Transcript The Sung Dynasty - Amundsen High School

The Sung Dynasty
969 AD – 1126 AD
-The Northern and the Southern
Why two divisions of one dynasty?
The intervening years, known as the Period
of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, were
a time of division between north and south,
and of rapidly changing administrations.
Therefore, created the two divisions of the
north & the south of the Sung Dynasty.
The Northern Dynasty
The Northern Song (960-1127) signifies the time when
the Song capital was in the northern city of Kaifeng
and the dynasty controlled most of inner China.
The Southern Dynasty
The Southern Song (1127-1279) refers to the time after
the Song lost control of northern China to the Jurchen
Jin dynasty. The Song court retreated south of the
Yangtze River and made their capital at Hangzhou
The Northern Sung
Dynasty
(969 AD – 1126 AD)
The Northern Sung Dynasty
Restored & marked the unity of China since the
fall of the T’ang Dynasty in 907AD
Cannot compare to the empire of T’ang
Foreshadowing the era of barbarian domination
The Sung remembered w/T’ang as the classic
period of Chinese civilization
Chu Yuan-chang, founder of Ming, promised the
restoration of “the T’ang and the Sung”
Family
The Genealogy of the Sung is entirely from the Nihon
Kodaishi Daijiten (Dictionary of Ancient Japanese History)
[…isn’t this suppose to be about China?? ]
Both the Northern & the Southern Sung are included in the
same diagram
Surprisingly, should note how the first Emperor of the
Southern Sung was actually the brother of the last Emperor
of the Northern Sung.
the succession then passed to a very distant (sixth) cousin
(once removed). The succession subsequently made an eve
larger leap to another collateral line.
The Southern Sung Dynasty
(1127 - 1279)
Challenges
The Southern Sung is inevitably remembered
mainly as the victim of Mongol conquest.
the Sung gave the Mongols the hardest time of
any of their ultimate conquests.
The southern terrain and the inconveniency of traveling
for Mongols to meet with their accustomed cavalry tactics
The saying in China is that "in the north, you go by
horse; in the south, you go by boat."
– The Mongols undoubtedly were more comfortable
with horses than with boats.
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The Sung state was also more formidably
organized than many opponents of the Mongols.
The Sung had resources unavailable to the
Russians or the Khawarizm Shâhs.
But the wages of resistance to the Mongols was,
of course, death.
Qubilai Khân, in the course of his conquest and
rule over China, killed "more than 18,470,000
Chinese"
This would put him in the same league, at
least, as Adolph Hitler.