Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The great Mongol conqueror Chinggis Khan emerged in 1206 as the
undisputed leader of all pastoral nomadic peoples north of China. He
and his successors in the Mongol world empire intermittently attacked
the Jin dynasty of the Jurchens until it fell in 1234, and after this the
Mongols and the Southern Song shared a border. The Southern Song
government in Hangzhou was probably not very sad to see the
Jurchens defeated, but they occasionally wondered if they would be
the next target of the conquering Mongols. Their worst fears were
realized in the 1250s, when the Mongols began attacking southern
China. The fight with the Mongols was long and hard, but by 1279 the
Mongol leader Khubilai (Kublai Khan) had succeeded in conquering
all of China and proclaiming a new dynasty: the Yuan. This was the
first time in history that all of China, and not just part of it, had fallen
to foreign conquerors.
SONG FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH THE KITAN LIAO,
1005-CA. 1120
In 1988 Jingshen Tao, a prominent historian of Song diplomacy and
foreign relations, published a topic entitled Two Sons of Heaven: Studies
in Sung-Liao Relations. The purpose of his startling title was to point out
that Song foreign relations were unique in Chinese history. The Song
was one of only a very few periods in Chinese history when the
Chinese emperor explicitly and publicly recognized a foreign ruler as
the equal of himself.
Actually, the Song had no choice. The Kitans and their Liao dynasty
to China's north had proven to be more than a match for Song China.
Because the Liao was a militarily powerful state that ruled over a sig-
nificant Chinese population, it demanded to be treated diplomatically
as an equal. The Liao would hear of no pejorative or condescending
references to its regime or people, and its rulers would be called
emperors (huangdi), and not something lesser such as sovereigns
( jun), kings (wang), or lords (zhu). The Liao was also greatly concerned
about its border security and insisted on strictly demarcating exactly
where its territory began and the Song territory ended.
After the Shanyuan Treaty, the Song and the Liao recognized each
other as “brotherly states” and their emperors as familial relations.
These fictitious kinship ties were taken quite seriously, and both states
carefully monitored the changing relationships between their emper-
ors. (For example, an older brother/younger brother relationship
would be altered to an uncle/nephew relationship when the older
brother passed away and a new emperor took his place.) A fairly
