Today we talk about things in China's history. Speaking of the Northern Song Dynasty, everyone's first impression should be that they are poor and weak, and they send old coins. Or song fans like to say that the Northern Song Dynasty was not poor and weak, and was the richest dynasty in ancient China. Some historical views are originally that the public is justified and the wife is reasonable, and I do not want to discuss the economy of the Song Dynasty here, in fact, its economy alone is very good as far as ancient China is concerned. But here is a more controversial question: Was the Northern Song Dynasty a unified dynasty?
First of all, according to the current official view of history, this matter is also inconclusive. Since the unification of the Qin Dynasty in ancient China, there were nine great unified dynasties of Qin, Han, Jin, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing, but the Song Dynasty would add an additional parenthesis: controversial. In fact, the official view of history tends not to, and refers to this period as the Liao, Song, Xia, and Jinyuan periods.
So was the Song Dynasty a unified dynasty? What are the criteria for a unified dynasty? Is there a more uniform and convincing standard?
There are standards. Therefore, whether the Song Dynasty is a great unified dynasty, we will talk about it later. Let's first look at what the criteria of the Great Unification Dynasty are.
This criterion is actually controversial, but less controversial. This criterion is: after unifying the six kingdoms of Qin Shi Huang, the southern and hundred yue and the great wall, even if the dynasty is unified.
The territory of the Qin Dynasty was the standard for the unification of the territory of the later Great Unification Dynasty
The territory of the Qin Dynasty stretched from Liaodong in the east to Lintao in the west, to the Yin Mountains in the north, and to the South China Sea in the south, which is something that exists in junior high school textbooks. The main controversy over this criterion is whether it is considered a unified dynasty without including the Western Regions, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and Inner Mongolia in northeast China.
But this sound is relatively small. In fact, there have always been two systems in China's historical map. One is the Central Plains dynasty system known as the "Yu Zhi Tu", with the goal of unifying the Nine Prefectures of Yugong. The other is the Chinese dynastic system known as the "unification map", which is based on the territory of the Qing Dynasty in 1820. In fact, both systems are reasonable, in the era of Qin Shi Huang, the surrounding ethnic minority areas have not yet established large-scale political power, lack of historical records, not within the direct territory of the Qin Dynasty, but it does not affect the fact that these places have belonged to China since ancient times.
So, by this territorial standard, let's see which dynasties fit. In fact, since Dayu demarcated Kyushu, this land has always been the ancestral home of the Chinese nation, and the land left by the ancestors must be forever solid, which is the cultural root of our China that can stand in the forest of the world.
This land is the common ethnic area of the main ethnic group, the Han nationality, and there are also many ethnic minorities living in the area, and its scope is finally finalized on the basis of the territory of the Qin Dynasty, through the expansion and consolidation of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. On the basis of the territory of the Qin Dynasty, the Hexi Corridor, the Hehuang Valley, the HanSi County of the Peninsula, the Lancang River Basin and the Red River Plain were added, as well as two large islands of Hainan and Taiwan. Therefore, every dynasty must unify this part, even the toast or the vassal state must be incorporated in form and jurisprudence, in the feudal dynasty era, the vassal state is equivalent to an administrative division, without preventing the closest vassal state from being legally part of the emperor's territory.
Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty laid the basic scope of the Han Dynasty
Then the Qin Dynasty had just been unified, and there was no exploration of the Hexi Corridor and other places, but the Qin Dynasty was considered a great unified dynasty, because it laid the map. During the Han Dynasty, this territory was finally finalized, and the territory of the Han Dynasty can be said to be the most standard. Then in the Western Jin Dynasty, a different situation occurred.
People who often look at historical maps will notice that from the Three Kingdoms onwards, the Hetao Plain and the northern Shaanxi region were separated from the territory of the Central Plains Dynasty. This was because Cao Cao placed the Five Xiongnu there, so the administrative structure of that place was abolished, and only the place where Qiang Hu lived was shown on the map. But the Western Jin Dynasty still had the power to exercise control over that place, so the Western Jin Dynasty was still a unified dynasty.
After the Western Jin Dynasty, China ushered in a four-hundred-year period of great division, a period in which there was no unified dynasty, until the Sui Dynasty crossed the Yangtze River and destroyed southern Chen, and the Central Plains Dynasty was reunited.
A large reason for the death of the Sui Emperor II was that many expeditions to Goguryeo caused great damage to the national strength. Because the Sui Dynasty basically unified the whole country, only liaodong and han counties have not been recovered, and this place is exactly Goguryeo, so this place has become a heart disease of the Sui and Tang rulers, not only because of the serious problems of the confidants, but more importantly, to ensure the integrity of the ancestral territory. In the words of Tang Taizong, "Kyushu Dading, only this corner." "It's going to be taken back no matter what." Emperor Taejong himself suffered defeats in Goguryeo, and it was only during the reign of Emperor Gojong that he regained Liaodong and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, and established the feudal governorate of Jilin Prefecture in Silla in the south.
The Northern Song Dynasty was not only less than the sixteen prefectures of Yanyun, but a whole circle of inherent territory
The late Tang Dynasty and the war with Tubo caused the Central Plains Dynasty to be seriously injured, and the surrounding frontier areas were out of control, the Western Xia State during the Song Dynasty, in fact, was formerly the Tang Dynasty's Ding difficult festival envoy, dali state and its predecessor Nanzhao State's predecessor was actually the Tang Dynasty's Yaozhou Tusi, and the final independent Jiaotong of the later generations was actually the Tang Dynasty's Jing Navy Festival, and most importantly, Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures, as an important part of the Central Plains region, were not within the territory of the Song Dynasty, which greatly reduced the unity of the Song Dynasty.
The above-mentioned small countries were all local administrative organs of the Tang Dynasty, and if these places were not recovered, they would lower the standard of the completeness of unity, which was not conducive to true unification. But this is not the most important thing, the most important thing is that Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures and Liaodong are not within the territory of the Song Dynasty, which directly led to the rise of the Liao Dynasty.
To be sure, the Northern Song Dynasty should not have been responsible for Shi Jingyao's actions. However, the Song Dynasty did not recover Yanyun and Liaodong in the future, and the significance caused by this is definitely not what some people think is just a small piece.
There is a very subtle phenomenon in the title of the Liao Dynasty, if a person calls it the Liao Dynasty, then he basically agrees with the unified multi-ethnic view of history. If he calls it Liaoguo, then perhaps he did not intend it, but it is more likely that he was a Han Chinese who believed that the territory of the Liao Dynasty should be foreign, of course, this idea is extremely narrow.
But the problem with the Northern Song Dynasty is that if it recovers Yanyun and Liaodong, then there will be no question of whether it will be the Liao Dynasty or the Liao Dynasty, and neither the Liao Dynasty nor the Liao State will exist, but only the Khitan tribes. If it only recovered Yanyun and the Khitans only occupied Liaodong, then there would be no Liao Dynasty, but only a Liao State, which was just another version of Goguryeo, and there was no essential difference from the Jin, Liang, Shu, wu and so on in the interior.
It is precisely because the Song Dynasty did not recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, resulting in the Liao State gaining the strength to match the Central Plains Dynasty, but also brought mana, so that the Liao State rose to become the Liao Dynasty, with the substantive qualifications of the Northern Dynasty, coupled with the Song Dynasty's territory in the frontier areas lost too much, in general, the Han Central Plains Dynasty that can completely occupy the territory of The Han Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, that is, han, Tang, and Ming, which requires the Central Plains Dynasty to occupy the three geographical bridgeheads of Hexi, Hetao, and Liaodong in the northwest, due north, and northeast at the same time. All cultivatable areas in the north were incorporated, and the power of the suzerainty was exercised over korea, Jiaozhi, and Ryukyu. Such a dynasty can be regarded as a strong dynasty. As for the Western Regions, it is better to have none. Other dynasties may have one or two less places, such as the Jin Dynasty Shaohetao, the Sui Dynasty Less Liaodong, but generally guaranteed integrity, while the Song Dynasty lacked Yanyun, Hetao, Liaodong, Korea, Ryukyu, Jiaotong, Yunnan, and Hexi, and lost so many places that people really could not list it as a unified regime.
Therefore, the Song Dynasty can hardly be counted as a dynasty that has completed unification, it has lost too much of the inherent territory of the Central Plains Dynasty, and it has done nothing in expanding the territory, and even cannot occupy the Central Plains in its entirety, a more important factor is that the current capital is not within the territory of the Northern Song Dynasty, so it is not surprising that it is listed as a controversial unified dynasty.
Compared with the Tang Dynasty, the Northern Song Dynasty is not very much of a unified dynasty
Even if viewed according to the standards of the Qin Dynasty, because it has lost so many places, it is difficult to be called a dynasty that has completed unification. It may not be a divided regime, but it has not completely unified. If we look at the multi-ethnic unification standard of the Qing Dynasty's territory, then the Song Dynasty is completely a southern dynasty divided regime.