Song Dynasty

:Alternative meaning: Song Dynasty (420-479)

Arts, culture and economy

The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in the previous dynasties.

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The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials, sometimes collectively referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners - the mercantile class - arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige. The development of paper money and a unified tax system meant the development of a true nationwide market system.

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Accompanying this was the beginnings of what one might term the Chinese industrial revolution. For example the historian Robert Hartwell has estimated that per capita iron output rose sixfold between 806 and 1078 (AD), such that, by 1078 China was producing 125,000 tons of iron per year. This iron was used to mass produce ploughs, hammers, needles, pins, cymbals (etc. etc.) for an indigenous mass market and for trade with the outside world, which also expanded greatly at this point. Concurrently the Chinese invented or developed gunpowder, the cannon, the flamethrower, printing technology, amongst many other things. As a result of these innovations (and the concurrent agricultural revolution) China boasted some of the largest cities of the world at this time. For example it has been estimated that Hangzhou had 500,000 inhabitants at this point: far larger than any European city.

Related Topics:
Industrial revolution - Robert Hartwell - Gunpowder - Cannon - Flamethrower - Printing - Hangzhou

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From a standard of living perspective, the GDP per capita Chinese under the Song Dynasty was about $600 in today's dollars. Western Europe had slowly declined from this level in 1 AD to $400 by 1000 AD. Western Europe started to become slightly wealthier than a stagnant China by 1300. By 1800, Western European GDP/capita reached three times that of a China entering a period of decline. And by 1900, the gap expanded to an eight-fold difference. During the height of Communism in the 1960s, GDP/capita in Europe was 16 times as great -- a trend that began to reverse sharply in the 1980s under China's open policy.

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Culturally, the Song refined many of the developments of the previous centuries. Included in these refinements were not only the Tang ideal of the universal man, who combined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman, but also historical writings, painting, calligraphy, and hard-glazed porcelain. Song intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics. This renewed interest in the Confucian ideals and society of ancient times coincided with the decline of Buddhism, which the Chinese regarded as foreign and offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.

Related Topics:
Tang - Writings - Painting - Calligraphy - Porcelain - Confucian - Buddhism

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The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers was Zhu Xi (1130-1200), whose synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late 19th century. As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi's philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the 19th century. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

Related Topics:
Neo-Confucian - Zhu Xi - Taoist - 19th century - Examination system - Korea - Vietnam - Japan

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