Tang & Song

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Review Early Dynasties

• Shang Dynasty1766-1122

• Zhou Dynasty1122-221

– Last 400yrs - warring states

• Qin Dynasty 221 -206 BCE– Shi huangdi (1st emperor)

– Legalist philosophy

– First coinage, writing system,

– Censorship

– Lasts 15 years

– China- in 2,000 years - 23 dynasties - 9 important ones

Han Dynasty

• Han Dynasty

• (classical era)

– Confucian based society

– Merit system-bureaucrats

– Paper & porcelain invented

• For 400 years after fall of Han - time of great troubles…

– Buddhism becomes popular in this period

Tang Dynasty (618-918)

• Sui unite China - rule for 30 years

• Tang– Increased boundaries

– Heavy dependence on Militarism

Tang Taizong the grand emperor

• Rise of Tang• First emperor &

minister (Wei Zheng)- model of good rule

• Imperial power and moral restraint in theory - in practice hard to maintain

Tang

– Trade & commerce grow

– Printing

– Arts- focus on landscape/nature

– Gun powder

– Woodblock printing

• Capital city Chang’an (eternal peace) 24 mile walled city

• Artistic / commercial & invention continues in Song era

Empress Wu

• Ruled for 50 years - 705– Biggest challenge deal with

scholar/gentry and old aristocrats– Economy remained strong!

• Econ- equal land system• Civil exam system

– Blow to noble class

– Social mobility

• Confucianism as official philosophy = cultural literacy uniting China

• Buddhism - why the backlash?– Around 845...

Tang Xuanzong (The Profound Emperor) and Consort Yang

Decline of Tang - Losing the Mandate of Heaven

• Xuanzong– (Empress Wu’s grandson)

– Patron of arts

– Decline due to lack of morality?

– Blame consort- during rebellion, soldiers want her head - he gives it to them

– He abdicates

• Other reasons for decline– 751 - loss to Arabs at Talas

– Equal land system breaks down

– Poor attention to canal & irrigation systems

– Nomadic attacks

• Moral: China’s view– Centralization = unity

= peace (stability)

– Decentralization = civil war

Song Dynasty 960-1279• Rise - 907 960 saw the fragmentation of

China into five northern dynasties and ten southern kingdoms until Song unify

• CHARACTERISTICS

– Scholar-gentry class dominates

• abuses in civil service exam develop

– Paper money

– Arts & commerce– 11C Needle compass

(3rd century - South pointer)•

Urbanizationrise of mercantile class

• By the end of the Song, 2/3 to 3/4 of the Chinese population is concentrated below the Yangtze.

• The Grand Canal, built during the Sui Dynasty, connects the Yangtze and the Yellow rivers, facilitating the transport of agricultural production from the south to the north and helping to unify the economy of China.

Culture

• Made refinements in the ideal of the universal man

– combined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman

– Song intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics.

– This renewed interest in the Confucianism coincided with the decline of Buddhism

• Seen as offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.

Neo-Confucianism

• The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers was Zhu Xi ( b1130-1200), whose synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late nineteenth century.

• As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi's philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother.

• The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the nineteenth century.

• Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

• • Army Area Handbook on China, written by Rinn-Sup Shinn and Robert L. Worden.

Splintering of North & Southern Song

• Heavy dependence on growth of civilian government at expense of military

– By 1127, the Song court could not push back the Northern nomadic

invaders – Surrounded by north ‘empires’

(Jurchin’)

• Invasion of Mongols from North 1279

– Start of Yuan (Mongol Dynasty)

North & Southern SongLearn more about the SONG

http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/song/

Tang & Song Influence on East Asia

• The influence of Chinese civilization spreads throughout East Asia as neighboring countries study and borrow from Chinese civilization

– Korea, Japan, and what is today Vietnam

• Confucian thought and social and political values

• Buddhism

• Literary Chinese and its writing system which becomes the language of government and that used by the elites of these societies to communicate among themselves.