The History of China - #131 - 5D10K 8: The Southeast

Episode Date: October 22, 2017

We sweep over 4 of the southern kingdoms along the southeastern coast. WuYüe: which remains rich and prosperous owing to its favorable trade and geographic positions at the mouth of the Yangtze. Wu: which starts off strong only to be subsumed from within, giving way to Southern Tang. Min: whose coastal location is fatally undermined by it own geographic atomization, unto civil war, breakup, and destruction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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As we approach the end of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, as promised, we're first going to be taking a little time to get acquainted with those kingdoms of the Southlands that we'd only touched on peripherally in the course of the main narrative. Though none of the Ten Kingdoms ever held enough power or gravitas to seriously think to challenge the hegemony of the Northern Dynasties, much less assert their own claim to imperium, they nevertheless played a vital role in maintaining much of the traditional culture, values, and mores that had been so thoroughly trampled by the decades of warfare across the northern plains. In addition, this is really the period when

southern China begins to pivot away from being an undeveloped backwater at the tail end of the universe into the economic, political, and cultural hearth of Chinese civilization that it will be in the centuries yet to come. So, let's dive right in. We begin our sweep of the ten titular southern kingdoms of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period with, as you may have astutely noted from the title, those along the southeast coast of China, and specifically with that of Wuye, which, if I'm not mistaken, we've said precisely nothing about so far. Now, as a brief note here, especially astute listeners will notice that a lot of the names sound rather, well, familiar, and even largely correspond to ancient states from other

periods of civil strife. And that is definitely no accident. Wuye, for instance, roughly lines up with the ancient semi-sinicized state of Yue during the Warring States period a thousand years ago. So yeah, buckle in for the repeated sense of deja vu all over again. Put more simply though, when we talk about Wuye, we're referring to the coastal region of central China, from the southern banks of the Yangtze River in the north, down to Wenzhou at the southern tip of modern Zhejiang province in the south, and including the cities of Suzhou, Hangzhou, and the region where Shanghai currently sits, though it wasn't there back then.

In fact, the dialect currently spoken across the majority of central China is named after this region and its neighbor to the immediate east, Wu, that is, the Wu dialect. So before getting directly into Wuye, it behooves me to look at the larger picture here in terms of the formation of many of these kingdoms, which requires us to look all the way back at episode 119, which you're sure to remember covered the rebellion of Huang Chao and his march all over the southlands of China, pillaging, murdering, and raping wherever he went over the course of the 870s and 880s. It's difficult really to overstate the profoundly destabilizing effect that Huang Chao and his merry band of mass murderers had on the regions of the south. But probably even more impactful, and at least as destabilizing, was the fact that the reeling Tong government time and again offered these bandit leaders spots as regional governors across the south if they'd just please stop raping

and killing everyone, pretty please, all while the central authoritative agencies continued to crumble and flee in the face of potential destruction at the hands of our bandits. As a result, excepting a very few situations, including our first kingdom of focus, Buye, these figures who will go on to found the kingdoms of the Southlands will largely be former bandit leaders, with bandit or at least heavily militaristic leanings and worldviews. The kingdom of Wuye was the brainchild of two individuals during the death throes of the Great Tang. Their names were Dong Chang and Qian Liu. Though the two had began life as buddy-buddy pirate

partners along the southern coasts, as they began to amass power in the 870s and 880s, the pair drifted apart, with Dong consolidating his power base over southeastern Zhedong, while Qian situated himself comfortably in the provincial seat of Hangzhou. But through the mid-890s, Dong Chang made what would be his fatal misstep by overestimating the esteem in which the Tang imperial court held him. He demanded that the court name him Yue Wang, which can be translated either as the King of Yue or the Prince of Yue. But in any case, the court balked, at which point Dong was pressed by his flunkies into

pushing the envelope even further and declaring himself the Emperor of Yue, that is, Yue Huangdi, in 895, which was just a bridge too far. Qian Liu, who had grown quite tired of his erstwhile friends' posturing and preening, sprang into action and proposed a deal to the Tang court. Let me take care of this Dong Chang problem for you, and all I ask in return is your confirmation of my governorship over both Wu and Yue. The court agreed, and ipso facto, by the summer of 896, Dong was captured and beheaded. A decade later, when the last vestiges of Tang control were dispensed with, Qianlio, already the uncontested master of the central coastline, was perfectly

poised to declare the formation of the Wu-Yue kingdom in 907, which would prove to be one of the richest and also the longest lasting of all of the Ten Kingdoms. The basis of its economic strength lay in its intricate network of water catchment bases and flood control systems, since the lands were particularly vulnerable to the storm surges common in the spring and fall. Of particular note was the Hanhai Tang, meaning the warning off the sea catchment basin, that was constructed in 910 shortly after Wu Yue's formal independence. Just outside of Hangzhou itself, which prior to its construction had regularly experienced seasonal flooding, Sima Guang wrote of the Hanhai Tang in the Zhizhetongjian, quote,

Today there are stone-lined catchment basins all along the city wall, which all were built by the Qian rulers. From this point, the wealth of Hangzhou was greatest in all the southeast. End quote. Of at least equal import to the stability and prosperity of Wuye was the establishment of a commissioner of waterways and agriculture, who, according to the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Ten Kingdoms by Wu Renchen of the 11th century, quote,

was directed to establish four cores around Lake Tai, with a total complement of 7,000 to 8,000 men to oversee the fields, to control the rivers, and to maintain the dikes. If there was drought, then they brought water to the fields. At times of flooding, they drained water away from the fields, end quote. Likewise, Song Dynasty author, co-founder of Neo-Confucianism, and native of the Wuye region, Fan Zhongshan, would write a century later, pining for the better days when the Commissioner of Waterways cared for the region and bemoaning the current Song inattention to such details, saying, quote, "...ever since our dynasty, the Song, unified the area, whenever the rice crop has failed

in Jiangnan, relief supplies can be sought in Zheyu which is the coastal region south of the Yangtze, relief supplies can be sought in Zheyu, which is the coastal region north of the Yangtze River. When the crop has failed in Zheyu, then relief has been sought in Hainan. Our dynasty has been careless about managing agriculture. The infrastructure has not been maintained. More than half the polders of Jiangnan and the dikes of Zhexi are in disrepair, and we therefore have forfeited the greatest advantage of the southeast. If we compare the cost of rice to the days of Wu Yue, it has increased tenfold." Politically, Wu Yue did its best to maintain peaceful relationships with the tumultuous regimes of the north through a standing policy of paying a regular tribute to, well, whoever the emperor of the day just so happened to be.

For them, this consisted primarily of silk and metalware, as well as the rice and pottery it produced in abundance. This was significantly aided by the fact that Qianliao and his successors were smart enough to solely use the calendar systems in effect by the northern dynasties when communicating or trading with them, even while internally they had proclaimed their own calendar system. Had the North known about this, they would have almost definitely taken it as a declaration of open rebellion against their imperial authority, because as I have mentioned before, Chinese emperors were pretty touchy about their calendars. This external adherence to the dynastic regimes had the extra benefit of ensuring that the prospective officials of Wuye remained able to sit for the imperial examinations at the capital to officially earn their credentials,

whereas the kingdoms that had more openly declared themselves independent either had to build up examination systems of their own or simply manage without such trappings, which often resulted in critical staffing shortages. But of course, this official trade relationship with the throne was far from the only business dealings Wuye had with the north. They maintained throughout the five dynasties period widespread private trading relations with the northern ports, of course extensively utilizing their access to the sea, and had by far the most sophisticated economy and trade network of any of the ten kingdoms, or any of the five dynasties for that matter, and it alone among the ten kingdoms of

the south was a significant consumer of the luxury goods these trade networks brought in from afar. Unlike many of the other kingdoms who were sure to secure permission from the northern dynasties before conducting their trade missions, the merchants of Wuye were somewhat more fast and loose with that whole letter of the law thing. In his New History of the Five Dynasties, Ouyang Xiu writes, quote, at the time of the later Han Dynasty, because the route across the Jianghuai had been cut, which is the overland trade route that crossed the Yangtze and the Huai rivers, emissaries from Qianliu commonly came across the sea. In the coastal prefectures, they established

trading agencies. When the people failed to meet their debts on time, the agency officials themselves would seek to enforce it. They even established their own jails without regard to the local districts or counties. Because the later Han officials had been heavily bribed, they tolerated this without question. End quote. In 1935, emissaries of Wuye opened official diplomatic and trade relations with Japan and maintained long-standing friendly relations with the Khitan, the Beihai, and the Korean states of later Baekje, Goryeo, and Silla. These Japanese and Korean ties were less strictly business

and much more influenced by the interplay of Buddhism between the regions, and monks from all these regions extensively traveled along the sea routes. Of course, trade with the North was only one aspect of the lucrative markets exploited by the many southern kingdoms, and they traded extensively among themselves as well. Song historian Tao Ye wrote in his Five Generations of History, quote, One morning, the monk Qi Ying accompanied the king of Wuye, then Qianchu, Qianlu's grandson, and the fifth and final ruler of the kingdom, to the Bibuo Pavilion in Suzhou. At that time, the tide was full and ships were jammed together so tightly one could not see a beginning or an end to them. The king

marveled, this place is over 3,000 li from the capital of northern China, Kaifeng. Who there could imagine that there would be so much profit collected together in one river? End quote. It's also apparent that Wu Ye had regular access to the goods common to the South Seeds trade networks, linking to India, Africa, and Indonesia, as evidenced by the fact that upon its eventual submission to the Song in 978, it sent by way of tribute enormous quantities of rhinoceros horn, ivory, frankincense, spices, medicinal herbs, and aromatics not native to China.

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Wuyue is highly developed and lucrative economy, its geographical position both on the Pacific coast as well as straddling the mighty Yangtze River, and its relative lack of reliance on others of the Ten Kingdoms put it in a uniquely powerful position as of 960, at peace, exorbitantly wealthy, and in a position to, when the time came, submit to the ultimate victor of the five dynasties of the north on largely its own terms. But for now, let's go ahead and move on to Wu and southern Tang. Like its neighbor to the east, Wuye, the kingdom of Wu came into existence right at the end of the Tang Dynasty in 907, when its prince, Yang Wo, eldest son of bandit leader turned governor turned prince, Yang Xingmi, refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Zhu Wen's overthrow of the Tang and his establishment of later Liang.

Yang Wo instead was among those regional leaders who insisted on sticking with the Tang reign era, marking it out as a de facto independent entity. Wu's territories, which were the region south of the Huai River, aka Huainan, and the region south of the Yellow River, aka Jingnan, collectively known as Jianghuai, that I mentioned earlier, are today encompassed primarily by the Jiangsu province. However, Yang Wo was young and untested, and he quickly found the majority of his power, though not a title, functionally usurped by the director of his guard, named Shu Wen. When Yang began to resent and resist this puppetry over him, Shu and his associate, Zhang Hao, had the Prince of Wu assassinated. And while they initially

planned to divide the territory and submit to later Liang, Xu Wen changed his mind and had Zhang murdered, and then installed Yang Wu's second brother, Yang Longyan, enthroned as his new young puppet ruler. However, in spite of the ruthless and bloody nature of his ascension to power, Xu Wen, for all his guile, proved to be an adept and even wise administrator over Wu. Shortly after seizing the power behind the throne, Xu Wen appointed his adopted son, Xu Zhigao, who would eventually become his heir after the murder of his blood son, as the prefect of the Wu capital at Guangling City, which is modern Yangzhou. He himself moved to Jinling, which is modern Nanjing, to set up his own parallel shadow government in waiting. Author Ma Ling, for instance, wrote in his book,

Mr. Ma's Book of Southern Tongue, in the 11th century, quote, When the Wu Kingdom was first stabilized, local officials were all of military background and the taxes were levied to aid the military. Only Xu Zhigao, who was appointed to high office in 912, was fond of scholarship. He welcomed those who practiced Confucian ritual, and he was personally able to promote frugality. His administration was humane, and people were attracted to it from near and far, end quote. Later on in his biography, Ma writes, Xu Zhigao established a guest hall to accommodate scholars from every direction, end quote. Both Shu Wen and his heirs, though themselves stemming from military stock, took pains to demilitarize the workings of their government in fairly short order, as evidenced in 909 by the establishment of Wu's own imperial examination system,

since it could, after all, no longer receive officials from the northern capital. And this display of virtue and good governance, as well as its extensive borders with the central plains of the north, seems to have made it an attractive destination for officials seeking to flee the chaos of the five dynasties. By 919, Yang Long'an, and through him, the Shu clan, was ready to take the further step of throwing off the title of prince and instead proclaiming himself the King of Wu before dying in 922. His younger brother, Yang Pu, succeeded him and reigned as king until 927, when, at Xu Zhigao's prodding, he proclaimed himself Emperor of Wu,

with Xu as his chancellor and grand marshal. The Kingdom of Wu would exist in such a state, with Yang Pu as puppet emperor to Chancellor Xu Zhigao, who had secured his personal hegemony excluding all other members of the Xu clan, after some four years of outmaneuvering his adoptive relatives, all of whom wanted a slice of the pie. This state would endure for a further decade until 937, when Yang abdicated in favor of Xu, who proclaimed himself the first king of Qi, and then, two years later, claiming descendants from the deposed Imperial Li clan, proclaiming the restoration of the Tang Dynasty, known to history as the Southern Tang. Professor Hugh Clark writes of the transition from independent kingdom to imperial claimant, quote,

It is uncertain when Xu Zhigao first conceived of such a step. No doubt, he was influenced by the collapse of the later Tang Dynasty in the north in 935, and the absence of any current claimant to the Tang Mandate. But to take such a step was momentous. That Tang Mandate was not just to rule a kingdom, a piece of the whole. The Tang Mandate was to rule the entire empire. By invoking the Tang Mandate, Xu Jigao distinguished his kingdom from all others that ruled in the south throughout the interregnum. A carefully choreographed campaign to bolster Xu's claim to the mandate got underway. Portents were cited, pleas that he accept the mandate were orchestrated, and a line of dissent from the dynastic house of the Tang concocted.

In 939, Xu Zhigao dropped his old surname for the imperial name Li, and changed his given name to Bian. Emperor Li Bian would reign until his death in 943, and was succeeded by his son Li Bian, would reign until his death in 943, and was succeeded by his son Li Jing, who by 945 had began and completed the conquest of the Kingdom of Min to the southeast, when an internal rebellion there destabilized that southern regime. In 951, later Tang was likewise able to further expand its territories, when infighting within the Kingdom of Chu to its west allowed both southern Tang and southern Han

to seize territories from their neighbor. That expansionistic trend would come to a grinding halt and reversal beginning in 956, however, when the later Zhou dynasty under Guo Rong began its successful south-before-north strategy we talked about in episode 130, and seized control of the totality of Huanan territory by 958. When Li Jing died in 961, he would be succeeded by his son Li Yu, who would serve as the final ruler of the territory up through 975, albeit no longer formally as emperor of southern Tang, but instead forced to adopt the much-reduced title of Nanjiang Guo Wang, or the King of Jiangnan, owing to the loss of Huainan. All right, on to our final major kingdom of the day, Min, which is pretty much the totality of modern Fujian province that sits just on the other side of the strait from

Taiwan. The collapse of Tang authority following Huang Chao's march through northwest Fujian led to the arising of two competing warlords, Chen Yan out of Fuzhou, and Wang Chao, not to be confused with Huang Chao, a migrant leader of some 5,000 displaced refugees who had entered into the province from the southwest, even though they were apparently originally from the Huanan region to the north. And they settled at the even more sparsely populated region of Dingzhou, and subsequently laid siege to and captured the coastal port city of Quanzhou, earning himself the formal recognition by Chen Yan as prefect of the region. This was the situation for the subsequent six years until Chen Yan's death in 891,

which saw a year-long siege against Fuzhou by Wang Chao and his two brothers finally uniting the northern and southern halves of Fujian. Something that must be taken into account when talking about Fujian, or Southeast China in general, is its very unique topography and geography. From Professor Clark, quote, although historians often treat Fujian of the 9th century as a single geopolitical entity, it is among the most topographically fractured regions of the Tang Empire. Fuzhou, located near the mouth of the Min River and linked to the interior of the rest of China by the river, was the political and economic center of the northern part of Fujian. By contrast, Quanzhou was isolated from the north by mountains and formed a natural center for the southern coastal regions because of its excellent natural harbor, end quote. And I can personally

attest that this region is some of the most rugged and impassable I've ever seen. The ruggedness and at times near-sheer rock faces of the mountainous terrain form such nearly perfect natural barriers to travel, transit, and trade that culture across southern Zhejiang and Fujian are some of the most diverse and atomized in China, with even neighboring villages routinely unable to even understand one another using spoken language. But this near-total split between southern and northern Fujian would prove to be a defining factor following the collapse of the Tang and throughout the entirety of the interregnum period until the 970s and ultimate reunification.

Uniquely and quite interestingly, in the main kingdom that would shortly develop, it would be from this migrant group of the Wang brothers that the new political elite would be drawn, rather than the native population of the region. In fact, over the course of this era, and even into later centuries, it would be considered a mark of being highborn in Fujian to be able to trace one's lineage to this initial band of migrants, whereas in virtually everywhere else, marks of nobility was a lineage tracing back to some ancient king or learned scholar. Thus, quote, it was socially advantageous to be connected with the migrants, a case where a truly déclassé group, wandering

bandits who had left their homes on an uncertain journey because they had so little at stake to begin with, took advantage of the social and political upheaval of the period to completely change their social position and thereby recast the social order of the whole region, end quote. Wang Chao would rule as military governor of Fujian Circuit until his death in 898, and was replaced by his brother, Wang Shenzhe. Following the collapse of Tang, after waiting two years, Shenzhe proclaimed himself the Prince of Min, at which point the records go pretty quiet for the next 15 years or so.

Shenzhe was apparently a popular and capable ruler over the region until his death in 925, which is noted as being potentially suspicious, an assertion that is perhaps corroborated by the whole of the region then being plunged into civil war between pretty much all of Shunzou's sons, both blood and adopted. Then again, it may well have simply been a factor of Fujian's fractured geography that would naturally lead to such political fractures in the absence of a single powerful ruler. Up through the early 940s, palace intrigue was chronic, assassination and regicide common. By the early 940s, the civil war had built to a crescendo, with the forces of Wang Yanshi out of Fuzhou in the north, locked against his brother Wang Yancheng in Jianzhou to the south, who had begun calling his breakaway state Great Yin.

The upshot of all this was that the Wangs would effectively end up self-destructing by the mid-940s, lose control of the region, and attracted quite a bit of outside attention from the likes of its neighboring southern Tang. Beginning in 945, the Tang armies began infiltrating into Fujian from the northwest, seizing Jianzhou later that year, followed by most of the rest of the territory by 946. The tiny fractions of the territory that were left surrounding Fuzhou turned to Wuye for assistance, which it did. Yet when the king of Wuzhou was informed that the leader of Fuzhou now chafed under his rule and was planning to appeal to southern Tang for help, he ordered the assassination of the ungrateful city governor and annexed the territory into Wuye proper.

The only remnant of the now-defunct Min Kingdom, left under his own control, was Chanzhou, not little more than a city-state along the southern coastal regions of Fujian. But a city-state strong enough to hold out against all comers until its final reintegration under the Song in 978. Alright, so that runs us through four of our southern kingdoms, leaving us with another five for next time. And yes, I know four plus five only equals nine, but we've already covered northern Han, which is typically lumped in with the kingdoms, even though it's not in the south. So in part two of this mini-sode through the south, we'll hit the interior, the central, and western kingdoms of former and later Shu, Jingnan, Chu, and then

finish up in the far south with Southern Han. And heck, I might even throw in Annan, aka Northern Vietnam, in there, because we haven't said Xinjiao to Vietnam in quite a long while. Then we'll finally get back to mopping this whole mess up in 970. Anyways, thanks for listening. I didn't quite manage to get a submission in on time this go-round, I still do show up for some devilish tomfoolery. So, check it out. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations,

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