A dynasty founded by a general
The Song began in 960 when Zhao Kuangyin, a senior general of the short-lived Later Zhou dynasty, was acclaimed emperor by his troops at Chenqiao. He took the temple name Taizu and set his capital at Kaifeng on the Yellow River plain. China had been politically divided for decades after the fall of the Tang in 907, the era often called the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. Over the next two decades, Song armies absorbed most of the southern kingdoms and, in 979, the Northern Han, reuniting most of the old Chinese heartland.
Reunification was only partial. The Song never regained the strategic northern territory around present-day Beijing, which had been held since the 930s by the Khitan Liao dynasty, and it faced the Tangut state of Western Xia in the north-west. Understanding the Song means holding two ideas together: it was an extraordinarily rich and inventive society, and it was repeatedly outmatched on the battlefield.
Civil government over generals
Having come to power through a military coup, the early Song emperors worked to prevent another. They moved command away from regional generals, kept elite forces near the capital and gave civilian officials more authority. The civil service examinations expanded greatly, including a final palace examination presided over by the emperor, and the number of degree-holders grew. Printing helped, because books became cheaper and more widely available.
This produced a government of scholar-officials who valued learning, and a culture in which poetry, painting and philosophical debate flourished. Song thinkers reworked Confucian ideas in what is often called Neo-Confucianism. The cost was a military that was large and expensive but often poorly led, because commanders were watched closely by civil supervisors.
The tension showed in fiscal politics. In the 1060s and 1070s the chief councillor Wang Anshi launched the New Policies, which included state loans to farmers, changes to taxation and labour service and new military arrangements. Supporters saw a way to strengthen the state, while opponents, who included major officials, saw interference with local society. Factional struggle over these reforms lasted for decades.
Diplomacy and defeat
In 1005 the Song and the Liao agreed the Treaty of Chanyuan after fighting along the border. The Song agreed to send annual payments of silver and silk, and the arrangement brought a long period of peace. Many Chinese writers later viewed such payments as humiliating, but historians often point out that they were a small proportion of the Song state’s income and cheaper than war. A similar arrangement was made with Western Xia.
The balance changed in the early twelfth century. The Song allied with the Jurchen, who overthrew the Liao and founded the Jin dynasty, but the Jurchen then turned on the Song. In 1127 they captured Kaifeng and took the retired emperor Huizong and his son Qinzong north, an event known as the Jingkang incident. A surviving prince, Gaozong, re-established the dynasty in the south, and by about 1138 Hangzhou was the effective capital. This is why history divides the dynasty into the Northern Song (960 to 1127) and the Southern Song (1127 to 1279).
A treaty in 1141 set a border along the Huai River. The general Yue Fei, who argued for further war, became a patriotic symbol, although he was executed around the time the treaty was concluded, amid court disputes over policy. In the thirteenth century, the Southern Song survived long enough to resist the Mongol conquests for decades, but the last Song forces were defeated at sea in 1279, and the territory became part of Yuan dynasty China.
A commercial economy
The most distinctive feature of the Song was its commercial economy. Agricultural output grew with improved rice varieties, including a drought-resistant early-ripening type introduced from Champa in the early eleventh century, along with better tools and water control. Surpluses fed cities, specialist production and long-distance trade. Iron and steel output rose significantly, driven partly by demand from the military, and coal began to be used in industry.
Cities changed character. Kaifeng and later Hangzhou had markets, shops, teahouses, entertainment districts and street vendors, and they were no longer limited by the strict ward-and-curfew arrangements of earlier capitals. Their populations are estimated to have reached around a million at the peak, though figures are uncertain. A famous long handscroll, traditionally attributed to Zhang Zeduan, shows a bustling river scene that many scholars connect with Kaifeng.
Money had to keep up. Copper coin was heavy and in short supply, so merchants in Sichuan began using paper notes as receipts. Around the early eleventh century, the government took over this system and issued official notes, commonly called jiaozi. It is one of the earliest examples of government paper money, and the Song experience also demonstrated its risks, because over-issue could weaken confidence in the notes. It stands in sharp contrast to the metal coin minting of the ancient Mediterranean.
Technology and ideas
Song China saw a number of important practical advances. Printing from woodblocks became widespread, and the scholar Shen Kuo recorded that a commoner named Bi Sheng devised movable type from baked clay in the 1040s. Compass needles were used in navigation, and gunpowder moved from experiments to weapons such as fire arrows and bombs. These developments are often grouped within the Four Great Inventions, a modern shorthand whose neat packaging oversimplifies a long, uneven process. The astronomer and official Su Song built an elaborate water-driven clock tower in Kaifeng in the late eleventh century.
Overseas trade grew, especially in the south, where ports such as Quanzhou handled shipping to Southeast Asia, India and beyond. In the Southern Song this trade was an important source of revenue, and the navy also grew.
Strength and weakness together
The Song is a reminder that economic and cultural vigour do not guarantee military security. Its steppe neighbours, whose cavalry and archery were hard to counter, repeatedly gained the upper hand. Yet Song society produced a large share of the innovations that shaped later centuries, as the wider Chinese dynastic timeline shows, and its civil-service model influenced later dynasties.