Why Does the Tang-Song Interregnum Matter?: A Focus on the Economies of the South

Abstract

Why Does the Tang-Song Interregnum Matter?A Focus on the Economies of the South Hugh Clark By the late ninth century, after more than two-and-a-half centuries of power, the Tang dynasty was losing its Mandate. As early as the 850s, local unrest had begun to evolve into real rebellion. This growing pattern culminated in the cataclysmic uprising led by Wang Xianzhi 王仙芝 (d. 878) and Huang Chao 黃巢 (835–884) that uprooted the court and upset regional hierarchies throughout the imperial core between 874 and 884. Although the court, following the vanquishing of Huang Chao, returned to Chang'an, its power in the now-desolate capital city was effectively broken. The dynasty endured as a hollow shell until formally deposed by the bandit rebel Zhu Wen 朱溫 (852–912) in 907, but its effective end had long been accomplished. With the collapse of the political center, the empire broke apart. Through the last two-plus decades of nominal Tang authority the landscape was overrun by autonomous warlord armies.1 Some aspired to replacing the Tang, while others had much more limited aims, perhaps best defined as simple predation. This disorder marked the beginning of a century-long interregnum that divides Tang from Song. In the north this era is marked by the so-called Five Dynasties that began with Zhu Wen, first "emperor" of the Later Liang 後梁 "dynasty" (r. 907–912) For the next several decades, until the holistic empire was more-or-less restored by the Song in the latter half of the tenth century, [End Page 1] the south, namely the lands of the Yangtze basin and territories further south, was divided among a network of coexistent polities misleadingly known as the Ten Kingdoms, "misleading" because at no one time were there more than seven.2 In a pattern that was established even in their immediate aftermath in the late tenth century, the southern kingdoms have been among the least appreciated and least studied eras in the long history of East Asia. Xue Juzheng 薛居 正 (912–981), whose History of the Five Dynasties (Wudai shi 五代史, later known as the "Old" History [Jiu wudai shi 舊五代史]) was accepted by the Song court in 974, gave the name to the sequence of courts that ruled the Yellow River basin between Tang and Song. But his cursory account of the southern kingdoms was limited to biographies of their rulers, whom he characterized as "illegitimate usurpers" (jianwei 僭偽). In his Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (Wudai shiji 五代史記, known more commonly as the "New" History [Xin wudai shi 新五代史]), Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–1072) was more generous in his judgments. Though he established a pattern, followed by China's historians ever since, which focuses on the successive courts that ruled of the Central Plain and places the southern courts at the end of the work as a footnote to the era, he granted each of the southern courts a full scroll (juan 卷) along with an annual chronicle (nianpu 年譜). It was Ouyang, in fact, who standardized the term "ten kingdoms" (shi guo 十國).3 Historians since, both traditional and modern, have routinely treated the interregnum century, both north and south, as a final chapter in otherwise thorough histories of the Tang. Rarely has the era been considered worthy on its own merits, and even more rarely has it served as the introductory chapter to the eras that followed.4 [End Page 2] Ouyang is also responsible for categorizing the southern courts as guo 國, usually rendered "kingdoms" or "states," rather than dai 代, or "dynasties," the term applied to the northern courts by Xue Juzheng and used by Ouyang and scholars ever since. The semantic issues cannot be understated. Ouyang was deeply concerned with the issue of legitimate transmission (zhengtong 正 統), a theme he wrote about more than once.5 A dai had an emperor (di 帝), a guo only a king (wang 王). A dai had the right to proclaim a calendar (zheng shuo 正朔), the defining mark of political legitimacy no matter how morally illegitimate its rulers; a guo did not. Of the Liang dai, the first of the northern Five, and its successors Ouyang wrote: "The Liang has long been despised (e 惡) throughout the land. Furthermore, from the Later Tang [that...