The Northern Song Dynasty, with its capital at Kaifeng (then called Baijing), united China around 960 following the fractured period known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. It was a period of particular cultural, economic, and technological flourishing for China, but ended with the loss of the northern half of the country to Jurchen invasion in 1127. At that time, the Court fled south, making its new capital at Hangzhou (then called Lin'an), marking the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty.
The last emperor of the Northern Song, Emperor Huizong (r. 1101-1125), is known as a particular lover of the arts. He is famous for his distinctive "Slender Gold" style of calligraphy, and for several paintings which are easily among the most famous Chinese paintings today.
Economics
The Song court's revenues far exceeded those of any other major government in the world, at that time. More than half of the state's revenues were obtained through monopolies imposed on the production of rice wine, and key mineral resources such as salt, copper, and alum. Private commerce was quite active in a great variety of fields, ranging from iron mining and metallurgy to sericulture, textiles, tea, porcelain, paper, and sugar. Government involvement in private enterprise consisted chiefly of actions taken to ensure the free flow of goods, and the prevention of monopolistic or cartel behaviors. Certain goods, such as iron, books, and bronze coin, believed to be of particular strategic importance, were forbidden from being exported; these flowed out of the country nevertheless, including in trade with Japan, in exchange for gold, sulfur, and timber, among other goods and commodities.[1]
During the 11th century, China produced perhaps as much as 125,000 tons of iron a year, more than twice the total output of Europe, using coke (refined coal) as fuel for piston-driven blast furnaces (blast furnaces driven by water-driven bellows would not be invented in Europe until after 1300). This iron production dropped off dramatically after the Jurchen invasion of 1127, however.[2]
In the late 10th century, private merchants in western China began to issue their own private forms of bills of exchange, which customers could then exchange at agents in other regions for actual coinage, or for goods and services. These were replaced in 1024 by the government's establishment of an official system of paper money, the first paper money in the world.
By the 1020s, the Song government was minting far more coinage than any previous dynasty. In the 1070s, it was producing nearly 6 billion coins per year, a process which required 9600 tons of copper each year. But even this volume of coinage could not fulfill the needs of the economy, and so paper money continued to play a large role.[3]
Maritime trade with Southeast Asia, India, and beyond was flourishing at this time. As early as the 9th century (prior to the beginning of the Song Dynasty), one Arab merchant wrote that more than half of the 200,000 residents of the southern Chinese port city of Guangzhou were Jewish, Arab, Persian, or Indian traders. The port of Quanzhou, likewise, supported a notable Tamil merchant community during the Song Dynasty. In earlier periods, Arab merchants took two or three years to make the round-trip journey from their homes to China, and back, due to patterns of the winds and currents; by the 10th century, however, many came to use ports in maritime Southeast Asia as stepping stones, allowing them to make the journey in a single year.[1]
Porcelain replaced silk as China's chief export in the 11th century, as India and Persia began to develop their own domestic silk production; meanwhile, however, China obtained new techniques in sugar refining and cotton production from India, marking the beginning of the development of these industries in China. In the 12th century, Chinese merchants first began in significant number to venture overseas themselves; most devoted their attentions to the so-called Spice Islands in and around the Moluccas and Indonesia, where rare (and therefore valuable) spices such as cloves and nutmeg could be found.[1]
References
| Preceded by: Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms |
Northern Song Dynasty 960-1127 |
Succeeded by: Southern Song Dynasty |