The publication of the first Song volume of the Cambridge History of China is a landmark in the study of Song history. Denis Twitchett began soliciting chapters for the volume in the 1970s. Although, sadly, he did not live to see the book in print, he had the foresight to bring Paul Jakov Smith into the project as coeditor in 2001. The result of their work is a fat volume covering the political and military history of the three and a half centuries from the end of the Tang through the Mongol conquest of the Southern Song. It complements volume 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, on the Song's northern neighbors, published in 1994, and the forthcoming volume 5, part 2, which will have essays on Song government, financial administration, armies, legal system, and examination system, as well as on intellectual, social, and economic change. All scholars of the Song period will want copies of these three volumes on a handy shelf, where they can turn to them again and again.
Ten authors contributed to this volume. Naomi Standen covers the Five Dynasties and Hugh Clark the south during the same period. The Northern Song is covered in four chapters: Lau Nap-yin and Huang K'uan-chung take on the first three reigns (960–1022); Michael McGrath covers Renzong (1023–63) and Yingzong (1064–67); Paul Smith provides a long analysis of Shenzong's reign and the New Policies (1068–86); and Ari Levine covers the remainder of the Northern Song and its fall (1087–1127). The Southern Song is covered by Tao Jing-shen (Gaozong's reign, 1127–62), Gong Wei Ai (Xiaozong's reign, 1162–89), and Richard Davis (the last four reigns and the fall of the Southern Song, 1190–1279). All of the chapters are full of insights and inferences that make them much more than handy retellings of the narratives in the Song shi and other basic sources. The citation of a wide range of primary and secondary sources makes the chapters useful starting points for further research on many issues. The book is enhanced by thirty-two excellent maps that regularly show the location of the places that figure in the narrative.
Most readers will turn to individual chapters when they become relevant to a research project, which is a perfectly reasonable way to use this volume. However, for those who are interested in the big questions about the Song government—absolutism, factionalism, powerful chief councilors, military failures, negotiated peace, and so on—there is much to gain from reading and reflecting on the whole book. For half a century, scholars’ understandings of the Song government have been subtly shaped by the pioneering work of E. A. Kracke and James T. C. Liu, both of whom worked mainly on the Northern Song. This volume gives equal coverage to both halves of the Song, shifting the perspective.
One issue that invites rethinking in light of these chapters is the Song's military record. Never before in English have we had such detail on Song military history, from the century of warfare that culminated with the Song unification, to the reorganization of military command structures, specific battles and campaigns, the strengths and weaknesses of particular generals, and the acrimonious court debates about war versus peace, aggression versus appeasement.
Throughout the book, the negative side of war and disorder are made amply evident. References to looting, pillaging, and indiscriminate slaughter are common. We learn of commanders who purposely breached the Yellow River dikes as an act of war, resulting in the deaths of huge numbers of civilians, and soldiers who starved to death in the thousands when supplies did not reach them. Not only do the authors show the inglorious side of war, they also present both sides of a conflict, sometimes bending over backward to avoid presenting the Song side as the true or right one. Levine, for instance, writes, “Enraged by persistent Song demands for more of the Sixteen Prefectures, the Jurchen leadership embraced military solutions in order to teach Huizong and his ministers a lesson in humility” (p. 634).
After the initial military unification of the country and the negotiated settlement with Liao in 1005, the Song only rarely went on the offensive. When it did, the result often was not worth the cost in men and material, in the analyses of these authors. Smith describes Shenzong's war policy as “an unmitigated disaster” (p. 464) and concludes that the decade spent trying to strengthen the armed forces accomplished nothing (p. 478). In the five-year campaign against Xia, Huizong's military commander, in Levine's words, “overcommitted Song forces to fight in a conflict with unattainable objects” (p. 620), leading to massive casualties. When the Song took the offensive against Jin in 1206, Jin's response was rapid and massive. Not only did a key Song general switch fealty from the Song to the Jin, but also the Song ended up humiliated by the demand for the head of the chief councilor (pp. 794–812).
Song armies are portrayed as hardly more impressive when on the defensive. In 1125–26, Taiyuan held out against a Jurchen siege for nine months, but most cities fell relatively quickly (pp. 634–36). For more than a decade, the survival of the dynasty was precarious. Besides dodging Jin armies, the Song court needed to raise armies, suppress banditry, win over local strongmen, and get generals under control (pp. 644–77). A century later, many Song commanders put up valiant resistance against the Mongols, but others switched sides, and the Song progressively lost ground (pp. 861–72, 917–23, 929–45).
Usually the authors give proximate reasons for military failures: indecisive leaders, poor coordination by commanders in the field, failure to plan for sufficient provisions or get them to where they were needed in time, contradictory instructions from the court and other forms of inept central leadership, and so on. Tao sees Gaozong as unable to commit all his forces to resisting the Jin because he “often worried more about his recalcitrant generals than about Jin” (pp. 670–71). Gong places much of the blame for the failure of the 1163 offensive on the animosity between the two principal generals (p. 717). Davis points out that the plight of the Southern Song court got steadily worse after the 1230s because as the Mongols took territory and armies, their resources grew as the Song's shrunk, making the situation ever more dire.
Occasionally the authors hint at deeper explanations. Lau and Huang fault the military organizational structure that made the top level “vulnerable to the factional infighting” (p. 235). Paul Smith suggests that the Song was hobbled by geography as it had to provision troops on “the resource-poor northern frontier.” He also points to the impact of cost-control measures. He asserts that the New Policies’ “reliance on baojia at the expense of the regular mercenary troops eviscerated the nation's defenses” (p. 446). Davis brings in the irredentist passions of many intellectuals in the Southern Song, especially Daoxue followers and university students, which made reasoned debate on strategy nearly impossible (pp. 829–30).
Taken together, the authors of this volume provide ample evidence that one of the Song's greatest deficiencies was the failure of the educated class to fully appreciate the good side of the treaties. Fan Zhongyan is quoted as saying, “Yan and Yun are lost. This is the greatest insult inflicted on China by the barbarians in a thousand years, but it has not been avenged” (p. 267). Over and over again, we find such irredentist sentiment carrying the day—sometimes it was the emperors who wanted war, while sometimes men outside the court were the loudest and most strident of the irredentists. Smith, in his introduction (p. 20), suggests that the Song's pragmatic acceptance of indemnified peace made possible a long period of political stability. Could it be that what disturbed the Song educated class most about their dynasty—its inability to gain sway over all the territory the Tang had dominated—was at the same time the source of its great success in other realms? If the educated class had been willing to put a positive spin on its treaties with Liao, Xia, and Jin, to see them as inexpensive ways to secure its northern borders, one cannot help but wonder whether some of the worst consequences of war might have been averted.
The political power of emperors and chief ministers is a second large issue on which this volume should stimulate discussion. Several authors use the terms “autocracy” or “absolutism,” and all treat in one way or another issues about the powers of emperors, ministers, and the ways in which they tried to control each other and the government. Smith, echoing the work of E. A. Kracke, refers to “an institutionally embedded system of checks and balances” that “prevented a single chief councilor from dominating the Council of State and subjected all the state councilors to independent oversight by a fully developed system of policy critics and censors” (p. 21). But no one who reads this book will think that the Song government operated that way for very long. Repeatedly over the Song, dominant grand councilors held power for years in a row, sometimes a decade or longer. They include Lü Yijian under Renzong, Wang Anshi under Shenzong, Zhang Dun under Zhezong, Cai Jing under Huizong, Qin Gui under Gaozong, Han Tuozhou under Ningzong, Shi Miyuan under Lizong, and Jia Sidao under Lizong and Duzong. Even though these men are usually treated in the standard sources as power-hungry dictators, today, the burning question is not whether they were good men or bad but rather why emperors repeatedly entrusted so much power to them and the ways in which the government worked with strong personalities at the top.
Factionalism was surely one reason that emperors wanted chief councilors who could take charge. The authors repeatedly describe emperors as frustrated, even infuriated, by the tendency of their top officials to act discourteously to each other, to wrangle and squabble (e.g., pp. 276–77, 324, 363). Animosity among top officials often brought on political gridlock (pp. 509, 521). There was also a problem of weighing conflicting advice. Over and over, we are told that critics portrayed the government as facing a crisis, often a crisis of unprecedented proportions. With so many men crying wolf, it must have been hard for emperors to recognize real crises when they occurred.
A few emperors tried to solve this problem by acting as their own chief councilors. After Wang Anshi left court, Shenzong ran the New Policies himself. Gaozong, Tao tells us, made all important decisions himself for more than a decade, regularly switching his councilors, determined as he was “to centralize power, especially military power, in his own hands” (p. 651). Gong presents Xiaozong as an autocrat who was fully in charge throughout his reign, keeping his ministers in line by issuing orders that did not have to go through bureaucratic review and by demanding to see the accounts of the Ministry of Finance (pp. 723, 729). Most emperors reasonably did not want to take on so much of the burden themselves. Given a choice between a strong minister who could get his measures implemented and a contentious council of state whose members showed open hostility toward each other, it is not surprising that many emperors chose efficiency, a point that Davis makes (p. 854).
Factionalism may have prompted emperors to put one man in charge, but powerful ministers made factional animosities that much worse. As Smith, Levine, and Davis all lay out in detail, the strong chief councilors successfully limited debate and dissent, first by putting their own followers in the censorial and policy criticism posts, then by sending their opponents out of town, and sometimes escalating to censoring book publishing. Under Huizong, the books of Su Shi and his circle were banned; under Gaozong, private histories were prohibited; and under Ningzong, leaders of the Daoxue movement were blacklisted. Attempts to ban books are rightly labeled autocratic acts, but they also seem to be signs of desperation on the part of emperors and ministers unable to control discussion.
All of this suggests that the rosy view of the early Song government with its checks and balances ignores the consequence of this structure for leadership. After the two founders, emperors did not function as leaders themselves, garnering support for their policies, getting key people behind them. Nor did the structure of the central government favor the emergence of charismatic high officials who could gain widespread support for their policies. Even during grave emergencies, such as the Jurchen and Mongol invasions, it was next to impossible for the throne to get the government and intellectual elite to close ranks behind one strong leader. It was not that there were no passionate patriots who were willing to take the lead, but that they could not expect enough followers to fall into line behind them to prevent different parts of the government from working at cross-purposes.
Are there any serious problems with this book? In my view, it is unfortunate that the Cambridge History volumes are still appearing in Wade-Giles Romanization, long after most scholars have switched to pinyin. Why couldn't the Cambridge History of Ancient China's use of pinyin be considered enough of a precedent to make the switch? Another feature that limits this book as a resource for nonspecialists is an index that concentrates on names and assumes that readers already know them. The Han- or Ming-period specialist looking for comparative material, not to mention the student doing a research paper, will repeatedly be told to look up the specific actor, event, or issue. For instance, someone who wants to consider the political role of empresses and dowager empresses will find only one page listed under empress, and under dowager empress, one page plus the phrase “see also specific actors.” In fact, however, there are a great many discussions of empresses and their actions scattered through the volume. Under diplomacy and under foreign relations, one is told to see the specific actor, issue, or location, but not to see alliances, which has a long list of citations. Many other examples could be given.
For scholars of the Song, especially historians of the Song, these are not major problems. What this book provides for them is a new established narrative. For the next couple of decades, historians will begin with these chapters, and as they get deeper into the sources, they will find places they think are wrong or misleading, and stud their own work with footnotes quibbling with this book. It is of course the great accomplishment of this book that it will now be the one to correct.
