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Society of the Song Dynasty
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s on their ships' top deckhouses to launch gunpowder bombs.
Organization, equipment and techniques
In the Song Dynasty, infantry units were organized 50 men to a platoon, two platoons to a company, and those into battalions of 500 men each. During the Northern Song Dynasty, half of the entire army of 1 million was stationed in and around Kaifeng. The remaining troops were posted in scattered forces along borders and near large municipalities, and in peacetime were used as means to maintain local security. Although the Song military was rife with corruption and largely ignored by civil officials, it did provide some valuable strengths to the empire. During the Song era, military drills and training were studied as a science, while elite soldiers were allocated different responsibilities based on examinations of their skills in weaponry and athletic ability. In their training, soldiers and officers were prepared for battle by following signal standards for troop movement, advancing when a flag or banner was raised, halting when the blaring sound of bells and drums rang out.
Song crossbowmen comprised their own separate units apart from the infantry, and according to the Chinese Wujing Zongyao military manuscript of 1044, the crossbow used in mass was the most effective weapon used against northern nomadic cavalry charges. Elite crossbowmen were also valued as long-range snipers; such was the case when the Liao Dynasty general Xiao Talin was picked off by a Song crossbow at the Battle of Shanzhou in 1004. Crossbows were mass produced in state armories with designs improving as time went on, such as the use of a mulberry wood and brass crossbow in 1068 that could pierce a tree at 140 paces. Song cavalry used an array of different weapons, including halberds, swords, bows, and fire lances that discharged a gunpowder blast of flame and shrapnel. In preparation for war, government armories manufactured weapons in enormous quantities, with tens of millions of arrowheads crafted each year, along with armor components by the tens of thousands. There were sixteen known varieties of catapults in the Song period, designed to fit many different proportions and requiring work crews in sizes ranging from dozens to several hundred men.
Unlike many other Chinese dynasties throughout history, the Song Dynasty did not model its military infrastructure and organization on the precedent of northern nomadic armies, such as the earlier Xianbei and later Mongols. Only twice in the Song era were non-Chinese people employed in Song cavalry units: in the beginning of the dynasty with the campaigns of Emperor Taizu, and later 13th century Mongol defectors who came over to fight for the Song. With the Khitan and Tangut kingdoms possessing much of the pasture and grazing lands in the north, the Song Dynasty military had a shortage of horses for cavalry. To make up for this shortage, statesmen like Wang Anshi advocated greater ties with Tibet, as the tea-horse trade with Tibet was continued by the Ming Dynasty. Still, the Song established considerably large navies: in the 10th century, in the war to reunite China, and then a standing navy in the 12th century. Many of the warships in the Song Dynasty's navy were paddle-wheel driven crafts and some Song naval ships could carry up to 1,000 soldiers. It was also during the Song period that naval ships were first armed with gunpowder weapons. The use of enormous pontoon bridges in the Song era on at least one occasion was essential to victory. The Song built a large floating bridge across the Yangtze River in 974; while troops were under attack, the pontoon bridge was used as a means of transport for troops and supplies to the other bank during the early Song conquest of the Southern Tang state.
Ethnic, foreign and religious minoritiesMuch like the multicultural and metropolitan atmosphere of the earlier Tang capital at Chang'an, the Song capitals at Kaifeng and Hangzhou were home to an array of traveling foreigners and ethnic minorities. There was a great amount of contact with the outside world. Trade and tribute embassies from Egypt, Yemen, India, Korea, the Kara-Khanid Khanate of Central Asia and elsewhere came to Song China in order to bolster trade relations, while the Chinese sent embassies abroad to encourage foreign trade. Song Chinese trade ships traveled to ports in Japan, Champa in southern Vietnam, Srivijaya in the Malay Archipelago, Bengal and South India, and the coasts of East Africa.
During the 9th century, the Tang seaport at Guangzhou had a large Muslim population. During the Song Dynasty the importance of the latter seaport declined as the ports of Quanzhou and Fuzhou in Fujian province eclipsed it. This was followed by a decline of Middle Eastern sea merchants in China and an increasing amount of Chinese ship owners engaging in maritime trade. However, Middle Eastern merchants and other foreigners were not entirely absent, and some even gained administrative posts. For example, the Muslim Pu Shougeng—of either Persian or Arab descent—served as the Commissioner of Merchant Shipping for Quanzhou between the years 1250 and 1275. There was also the Arab astronomer Ma Yize (910–1005), who became the chief astronomer of the Song court under Taizu. Aside from these elites, Chinese seaports were filled with resident Arabs, Persians, and Koreans who had special enclaves designated for each of them.
Muslims represented the largest religious minority within Song China, although there were many others. There was a community of Kaifeng Jews who followed the exodus of the Song court to Hangzhou once the Jurchens invaded the north in 1126. Manichaeism from Persia was introduced during the Tang; during the Song, the Manichaean sects were most prominent in Fujian and Zhejiang. Nestorian Christianity in China had for the most part died out after the Tang Dynasty; however, it was revived during the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Followers of Zoroastrianism still had temples in China as well. Prospects of studying Chinese Chan Buddhism attracted foreign Buddhists to China, such as Enni Ben'en (????; 1201–1280) of Japan who studied under the eminent Chinese monk Wuzhun Shifan (1178–1249) before establishing Tofuku-ji in Kyoto. Tansen Sen states that Buddhist monks traveling from India to China and vice versa during the Song surpassed that of the Tang Dynasty, while "Indian texts translated under the Song dynasty outnumbered those completed under the preceding dynasties."
There were many native ethnic groups within Song China that did not belong to the Han Chinese majority. This included the Yao people, who staged tribal uprisings against the Song in Guangdong in 1035 and Hunan in 1043, during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song (r. 1023–1064). Song authorities employed Zhuang people as local officials in what is now Guangxi and Guangdong, where the Song placed them in charge of distributing land to the Yao and other tribal groups. The Yao peoples and others on the empire's frontier were incorporated into a feudal system, or fengjian shehui, which Ralph A. Litzinger says bypassed any possible native development of a primitive slave society, or nuli shehui, since the Yao and others lacked a sedentary tradition. Although mainland Chinese states made efforts to settle parts of Hainan Island since the 3rd century BC, it was not until the Song Dynasty that a concerted effort was made to assimilate the Li people of its highlands, who at times had fought against and repelled Han Chinese settlers. During the 11th century, the Man people of Hainan wreaked havoc by joining bandit gangs of ten to several hundred men. The statesman Ouyang Xiu estimated in 1043 that there were at least several thousand Man bandits residing in a dozen or so prefectures of mainland China.
To counter powerful neighbors such as the Kingdom of Dali (934–1253), the Song made alliances with tribal groups in southwest China which served as a protective buffer between their borders and Dali's. As long as these ethnic tribal groups paid tribute to the Song court and agreed to follow the course of its foreign policy, the Song agreed to grant military protection and allow the tribal leaders hereditary, autonomous local rule. During the 1050s, the Song Dynasty put down local tribal insurrections along their borders with the Lı Dynasty of Ğ?i Vi?t, while their relations with Tai peoples and alliances with local clan leaders in the southern frontier led to a border war with Lı from 1075 to 1077.
See also
External links
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