its faults are so culturally bizarre that it's hard to write them in a way that even resembles human reasoning. You'll see what I mean shortly.

Zhao Guangyin, Captain of the Later Zhou Imperial Guard, performed an effortless coup—founding the Song Dynasty. He saw the problems of too much military power and the utter clusterfuck of the endless military coups of the Five Dynasties era, so he laid down the law of raising the position of scholars and demeaning the position of military officers so that such a thing would never happen again. His most important reform was restoring control of the military directly to the Emperor, doing away with the military governor system that the Tang had resorted to. He did this by inviting all his generals to a banquet, and convinced all of them to peacefully retire atop a giant heap of cash—allowing him to perform the necessary restructuring. With his own military now firmly under his control with far less risk of coup and rebellion, he then proceeded to unite all of south China⁹. He also had every “Art of War” ever written compiled into a grand “Encyclopedia of War”—an undertaking so large it wouldn't be finished until the third Song Emperor.

At some point Guangyin asked to see his brother, Zhao Guangyi, in private—dismissing all the servants. One of the servants reports seeing a man’s shadow swinging something, and another reports hearing the sound of an axe. The next day, the Emperor was found dead, and his brother insisted he died of disease. How Guangyin died is considered one of the Ten Great Mysteries of Chinese history. At any rate, Guangyi invited a minister who was banished for corruption to the capital, who then claimed to have a sealed envelope¹⁰ from the Emperor naming Guangyi Emperor instead of the Crown Prince. Guangyi¹¹ then named that minister Chancellor.

It was actually Guanyi who finished uniting China—or at least as much of it as Song Dynasty was ever going to. The further reaches of Tang's former territories—Vietnam, Korea, the silk road—were all completely beyond reach. Much of the north was still held by the Khitan Liao, and despite several attempts Guanyi was unable to break their hold within his own lifetime.

Zhao Heng was the third Emperor of Song, and he took the “reduce status of the military” policy to something more like “all soldiers are bastards”—except more literally than any Antifa member ever meant it, and the bigotry intensified with each subsequent generation. By the end of Northern Song, “defund the military” was actual state policy, and soldiers had to get unit designation facial tattoos¹² that marked them as lower status than actual beggars and whores. Despite these disincentives, it was an all volunteer military.

And despite all that, at its peak Song fielded an army of 1.25 million¹³ and managed to defeat the Liao. In the resulting peace treaty, Heng agreed to recognize Liao as the superior nation, pay the Liao 100,000¹⁴ taels of silver and 200,000 bolts of silk every year, as well as cede to them the entire province of Xiong. Since he was paying 30 million taels per year to fund the military, Heng considered this a fantastic deal—so great that he thought himself worthy of making a sacrifice on Mount Tai¹⁵. The peace would technically last a century, but every time Song found themselves vulnerable, the Liao would amass an army at the border and demand to renegotiate the treaty for increased tribute.

So how did Song field such a massive army? Because they had ~80% of global GDP¹⁶. Every other nation in the world combined would only be a fourth of Song's wealth. Some of this was the rest of the world not having their shit together at all¹⁷, but nonetheless what was Song doing right? Mostly just implementing Tang dynasty's scholar meritocracy¹⁸ before it got completely fucked by warlords. That, and it got implemented on an unprecedented scale with a population that had thoroughly recovered¹⁹—peaking at around 120 million. This is a hard pill to swallow for Eurocentric historians, but it's not especially unusual when you do the math on Asian populations. Rice is magic—and Song²⁰ had just imported drought resistant fast growing Indian rice as well, and they immediately planted it as close to the northern border²¹ as possible—as rice fields are impenetrable for cavalry.

Despite losing the silk road to Western Xia, trade reached record highs during Song as well²². The maritime silk road became the locus of trade, starting in Quanzhou, at the time the largest harbor in the world. Song coinage was the official currency of Liao, Xia, Korea, and Japan—and its stable value made it a popular investment for all manner of foreign merchant. This actually furthered adoption of paper currency within Song as it was difficult to produce enough bronze coinage²³ for a global market—as well as some hiccups with inflation as the consequences of printing money hadn't fully been realized at this time. Song trade also oversaw significant legal development in commercial and contract law.

Song was so preposterously wealthy that I think they were genuinely attempting a new kind of foreign policy. China at this point had only been successfully invaded by barbarians twice²⁴, but the history of rebellions, warlords, and coup d'etats filled libraries. Not having a military must have seemed genuinely safer²⁵ than having one, especially when paying foreign invaders beyond their wildest imagination was orders of magnitude cheaper than funding your own military enough to keep them loyal. This policy becomes especially indefensible when you start repeatedly paying your invaders in the very warhorses they are currently using to invade you, but Song saw it through to the end.

Song was wealthy enough to outlaw infanticide—with the government taking in all unwanted children, and offering 1000 coins per month and 3 litres of rice to anyone who would adopt them. Their public schools not only waived all tuition, but had free dorms, free food, and an additional stipend of 2 litres of rice and 20 coins per month. In 1000AD they had achieved the utopian dream of “every household could recite poetry, every man knew the philosophies of Confucius”.

Their wealth also led to tolerating inefficient government bloat on an unprecedented scale²⁶. Many scholars wound up in “false minister” positions, where they were given title and wages but no actual responsibility or work. Tang's Equal-Field system couldn't be replicated at this population, so nationalized land was given to provincial magistrates for them to rent as a side business, in hopes that wealthy ministers have less incentive to be corrupt. But since different provinces got different amounts of land, many magistrates felt slighted and illegally seized land²⁷ and charged exploitative rent. Because the scholar ministers were such vastly higher status, it was nearly impossible to hold them accountable at a court ran by their scholar peers. But because Song was so wealthy, it could afford to ignore the dead loss of corruption for over a century.

Not all scholars were useless of course. Notable personages include Song Ci, who pioneered the field of forensic science²⁸, writing a textbook on autopsies and coroner's conduct. Hydraulic Engineer Qiao Weiyue invented the pound lock²⁹ for the Grand Canal, reaching a height of 42 metres. Jia Xian made Jia Xian's triangle³⁰, which he used to compute square and cube roots. Su Song was a polymath who made a water powered clocktower and astrolabe with an endless chain drive (including a full schematic), made various star charts and terrestrial atlases, and wrote a pharmacological manual on identifying medicinal plants and minerals. But the most impressive was Shen Kuo—a polymath comparable to Zhuge Liang and Von Neumann who was the pinnacle of his field in every single field he encountered making advances centuries in advance of the west—many of which wouldn't be discovered until the 19th or 20th centuries. And it's pretty disgusting you've never heard of him (neither had I).

Shen Kuo scored 6th in the national exam, and was assigned to the Astronomy division of the Imperial Library, where he discovered his colleagues were lazy and making no advances. So he revised the entire department. The Empire was so impressed they decided to rotate him through various departments to see what improvements he could make in each one, more or less expecting him to be a lifelong career expert at any random specialty they threw him at. So he proceeded to revolutionize archaeology, hydraulic engineering, optics, acoustics, chemistry, medicine, geology, meteorology, economics, diplomacy, cartography, military technology, and military strategy. As a diplomat, he managed to convince the Liao to return some Chinese territory, and as a military commander he led several successful campaigns against the Xia taking over half a dozen cities. But when they counterattacked, his soldiers refused orders to abandon an indefensible city, resulting in around 50,000 losses. Political rivals in court held Shen accountable regardless, put him under house arrest, and gave the Xia back all their territory even though most of it could be firmly held. Although Shen was later pardoned, after that he was too salty, and retired from government work to tinker and publish at his own leisure.

Covering Shen Kuo's advances properly is a subject worthy of its own book³¹. In brief summary, in the 11th century he developed:

Maths: Chords and arcs use in trigonometry, as well as solving circle packing problems, and large number notation.

Physics: Induced artificial magnetism, developed four new designs of compass; proved magnetic north is distinct from geographic poles, developed the idea of cavitation and vacuums.

Astronomy: Charted the path of planets, revised calendar that noted 51 second variations in day length, observed tides were linked to lunar position.

Optics: Refined lens making technology and made telescopes. Calculated the curvature of light as it entered the atmosphere from the vacuum of space. Explained rainbows as prismatic refraction. Developed a filter for UV light to detect blood (Judge Song Ci was a student of his). Invented a bronze mirror projector.

Acoustics: Used cavitation for acoustic engineering. Described sonic resonance. Linked the timbre of instruments to material and shape.

Hydraulic Engineering: Drained swamps to reclaim as farmland, developed the concept of sea level and how to measure altitude relative to it

Cartography: Created a complete atlas of China, developed top-down topographic maps, sculpted raised-relief maps for the Emperor

Geology: Deduced the Huabei plains used to be underwater, that the cliffs of Yandong were caused by water erosion, and that climate had changed based on bamboo fossil records.

Meteorology: Described the phenomena of tornadoes³², under what conditions they occurred and how to estimate their danger

Chemistry: Identified Copper-Sulfate, its use as fertilizer and disinfectant, how to extract copper from it, and blueprints for a machine to synthesize it. Also named petroleum (in Chinese), and made an alternative ink from it to reduce pine tar use and deforestation

Medicine: Did replication studies on various drugs, published in two volumes. Refined methods for extracting hormones from animals, recommended mineral water

Military Science: Made various advances censored by the CCP, from which we can infer they were related to gunpowder technology and are still relevant today. Increased Song Dynasty weapon production by a literal order of magnitude. Wrote a guide to defending cities and border integrating new military technology (earthworks defenses against gunpowder weapons, we presume).

Economics: Wrote a guide to solve the problem of inflation by limiting cash printing, establishing a salt standard, regulating the price of salt, and phasing out all bronze currency³³. Described monetary theory—how money velocity and investment are necessary for prosperity; wrote about the importance of the import-export ratio in keeping currency stable. Wrote about stimulus benefits of paying labor instead of conscript labor.

Musicology: Wrote extensively on music theory, scales, structure of music, use of acoustics in musicology

Poetry: Critiqued contemporary poetry, but wrote his reviews in poetic verse itself, which was praised by contemporary poets.

Archaeology: Criticized archeologists who didn't do reconstructions using period methodology. Wrote a history of the block-type printing press and its inventor, wrote a guide on Chinese architecture, describing many buildings that no longer survived even by his own time.

Reference for yourself when the west made equivalent discoveries, but almost all of these are post-enlightenment discoveries in Europe. Shen Kuo didn't simply write theories or speculations either—almost all of his insights he was able to turn into concrete technological advances after only a very short period of study. To some extent, this was still work on the backs of giants—freeloading academics not withstanding. At least some scholars were flourishing in their element.

Meanwhile, the resentment between the Emperor and the military grew every day. From the military's POV, this is very reasonable—the military took advantage of every time they were absolutely needed (to defend the border or to defeat a village of bandits) to hold the government hostage for the next 10 years of their pay, because if they let this opportunity go, they might never be paid at all. And people deserted all the time, because fuck this shit. Even those that stayed—what motivation do they have to risk their lives for their country, when their country clearly gave zero shits about them? If it were you, you'd throw down your weapons and run as soon as battle started too, in the day and age where a small cut could lead to lethal infection.

And from the government's POV, well, it wasn’t like the military had done a whole lot in the last couple of decades, and now they want the next ten years of their salary up front before they even fight? Why would I do that, when I know that as soon as the gongs of battle start ringing, most of the time, they immediately run? If I'm going to end up paying the enemy for peace anyways, I might as well just start by doing that.

And this was sustainable so long as all the barbarians wanted was money. Song practically had infinite money. But eventually, once those barbarians had bought all their weapons, fattened all their horses, and swelled their ambition...

During the reign of Zhao Ji, the eighth Emperor of Song, the Jin³⁴ invaded. It was a war that made no sense. They were going up against the Song who had thirty times their military, had a hundred times their economy, had far more advanced fortresses and weaponry, and the Jin hadn't even bothered at all to get their logistics together. An unsupported Jin army began marching on Song and every fortress they came upon instantly abandoned its walls, opened its gates, and surrendered³⁵. Every time they'd run out of supplies while marching, they'd write a letter to the Song Emperor demanding money, grain, and horses, promising to leave if their demands are met. And no matter how many times they went back on that promise, it worked every time. They marched with next to zero resistance right up to the walls of the Imperial Capital itself.

Finally, Zhao Ji panicked. Now, it was too late to fight. Sure, he had a military force in the city that outnumbered the Jin four to one. Sure, they had seven layers of walls and moats and cannons that the Jin did not. Sure, the Jin had zero logistics and would starve themselves out in a couple of days if you cut them off. Sure, you had some of the most competent military generals in your city, eager to prove themselves once and for all...

“But, Your Majesty,” your scholar speaks, “You can't trust your dastardly generals! They're exaggerating the threat of the Jin to seize power! Once you give them command, are they ever going to give it back? They, like all those military generals before them, simply want the throne for themselves! They'll do far more damage than the Jin, who merely want women, wine, and gold. And we have plenty of women, wine, and gold.”

The Jin sat outside the capital and made their usual demands. And itt was the Song Emperor who ransacked people's houses. It was the Song Emperor who dragged women out kicking and screaming and offered them to the Jin. It was the Song Emperor who sentenced people's entire families to death if they dared to raise a finger against the Jin. And after every valuable had been scraped out of every residence in the capital. After every woman had been offered to comfort the Jin army, even the Emperor's own daughters and concubines. After every general who might have offered resistance had been put to death for proposing action. The Jin were still not satisfied.

When they finally entered the city, Zhao Ji panicked and abdicated his throne to his son to avoid the bad reputation of being the Emperor who lost a dynasty. His son faked a stroke to avoid accepting the crown. None of it mattered. The entire imperial family was captured, including both of the Emperors, along with what remained of the civilians in the capital, and they were all taken back to the Jin capital in a death march. The horrors that happened to these captives were not any less than the stories you might read of the death marches in WWII. Plenty of men and children and elderly were eaten. The most beautiful of the imperial princesses were recorded to have died of anal tearing. And when what few souls arrived in the Jin capital, they were paraded through the streets naked and forced to bow in Jin temples to Jin ancestors.

In the aftermath of the Rape of Jing Kang, people became rapidly very conservative³⁶. They were scared to try new ideas. They were scared to go for new reforms. They were uncertain about new technologies. The newer generations stopped believing that they could surpass their forefathers. They demanded ever stricter adherence to Han or Tang dynasty philosophies and customs and rejected new ideas.

As a result of the mass rape of China’s women, this was the start of purity and chastity culture for Chinese women too. This marked the start of women not being allowed to go outside unescorted, not being allowed to sit at the same table as men when eating, not being allowed to remarry after a divorce, or own property.

After the Rape of Jing Kang, the remaining scholars managed to find Zhao Gou, the only son left of Emperor Zhao Ji by a lowly palace maid, who had been sent to keep vigil at the Imperial grave site because he was the Emperor's least favorite child. They crowned him Emperor and retreated entirely out of northern China, ceding yet another half of Chinese territory to the Jin. That is the start of the Southern Song Dynasty.

And that was actually precisely what Northern China needed. The war effort immediately turned around as soon as parliament and the Emperor left and stopped issuing orders. Various resistance forces rose up. Now that they were fighting for their families and their lands, instead of for a far away and resentful Emperor, people were actually motivated. The most remarkable of these was the troops lead by Yue Fei. With no funding from the government, no ability to produce armour or weapons of his own, based solely on a volunteer army, he was able to take back the capital, and then push the Jin all the way back to almost their own capital. He participated in hundreds of battles against the Jin, surviving on donated food and resources by local peasantry. Almost every time, he faced double his number at the very least. Multiple times, he was able to win victories against armies ten times his number. He became so feared by the Jin that he is the single reason that they began to treat POWs with dignity and respect.

And when he was on the verge of total victory, the Jin had an idea.

They wrote to Emperor Zhao Gou, demanding that if he killed Yue Fei, the Jin would retreat and negotiate for peace.

And so Yue Fei was arrested, jailed, tortured for a forced confession which he never gave, and was eventually executed for the official cited reason of, “The Emperor does not need a reason.” This resulted in no change in Jin behavior.

Why did Yue Fei allow himself to be arrested? He knew full well he was being taken to die on false pretenses. Why didn't he use his army to overthrow the pathetically weak Song Emperor? Because he was a man of principle. He had “Loyalty to your Country” tattooed on his back. He refused to rebel because it would prove the Song court was right about military disloyalty.

Why didn't other generals stage a coup against such a pitiful and shameless regime? Because the Chinese system of rotating and retiring generals and mixing soldier units was actually quite effective³⁷. Generals didn't get to know their men well enough to know if they'd risk their families being executed for their act of treason. And having mixed south Chinese men in every unit meant they were less effected by barbarian invasions and had less to gain. Desertion was common, and a much easier alternative to committing to treason. Yue Fei was unique in that he was a resistance leader—mustering his own militia and his own logistics with people he led personally. Any internal threat to the Song died with him.

Eventually, in latter Song Dynasty, there were two more unremarkable attempts to reclaim lost territory and fight the Jin. They were all laughable failures³⁸. Eventually a Mongolian Khan and former slave of the Jin named Temujin conquered the Kingdom of Western Xia, then invaded Jin from the north and took half their territory. Temujin—better known as Ghengis Khan—left³⁹ his rapidly expanding Empire to his son, Ogedei Khan. Ogedei promised the Song ambassador that if they gave him an army of horses and supplies, he would crush the Jin once and for all. Reluctantly the Southern Song agreed, and in 1234AD, Ogedai crushed the Jin. But the Song had no intention of letting the rapidly expanding Mongols build a state on the Yellow River, nor did they humor Mongol diplomats offers of peace. From the start, they assumed there could only be war.

By their own history, the Mongol conquest of Song would be their fiercest campaign—but also their biggest prize. While conquests of the Middle East and Europe proceeded at lightning pace, the vast majority of Mongol forces concentrated themselves in a slow meatgrinder in China-0heavily relying on Jurchen, Tibetan, and Vietnamese conscripts—where they inched their way through a massive entrenched Chinese population⁴⁰. But the Mongols were masters of war, and Southern Song hadn't fully regained the trust or expertise of their military after centuries of abuse. In 1271AD, Kublai Khan crowned himself Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty.

Back to Tang Dynasty

Next to Yuan Dynasty

1. Ironically—or perhaps just optimistically—he had been given the title “Zhu of Perfect Loyalty”.

2. Of Shatuo (Turkish) descent. His father was born Zhuye Keyong. The Tang royal family has bestoed on him their name and title of Prince in honour of his warlor services.

3. That year was 923AD. He had to wait for his father to die before he could enact his ambitions.

4. Remember, we already had a Jin Dynasty in the Wei-Jin portion of the Six Dynasties era. But Dynasties are named by the territory that did the conquering.

5. Believed to be a splinter group of the Xianbei, they spoke their own—now extinct—language. Their nation spanned from modern day Vladivostok to the borders of Xinjiang, and encompassed almost all of Manchuria and Mongolia.

6. Himself of foreign Shatuo descent.

7. Who was actually of Han descent.

8. They call it Ten Kingdoms, but there were an additional 11-12 miscellaneous regimes considered too small and insignificant for recognition.

9. There wasn’t anything particularly brilliant about this conquest, aside from not collapsing to intrigue and gaining momentum with each Kingdom conquered. Note that throughout the Song Dynasty, cavalry was used less as most of the territory used to produce warhorses was lost to Khitan Liao.

10. Even at the time, everybody knew the sealed envelope was complete horseship. There was even a prophecy that Guanyin’s bloodline would someday retake the throne from the usurpers, which did in fact coem to pass after the Rape of Jingkang.

11. Guanyi also decided to rape the Late Zhou dynasty Queen once he became Emperor. He even had a portrait artist watch and make pornographic paintings of the event.

12. This actually started because generals would false claim to have twice as many enlisted as they actually had, since Song was only paying them half the wages they needed to survive. To pass inspection, they’d hire local farmers to pose in uniform for a day. Once the scam was discovered, numbered facial tattoos became mandatory so that it took more commitment to pose as a soldier.

13. Remember, the peak of Tang Dynasty had only 600,000 soldiers.

14. The Emperor was willing to go as high as one million taels a year, but the Minister of Defense told the ambassador he’d execute him regardless of the Emperor’s wishes if he exceeded 300,000 in total tribute. When the Emperor asked how much they negotiated, he said “three”, which the Emperor thought meant three million. He was shocked at the high price, but comforted himself by saying, “Oh well, at least it puts an end to the war.” After all, it was still a tenth of what military spending cost.

15. The Chanyuan Treaty was considered such an absurd and disgraceful treaty for a victor to sign, that the tradition of making a sacrifice on Mount Tai was permanently ruined. They could stomach the tragic fall of Li Long ji, but nobody wanted to be associated with the delusional narcissistic blunders of Zhao Heng.

16. Chinese historians came to this estimate by taking the tax revenue of Song, the tax rate, the taxpaying population, and the value of gold and silver. Song tax records are robust and meticulously detailed. The 80% figure has been criticised a lot, and having looked over the data myself, I admit that it is in fact hard to come up with accurate estimations of exactly how well-enforced taxes were back then or exactly how much contemporary gold was worth. But I don’t think the figure is so far off as to be completely useless.

17. India was doing well, but India was not a single nation. Their total GDP might be more substantial than Chinese historians can grasp, but their records are even more impenetrable than China’s. The Muslim world was properous, but their territory was mostly inhospitable, incapable of immense population, and their economy was based on trading with India and China, so their prosperity was directly linked to the greater powers. Europe, Africa, and other Asian states simply do not compare in terms of technology, population, global trade, or even civic organisation at this early stage.

18. They did add a few tweaks. Top level positions required a recommendation from a senior minister, but if the applicant performed poorly during the internship period, the minister who recommended them would be fined as a penalty. If the applicant did especially well, they’d get a bonus instead!

19. Remember, Tang’s Golden Age was still trying to recover from Sui’s death march and perpetual Ice Age famines.

20. Other agricultural reforms included eliminating the tax on farm equipment, and government loans to farmers that were paid after harvest season, so farmers always had capital to expand when they needed it most. Unfortunately, these loans became predatory by the end of Song Dynasty.

21. Keep in mind Liao still controlled what we’d consider northern China today, so northern Song is basically central modern China.

22. Despite this, trade only accounted for 6% of Song GDP.

23. Around 6 billion coins were minted.

24. The Invasion of the Five Barbarians, and the Liao themselves.

25. From a modern lens, we might even imagine some kind of idealistic humanitarian and pacifist approach, though there’s no record of the Song recording their motivations in this way.

26. The fifth Emperor, Zhao Shu, saw how insane this was and tried to implement economic reform. His ministers refused to carry out his orders, nor did he have a strong enough military to enforce his decree. Shu also saw the Chanyuan Treaty was insane, and tried to break the treaty and conquer the Liao once and for all. Again, the ministers blocked him, and he ended up dying of depression at 38 years old.

27. The local magistrate would just declare you a bandit and have you arrested if you refused to hand your ancestral lands over.

28. He wrote a book about all the cases he had solved, going into the forensic techniques he employed in each. The book was made into one of the most successful Chinese TV dramas of all time, “The Judge of Song Dynasty”. His methods were shockingly modern, including using UV light to detect blood, widespread anatomical dissections, detailed notes on decomposition, and determining premortem vs. postmorterm injury.

29. Americans would brag about coming up with this idea in the 20th century to build the Panama Canal.

30. You know it as Pascal’s triangle, though Pascal was even the firstt in Europe to have developed it.

31. The Wikipedia article on Shen Kuo is actually pretty comprehensive, and I recommend reading it for further detail-though China still records things I don’t see in Wiki’s article.

32. The west refused to acknowledge tornadoes could even occur in the Eastern Hemisphere until the 20th century.

33. The Emperor, alas, largely ignored these recommendations.

34. No relation to any previous Jin Dynasty. They are perhaps bettern known as the Jurchens, who centuries later the Ming would rename as the Manchurians. They were a vassal state north of the Khitan Liao, until they allied with Song to destroy Liao. But during that war, the Jin got a very close look at just how incompetent and underfunded the Song military was, and returned none of north China to Song, and decided they could probably take on Song itself and win.

35. At one point, a fortress with well over 100,000 troops surrendered to 17 Jin soldiers. The Emperor had made a precendent of execuding genrals who “broke the peace treaty” with the Jin (established aftr giving the Jin fresh horses and logistics), so the military had little incentive to resist.

36. For example, the practice of footbinding had its originas here, though initially, it was a minor cosmetic adjustment, not the mutilation it was evolve into as contural conservatism intensified over the next several centuries.

37. Others who had fought at Yue Fei’s side, such as Han Shizhong, were too demoralised to continue fighting for such a corrupt regime.

38. Song was outfitting their soldiers in 40kg thick pig-iron armour that still shattered when struck. Soldiers at the time attributed this to Song’s usual policy of fucking over the military, which furthered morale loss. However, most of the low-carbon iron needed to make quality steel was in the northern territory lost to the Jin.

39. Temujin died in 1227 after contracting the bubonic plaugue in the Kingdom of Western Xia.

40. Song Dynasty, in this century, had the most advanced gunpowder weaponry in the world, fielding not only the arquebus, but also hand mortars and artillery that launched fragmentation shells, and land mines. They also had double-piston pumped petroleum flamethrowers.