The History of China - #132 - 5D10K 9: The Southern Kingdoms

Episode Date: November 6, 2017

We round out our overview of the 10 Kingdoms of the south by looking at the trials and tribulations of Chu, Former & Later Shu, Jingnan, and Southern Han’s travails against Annam… but little do they know, they’re one and all riding for a fall… Time Period Covered: 870-960 CE Major Historical Figures: Huang Chao Chu: Governor Liu Jianfei, King Ma Yin, Minister Gao Yu, King Ma Xifan, Prince Ma Xi’ou, King Ma Xiguang Former/Later Shu: King Wang Jian (“Bandit Wang Eight”) [r. 903-918], Minister Feng Juan, Minister Wei Zhuang, King Wang Yan [r. 918-925] King Meng Zhixiang [r. 933-965] Governor Dong Chang [d. 930] Jingnan: King Gao Zhichang [r. 907-] King Gao Congmei Southern Han: Governor Liu Qian, of the Man People [d. 896] Prince Liu Yin of Nanhai [r. 896-911] Emperor Liu Yan, “The Heavenly Dragon” [r. 911-942] Emperor Liu Hongdu [r. 942-960] Annam (N. Vietnam): Governor Duong Dinh Nghe [d. 938] Ngo Quyen [r. 939-] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Four hundred years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the History of China. Episode 132, The Southern Kingdoms. Last time, we looked at the east coast states of the southern lands, covering Wuye, Min, Yin, and Wu.

This time, we began our final sweep through the Western Interior Kingdoms before finishing off in the far south. We begin today with the Kingdom of Chu, also known as Ma Chu, to better distinguish it from the other states that have shared its name across time. As with virtually all of the southern states that emerged at the end of the Great Tang Dynasty, the Kingdom of Chu was born out of the chaos sown during the bandit emperor Huang Chao's march up and down the countryside, leaving the absolute powerlessness of the dying regime at Chang'an on full display. The region that would ultimately become Chu lies across much of what is today Hunan in south-central China, and for our purposes at least, kicks off round about the year 892,

when the ceaselessly revolving door of the soon-to-be-assassinated rebel leaders and disaffected army commanders left Liu Jianfeng and Ma Yin in command of a force of some 7,000 troops with no orders to speak of, no senior military command staff, and no real idea of what to do next since their last commander had just been captured and executed by the enemy. Thus, they meandered their way vaguely westward from their base region of Jiangxi, plundering, raping, and murdering as they went, until they came at last to the prefectural capital at Tanzhou by 894. Though the prefect of the city, one Deng Chunna, quickly dispatched his small contingent of militiamen to confront the force, Ma Ying was able to use his own army's unknown strength to maximum advantage. He told them from the Zizit Hongjian,

quote, my force is number 100,000 and are all highly trained soldiers. You have only a few thousand village militia. Your situation is difficult, end quote. Instead, Ma urged the militia to lay down their arms and accept the overlordship of Liu Jianfeng. And given that they apparently were facing 100,000 crack troops rather than, say, 7,000 half-starved bandits, that seemed a perfectly reasonable request. Once the militia had given up without a fight, Liu and Ma's army was able to march right on in, seize the prefect, and kill him before taking over. Liu was to assume the governorship of the region, a state of affairs that, all too predictably, claimed his own life some two years later in 896, leaving Ma Yin as the de facto, and in due time officially confirmed, head of the state.

Though it would take him several more years of hard fighting against the remaining prefectures of Hunan arrayed against him, by 899, Sima Guang confirms that all Hunan was at peace and united under the banners of Ma Yin. As one of the states straddling the river and canal networks of China, Chu engaged in extensive trade with both the northern dynasties and the southern states, probably the most prominent product of which for Chu was the production of tea, but also silk. It's notable how dangerous these voyages appear to have been. As stated in the Zhefu Yan Gui, the largest encyclopedia compiled in the Song Dynasty, quote,

Nevertheless, it's recorded that in spite of the tremendously dangerous nature of these river and sea routes, Chu annually sent 250,000 caddies of tea to the north as tribute, or about 125 tons of tea per year. Beyond tributary payments to the northern court, however, as I've mentioned before, the southern kingdoms also engaged in widespread trade relations with one another, and Chu was certainly no exception. In fact, Chu was among the first to realize the lucrative potential of this flow of goods and capitalize on it rather ingeniously. A court official of King Ma Yin, named Gao Yu, suggested, quote,

The people are selling their vegetables and tea to northern merchants. If we collect taxes on this, we can support our army. End quote. This all seems rather obvious to us today, but if you'll think back to the other discussions we've had about the imperial Chinese economic policies up to this point, it was actually something of a stroke of unprecedented brilliance. Tax. The. Trade. Who'd have thunk, right? And indeed, Sima Guang is quick to point this out, saying,

In 908, the Chu king petitioned the court of later Liang for permission to establish trading agencies. The request was granted, and from that time on, Hunan prospered, end quote. This was such a tremendous boon that Chu's ability to tax tea moving through its borders quickly outstripped even the profits it was generating from its lucrative gold and silver mines. That wasn't the end of Chu's economic genius, however. As recorded again in the Zizitongjian, Gaoyu also put forth an idea to tax the traveling merchants, without them even realizing that they were being tax Chu. Before leaving the kingdom, the merchants would exchange the coins for other goods. Thus, Chu could barter with what was surplus in Hunan

for the myriad goods of the whole empire, and the kingdom would be rich. Essentially, under Gaoyu's plan, Chu was going to turn itself into a video game arcade. You come in, exchange your cash for their own shiny tokens, win tickets only good there, and then, before you leave, exchange all those tickets for some worthless stuffed bears and cheap wall clocks. Meanwhile, the state just sits back and lets the profits come rolling in. It was a near-perfect plan, at least for Chu itself. There was just one minor hitch. It turned out that by this point, China was, as a whole, so critically cash-starved that more and more people were willing to accept monopoly money as though it were the real thing. Much to the chagrin of the northern dynasties, who were none too pleased to find their own copper-based economies were

suddenly being flooded with what amounted to washer rings and carnival tokens. From Professor Hugh R. Clark, quote, economic need mandated that the southern states find a substitute for copper, lest they abort the economic development. These kingdoms took the initiative in minting coins of lead, tin, and iron to the consternation of the northern dynasties, whose markets were soon awash in debased specie. In 924, the newly established later Tang issued a prohibition against using the lead or tin coins of the south, but the ban had to be reissued in 929 because, at this time, Hunan was using only 10 coins, which traded with copper coins at 100 to 1. These 10 coins flowed into the North, and laws could not put a stop to this, end quote. In spite of the North's ineffective finger-wagging

at Southern merchants for not sticking to their precious copper coinage, Clark points out that it was in fact a significant economic turning point for the South, which had only begun developing enough economically to really begin monetizing its regional economies to any real effect. And in the centuries to come, that monetization, even on the back of Uncle Pennybag's debased carnival coinage, would prove instrumental in helping the South transition from economic backwater to economic powerhouse. As we can see all across time, when economic necessity comes up against the force of law, the law loses 10 times out of 10. Another economic innovation of Chu that would flow out into virtually all the other southern kingdoms was that of the head tax. From the Song Dynasty Manuscript Compendium, or Song Huiyao Jigao, quote, ever since the Ma family occupied

Hunan, they began to collect a tax in cash, silk, prefectures, and counties were singled out for the head tax. They were all closely grouped together, opening the possibility that there had been some drastic event that had failed to survive across time and into the histories, or perhaps something more ethnically motivated. Without any surviving records, all we can do really is speculate, but the possibilities that lay within the shadowed corners where the light of recorded history does not shine can often be the most tantalizing. The Chu kingdom was far from the only one who wound up implementing the head tax, and in fact, Professor Clark points out that among them all, only former and later Shu even maybe didn't wind up implementing such a policy, and that uncertainty exists only because records shed little light on the tax economics of those two shoe regimes.

So maybe they did, but we just can't confirm it. And it's not especially difficult to see why. Clark writes, quote, The advantage of a head tax over other taxes, especially agrarian taxes, was twofold. First, a head tax could be levied upon the urban population. And second, because head taxes are levied on individuals rather than on property. They could also be imposed directly on the landless tenants of the great estates, including those of the monasteries.

Furthermore, because these taxes were assessed on the person, not on the land, the individual, rather than the landowner, was responsible for paying. This meant that the great landowners could not minimize their own taxes by shielding their tenants, a problem that undermined all taxes based on land." Now, my interpretation might beined all taxes based on land, end quote. Now, my interpretation might be a little off base here, but the way that I'm understanding this passage is that before, large landowners would essentially provide tax shelters to their smallholder neighbors and constituents by officially claiming their land on tax registries as their own, for a relatively small fee. All these lands then would be subject to a single instance of the tax collectively,

which would then probably be more than offset for the primary landowner's pocketbooks by the fees collected. Now, however, the taxes were levied on the people themselves, regardless of how many there might be, and irrespective of their holdings. Comprehensive tax reform now. In spite of the obvious advantages of such a system in raising considerably more revenue for the ever-cash-starved royal apparati of the kingdoms, such changes to the way things were done faced its fair share of detractors, such as the official advisor to the

emperor of Wu, Song Qichou. Wu, you see, had parted with the more typical payment conditions of the amount assessed in common trade goods like textiles, silks, or grains, but instead demanded cash and cash only. Minister Song is noted in the Zizhetongjian, however, as cautioning his king against the potentially long-term consequences of such a step, urging, quote, One does not get cash by tilling the land or syraculture. By forcing the people to get cash to pay their taxes, we are teaching them to abandon what is basic, agriculture, for what is not, trade.

We should remit the head tax and collect the rest in grain and cloth, end quote. This provides a rather fascinating look into what must have been a common position of the era, one in line with the old, but rapidly resurgent, ethos of Confucian philosophies, that far from something to be celebrated and encouraged, as in most of our own modern societies, pursuing commercial success was a social evil unto itself that must be actively discouraged or, at most, grudgingly accepted. Better that the masses remain Yemen farmers with the virtue of their own toil than to succumb to the lure of profits and trade in generating value from nothing. Yet even with the added revenue of such an unprecedented tax

system, it ultimately failed to bridge the necessary gap to solve any of the Ten Kingdoms' financial problems, even in the few of those kingdoms, like Wuye, that imposed a head tax across all of its territories. Even so, it remains one of the most important and enduring developments of the era for future dynastic governments. In terms of foreign policy, Chu was throughout the Ten Kingdoms period one of the primary aggressor states along the Yangtze. Its central designs were aimed at the weakest and smallest of the kingdoms, Jingnan, which we'll talk about more in a little bit, but that would almost invariably result in Jingnan calling for aid from Chu's

other, larger neighbor, Wu. And so, the two states were frequently embroiled in conflict, up until about 928, when the king of Chu was convinced to leave Jingnan intact and unconquered to serve as a buffer state against other would-be rivals. This would tamp down on Chu's expansionistic tendencies, at least in that direction, and thus turn the temperature of the relationship between Wu and Chu down to a low boil, at least until the 950s. The decade of the 950s would be the final one for the kingdom of Chu, following the death of its king, Ma Xifan, in 947. The sequence of events that would follow his death, Clark notes, largely mirror those of Min to its southeast that we discussed last episode.

He writes, quote, Ma Xifan's failure to name an heir caused a split between the brothers Ma Xiyou and Ma Shiguang. That was temporarily resolved when the later Han court of the north named Ma Shiguang as the new king. Ma Shiyou resentfully retired to the western shore of Gongting Lake. Also living there was a large population of non-Chinese Man tribesmen who had never been fully included in the Chu polity, nor felt particular loyalty to it. From his retreat at the lake, Ma Shiyou plotted rebellion. He initially tried to get the northern court of later Han to back his usurpation, but when they balked, he turned to the ruler of southern Tang, formerly Wu, to which he promised

his subordination in exchange for military aid. This would prove to be the spine on which he built his army. After a year of fighting his brother's forces, Ma Shiyou's combined Man and Southern Tang army entered the Chu capital at Tanzhou and proceeded to put the great city to the torch. Sima Guang writes of the devastation, quote, everything that had been built since the time of Ma Yin was burned to the ground, and all the wealth he had gathered was seized, end quote. Ma Shiyou ordered his captured brother to commit suicide and then assumed the title of King of Chu. Yet word had reached the King of Southern Tang, Li Jing, of Chu's relative weakness and its population's dissatisfaction with the cruel and capricious regime under Ma Shiyou,

and began to make plans to exploit such internal divisions and seize the kingdom for himself. This process was greatly accelerated the following year, in 951, when Ma Shiyou's younger brother, and former ally in the previous civil war, Ma Shizhong, himself rose against Shiyou in the summer and fall. When both brothers appealed for Southern Tang's intervention, Li Jing was only too happy to oblige them both, though obviously not as they had expected or hoped. Southern Tang armies streamed into the kingdom, but made a beeline for Tan Zhao and captured it, along with the entirety of the Ma clan. A lot of them were deported to the Southern Tang capital and kept under lock and key while Chu as a kingdom came to an abrupt end, with all but ten southern prefectures annexed by Southern Tang and the rest quickly taken over by Southern Han.

Yet if the population of Hunan was happy to see the back of Ma Xiyou, they were in for quite a shock under this new southern Tang regime. Again from the Zizhetongjian, quote, Tang forces seized all the gold and silk, the precious curios, the stored grain, and even the best of the ships and boats. The pavilions and courts and the flowers and fruits were all shipped to Jinling. Taxes were levied in Hunan to support the occupying troops. The exactions were harsh, and the people of Hunan lost hope." We'll get back to that whole slow-rolling catastrophe in due time, but for now, let's move on to the two Xus. No, not left and right. Instead, former and later. The origins of former Shu stem from, everyone all together now, the Huangchao Rebellion.

That's right. But markedly unlike most of the other states affected by the bandit, Shu, which is to say Sichuan, did not succumb to social disorder and governmental collapse in its wake. This is because, well, Chengdu was the Tang Emperor Shizong's fallback position once Huang Chao had captured and plundered the capital. For five long years, Chengdu was forced to pay the enormous costs of housing the entire imperial apparatus on its own, which must have been financially ruinous. Added to and magnifying this, though, was the fact that the Jiedushi of western Sichuan was the brother of the emperor's chief eunuch official, Tian Lingzi,

both of whom are rather infamous for their corruption and rapaciousness. So, somewhat ironically, the social breakdown that occurred in Sichuan happened not because of too little imperial authority, but because of way too much of it. When Emperor Xizong finally got around to moving back to his burnt-out shell of a capital in what was left of Chang'an in 885, Sichuan was once again left pretty much to its own devices. So long, and thanks for all the fish. Into this situation arose the most important figure of the time, Wang Jian, who had

made his bones as a small-time cattle rustler and salt smuggler, a reputation that earned him the nickname Bandit Wang Eight, or Cui Wang Ba, across the region. This low-level activity evolved into a much wider and larger racket over the 870s. In fact, by the mid-870s, we hear of a tale that nearly defies explanation at its face. Apparently, Wang and his close associate, surnamed Jin, were both captured in the aftermath of a raid against Xu Zhou and were, of course, sentenced to death. Yet shortly before their scheduled execution, their jailer just up and freed them. You know, the kind of thing where they wake up one morning to find that their cell door has been left open and all the guards mysteriously nod at their posts for ten minutes, or the like.

Now, most traditional tellings credit the fact that the jailer saw in Wang Jian a remarkable person and was just compelled to therefore free him, or some garbage like that. A more likely reason? The possibility that Wang's gang was so active and powerful across the land that even holding Wang was potentially deadly, much less attempting to execute him. By the conclusion of the Huangqiao Rebellion in the early 880s, Wang Jian had managed to parlay his infamy into a legitimate career by earning, or perhaps buying, a position as one of eight regimental commanders of the Tang loyalist Qin Congchuan army, and by 882 had been promoted all the way to the imperial bodyguard in the form

of the Army of Divine Strategy. By 886, however, Wang had been demoted back to district prefect in Lizhou, Sichuan, prompting him to at last formally break from the Tang dynasty and begin operating on his own volition, and in the process earning him the scornful moniker at the court of Cao Cui, or Rural Bandit. Nevertheless, there was pretty much nothing the crumbling Tang regime could actually throw at Wang other than such harsh language, and so Wang was free to continue consolidating his power over Sichuan throughout the 890s, which he, of course, did, achieving total domination over the entirety of Sichuan as well as the upper Han River Basin by 902. The following year would earn him official recognition from the rapidly dying Tang court in the form of being officially named King of Shu, a title reaffirmed in 908 by later Liang. As I'd mentioned before, these high officials and, well, now, kings were almost

uniformly not of illustrious background and heritage. Wang Jin himself is thought to have been completely illiterate for his entire life, as were many of his followers and eventual court appointees. At the core of this circle of trust were those who had been him from the beginning, primarily his brothers-in-arms that had served with and alongside him from the early days of his bandit and then military career, and who had, quote, earned Wang's favor not because of proper family background or because of scholarship, qualifications of the traditional elite, but because of merit earned on the battlefield, end quote. These men, of which Sima Guang claims numbered more than 120, were all formally adopted as sons by Wang Jian, and given

both his surname and the same generational given name as his natural sons, Cong, which, we might imagine, must have made family reunions rather confusing. This is not to say, however, that all of Wang Jian's inner circle were old army mates. In fact, with the death knell of Great Tong in 907, one of the great debates of the kingdom of Shu was fought out between two transplanted traditional elites that had earned the king's favor, Feng Juan and Wei Zhuang, over whether or not the king of Shu ought to proclaim himself emperor. Feng wound up losing the debate, and Wang did indeed declare himself emperor Gao Zu of Shu in 908, while urging members of the other states oppositional to later Liang to do the same, of which most refused. The fall of former Shu in the third decade of the 900s has traditionally

been pinned on Wang Jian's heir, Wang Yan. This is straight out of the Imperial Chinese historian playbook on the page titled Bad Last Emperor, in which whoever is holding the imperial hot potato when the dynastic music stops gets blamed for everything going wrong. From Ouyang Xiu's New History of the Five Dynasties, for instance, quote, Wang Jian was young and given to carnal pleasures. He entrusted his court to his officials and surrounded himself with boars. Every night, he and his cronies drank and cavorted with women, end quote. Yet it is precisely because of that stock Chinese character-ness

that, as Clark notes, such a simple and likely oversimplified explanation warrants closer inspection. Much of the blame for the fall of Shu then, in the final analysis, must be placed at the feet not of the son, but of the father. Clark writes, quote, Although Wang Jian was an extremely able military leader, he seems to have been less able to judge the civil characters of those who allied with him. The security of the kingdom was disturbed several times by rebellions instigated by some of Wang's own followers, end quote. The largest such uprising

was led by none other than Wang Jian's own initial heir, his eldest son, Wang Yuanyong, which ended with his death. And, of course, Wang Jian in need of selecting a new heir. But Wang, now well into his 60s, had become old and infirm, and could not make up his mind between the most able of his sons, which was Wang Congjie, and the son whose face resembled his own, Wang Conglu. The answer, as it would turn out, would be neither, because into this dithering daughter's indecision stepped his favorite courtesan to suggest that her son, Jian's youngest and least prepared, should be heir instead. Surely that'll pan out well. Surely. On his deathbed in the summer of 918, Wang Jian finally relented and named this son,

Wang Yan, to the throne, a choice that can be described in a somewhat understated fashion as woefully inadequate. Things would remain roughly stable for the next few years, as the boy emperor in his late teens frittered his days and nights away drinking, whoring, and gambling. But that would all change in 923, when Shu's northern neighbor, ruled by Li Maozhen, capitulated and surrendered to the emergent later Tang of Li Chunshu. Li's territories surrounding Fengxiang had long acted as a buffer zone between the north and Sichuan, but now the path was open for later Tang troops to come streaming in unopposed, which is exactly what they did beginning in 925. Thanks in large part to popular alienation from the regime and scores of official defections,

before the year was out, Tang armies possessed Chengdu itself, completing the conquest of Shu. It would thereafter restore the territory to its traditional constituency of East and Western halves, each under the respective thumbs of their Tang-appointed governors, and the figures who will star in the second half of Shu's story, Meng Zixiang in the West and Dong Chang in the East. Very early on, both Meng and Dong had realized that they now sat in control of an enormous amount of wealth, which existed in the form of revenues generated from taxing the mining and distribution of salt. Thus, the pair, though they would later become bitter foes, initially planned to break away from Later Tang's deserity together. The pair held out for the following half-decade, until 930,

when Later Tang armies once again arrived and began a renewed invasion of the realm from the east, running headlong into the defenses of Dong Chang. But this distraction at last gave Meng Zishang the opening he'd been waiting for. He was able to press Dong from the west, asserting control over both halves of Sichuan for himself, and two years later, trapped and killed his erstwhile ally. With Dong Chang's death, later Tang and Meng Zishang reopened the channels for negotiation, which would remain in talks until late 933, when the Tang emperor Li Suiyuan died, at which point Meng stated, quote, The new emperor is young and weak, while those now in charge of the government are petty clerks and incompetents.

We can just wait until everything breaks down, end quote. Instead of waiting, however, within a month, Meng had declared himself the emperor of the revitalized kingdom of Shu, now later Shu, which would endure until its final defeat by the Song in 965. All right, on to the runt of the litter, the tiny central state of Jingnan, aka Jiangling. The region of Jingnan occupied the three strategically vital prefectures that lay within and just east of the three gorges of the Yangtze River. Its centrality and importance ensured that as the Pillars of Tang began to crumble in the 870s and 80s, it would fall into the hands of one would-be warlord and governor after another, finally settling only in 907 with one Gao Zheqiang, a man who had at one point in

his life been a household slave of a wealthy merchant in Kaifeng before the city's takeover by Zhu Wen. When Zhu adopted the merchant as his son, he apparently took notice of this particular slave, and clearly must have been impressed with his military sensibilities, since Zhu went on to not only free Gao Zichang, but appoint him to a series of military positions of great import, including the defense commissioner of Yingzhou. It was from this post that he was finally tapped in 907 to assume control of Jing import, including the defense commissioner of Yingzhou. It was from this post that he was finally tapped in 907 to assume control of Jing'an, where the Gao family would rule until 963. So how's that for a literal rags-to-riches story? Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern

history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with

remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Politically, Jingnan only survived by the good graces of its neighbors, specifically that of its expansionistic neighbor to the east, Chu. Though it had declared independence from the north in 913, by 928 it sat on the verge of annihilation at Shu's hand. From the Zizhitongjian, quote, Ma Ying urged his general, Wang Huan, to seize Jingnan. Huan responded, Jiangling lies between the northern dynasty, Wu, and Shu. On all sides are enemies. It would be

best if we permit it to endure as a buffer against our enemies, end quote. The kingdom was to be spared, not through force of arms, but rather through skilled diplomacy on its own behalf, as well as remaining a necessary speed bump, blunting any state's attempt to push through the region to attack other, more distant kingdoms. That precariousness, however, was not without its own form of benefit. Jingnan was so coveted precisely because of its centrality between north, south, east, and west, and being that center spoke of the relatively few trade routes to remain consistently open throughout the interregnum period. If you wanted to move your goods from one place to another,

odds were you were going to have to pass through one or more of the Jingnan tax booths. And boy, oh boy, did they ever know it. Again, from the Zhizhetongjian, quote, Sounds pretty sweet, right? Well, yes, but like a child addicted to sugar, or me, to caffeine, Jingnan became almost wholly dependent on this series of transit tariffs to fund itself. And just like me and coffee, try taking it away and things get real ugly, real quick. This happened in 948 as follows, quote, Ever since Gao Chongmei had broken with the later Han dynasty in 947, northern merchants had not come and the land was impoverished. So he sent an envoy to the later Han dynasty in 947. Northern merchants had not come, and the land was impoverished. So he sent an envoy to the later Han court,

admitting his error and begging restoration of his tributary status. End quote. Reduced to begging. You know, just like a junkie. Y'all get any more of them trade missions? So, yes, Jing'an essentially acted as the Ten Kingdoms version of Switzerland, surrounded on all sides by tremendously more powerful states, so you'd better be really good at diplomacy So, yes, Jing'an essentially acted as the Ten Kingdoms version of Switzerland, surrounded on all sides by tremendously more powerful states, so you'd better be really good at

diplomacy and make sure everyone values your continued existence more than your territory. Okay, let's move right along to our last state within China proper, which is Southern Han. Alongside Southern Han, we must necessarily talk about Annam, which is to say Northern Vietnam, since the two are inextricably linked. While everyone else was terribly worried about what was going on north of the Yangtze River, Southern Han was concerned first, second, and last with what was going on to its south amid those Vietnamese who, vexingly, just wouldn't give up the ghost and accept permanent

sociocultural subjugation already. Traditionally, the southern coast of China was considered to be, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the ass end of nowhere, and career suicide for anyone unlucky enough to pull that short straw. Power in China functioned much like gravity. The closer one was to the physical center, the stronger the pull. Which made the province of Lingnan,

that is to say, modern Guangdong in Yunnan, the political equivalent of being sent to Pluto. But over the course of the Tang Dynasty, that ancient political calculus predicated on physical proximity to the capital began to be rewritten. By what? By the almighty dollar, of course. Okay, not the dollar. The caddy, then.

Cash. The provincial capital of Guangzhou, or as it was called back then, Panyu, had become a tremendously wealthy port city and one of the main hubs along the Indian Ocean trade routes. As you may recall, it boasted a population of perhaps as many as 200,000 permanent foreign residents by the time of the Huangchao Rebellion, before he came sweeping in and killed off half of them in 879. When he and his roving band of marauders left the city, they must have left behind them little more than a smoldering ruin painted red with blood, and with absolutely no one left alive with any real semblance of authority. This was, obviously, terrible,

but it also wound up resulting in a unique opportunity for some, especially a fellow named Liu Qian. Now, Liu was not Chinese, this much is clear, even as throughout his life he claimed time and again that his family, good strong Han men one and all, hailed from Xiangcai County, Henan. But claims that have long been used from the other side, that he might have even been Arab, are just as outlandish. Professor Clark makes the case that the most probable answer was that he was Man, that is to say, a rather loose Chinese designation of any number of tribal peoples from the south. Unfortunately, his non-Chinese name and specific tribal designation don't seem

to have survived in the historical records, and so that's about as specific as we can really get. As a chieftain of one of the resident Man tribes, Liu Qian was able to use this power vacuum to his family's advantage, leveraging his own political influence to arrange a marriage to the Jiedushi of Lingnan, Wei Zhou, prior to the Huangchao Rebellion. Wei had been dispatched by the Tang court to the south not as a political punishment, as we might otherwise have expected, but because he had a distinguished track record of cordial and effective relations with the minority peoples of the realm. Thus, the marriage between Wei and Liu, from Clark, was part of a policy for maintaining the loyalty and quiescence of those peoples,

and was proof of the prominent role Liu Qian played among them. In the aftermath of the destruction wrought by Huang Chao's army, it seems that Liu Qian was the only figure left standing with anything approaching enough clout to exercise viable authority in the region. As such, the Tang court was left with no option but to confirm the chieftain as the governor of his own home city, Fangzhou, if for no other reason than to attempt to ensure that he and his people would remain loyal and not go getting any crazy ideas like declaring independence or anything. And to be sure, the Liu family proved themselves loyal to the last, since whatever formal declarations on paper they needed to swear and sign were little more than convenient window dressing

to what all parties surely understood was the actual political reality of the day. The Liu's controlled the Southlands, whether or not the Tang court recognized that. But by the same token, a little window dressing can lend a lot of legitimacy to such a rulership. Liu Qian's heir, Liu Yin, took power upon his father's death and demonstrated that loyalty in 896, when the Tang court dispatched a prince of the royal family to act as the new Jiedushi of Guangzhou, in order to ensure, as it were, that the lucrative revenues generated by the South Sea trade routes remained firmly under the foundering Tang's dynastic thumb. Local elements, some sources estimate about a hundred men altogether, were poised to resist this move towards direct imperial control over the region, and turned to Liu for his support to throw

off the Tang yoke once and for all. But Liu Yin instead launched a sneak attack against the would-be rebels and executed them, welcomed the prince to his post, for which he was granted the post of Xinjun Sima, a military rank we can directly translate as Master of the March and Horse, but which other sources translate as Adjutant or Warrant Officer. He'd be further promoted in 902 to the position of Commandant of Guangzhou, and then to Jiedushi himself circa 907, after having dutifully bribed the newly ascendant warlord Zhu Wen of later Liang. In 910, he'd be named to the Prince of Nanhai by Zhu, but would fall ill and die the following year, recommending that his younger half-brother, Liu Yan, be appointed to replace him,

a recommendation that was quickly enacted. In 913, Liu Yan, now the jiedushi of both Qinghai and neighboring Jianwu, as well as having been conferred the ceremonial title of Tianfu, or Imperial Professor, by Zhu Wen's assassin and successor, Zhu Yougui, now sealed a marriage alliance with the state of Chu to the north by marrying King Ma Yin's daughter, who would, by the bye, become the only official empress of the Ten Kingdoms, Ma Huanghou, though in spite of this, her given name is rather ironically unknown. In any case, as of about 915, Liu Yan found himself snubbed by the court of later Liang, when its new new emperor, Zhu Zhen, refused to promote him to the level he thought he deserved, namely the prince of Nanyue, which, you'll just have to take my word for it,

was a promotion from his former principality. Prompting Liu to darkly comment, as per the Digitongjian, quote, Now the central plane is in confusion. No one knows that, the writing was pretty much on the wall. Liu ceased sending tribute or emissaries to Kaifeng altogether, and began to prepare to seize control of the south outright. Liu Yan would cut ties with the north in 918, after having sealed yet another marriage alliance with a neighboring state, this time Min to the northeast by offering his niece, Princess Qingyuan, as the bride of the

prince of Min's son. Having assured that his neighbors would be of no concern, and having offered appropriate sacrifices to heaven and earth, Liu Yan changed the name of his territory from Yue to Han, with himself as its emperor, Gao Zu. Though he would not, of course, tell any of this to the northern dynasties with which he interacted, as evidenced in 925 when, following Li Cunshu's defeat of Zhu Chuangzong's army and the establishment of the later Tang dynasty, with himself as its emperor, Zhuang Zong, Liu sent an emissary to the imperial capital, with instructions to refer to Liu Yan merely as the king of Great Han rather than emperor.

Liu was, after all, no fool. Still, he was comfortably, and critically, distant enough from the seat of this so-called imperium that when the emissary returned to southern Han with word that the new emperor was arrogant and excessive, and he had nothing to fear from it, he cut off all further communication with the north and merrily went about his own business once again. That same year, he apparently first changed his name to Gong, but was then informed by a group of foreign monks that such a name was unfavorable to Southern Han, so he re-changed his name to a character that, by all indications, he made up himself. It was the character for dragon, Long, situated above the character for heaven, Tian, and he pronounced it, conveniently enough, Yen. So Liu Yan renamed himself Liu Yan.

But now he was the heavenly dragon, because he was oh so humble about all this. So let's get to Liuillian's conflict with Vietnam, because I'm sure that's what you're really here for. And a quick note here, I have looked up and practiced the pronunciations of the names to follow, but I do not by any measure claim to be able to speak or pronounce Vietnamese names well, but I'll do my best to pronounce them neither like a Midwestern American nor a Beijing Mandarin speaker. So for all roughly 20 of you listeners in Vietnam, my apologies in advance. Anyways, Annam had become by the fall of the Tong, by all reasonable measures, once again an independent entity. For ages it had been

administered by either out-and-out Han Chinese officials, or at least a highly sanified local elite. Yet by the mid-9th century, between the erosion of northern power and the far-flungedness of the region itself, Annam had been largely unable to fend off an invasion of the Nanjiao kingdom to its immediate north. The Tang armies had been able to eventually push the Nanjiao forces out, but Tang, and Chinese authority in general, had been fatally eroded as a result. When Liuyin had first established his independent authority over the region, he claimed Annam as part of his Dezhi realm, but everyone knew that such a claim was just so much hot air, and he had no way to actually back it up. This de facto independence would be

what Liuyin sought to do away with in 930, when he launched an invasion of the southern territory. It all seemed to go very well at first, with the incoming southern Han armies meeting very little in the way of resistance. But the following year, Ai province, which is the southernmost region of Annam, rendering it the most loosely held by Chinese authority, launched a rebellion against Chinese Cesarity, led by a man named Zhong Jiannei. It's a testament to Zhong's power that Liu just didn't even really try to oppose this move, but instead went, oh yeah, well obviously you're thegeneral of the region with absolute authority. Of course, that was my plan the whole time.

Even so, Zhong's victory for the Annamese over the Sanofi gentry proved short-lived, as he was assassinated less than a year later by counter-revolutionary forces. Their own return to power was equally short-lived, though, since Zhong's murder only inflamed the Annamese further and saw the rise of Niu Guen, who had been Ziyong's right-hand man prior to his death. By 939, Niu had utterly ousted the revanchist Chinese leadership and driven off all southern Han efforts to interpose themselves back into the situation, culminating with the decisive battle of

Baikdong River, which saw the Han Chinese government under the command of Liu Yan's son, Liu Hongcao, the recently appointed governor-general of naval pacification, stumble into a carefully laid trap set by the Annamese. This trap hinged on the Annam army planting a series of iron-tipped spikes in the tidal bed at low tide, so they would just be invisible to the approaching Chinese fleet at high tide. As the Chinese force advanced, their boats were impaled on the spikes just below the water's surface and stuck fast, allowing the Annamese to dispatch them at their leisure or simply wait for the sailors on the rapidly sinking ships to drown. And drown they

did, with purportedly less than half of the 100,000-plus Chinese force limping away in abject defeat, and Liu Yan himself, upon hearing the news, crying bitterly and ordering the total withdrawal of his expeditionary force. In victory, Niu declared himself king of Annam, a step that even Jiang Jianye had hesitated to take, and even abandoned Hanoi, then called Daila, for Guolua to the south, having deemed the former too Chinese for his taste. Yet for all this, Niu declined to take on an imperial title, instead opting to remain nominally submissive to the northern dynasties, which has led many historians to debate over whether Annam was really an independent state or not, but any sense of

subordination to the Chinese at this point was really truly in name only, and likely just as a way to hedge his bets. In reality, Annam was as independent as they came, and neither Southern Han, nor even the full might of the Song Dynasty yet to come, would ever be able to re-subjugate the Vietnamese state in any way other than empty lip service for the next thousand years. Hell, not even the Mongol Yuan Dynasty that crushed the Song under heel in the 13th century was ever able to extend its reach into the steaming jungles of Vietnam. So yes, I'll go ahead and side with those who say, whatever their nominal position might have been in the eyes of the Chinese court, Vietnam had successfully declared its independence from the Chinese Imperium

and dared anyone to tell them otherwise. In the words of the Vietnamese historian Ngo Thay Si E, quote, The victory on Bạch Đăng River was the basis of rebuilding the nation. The later victories, under the Tinh, Lê, Lý, and Trần dynasties after then, also was the basis of rebuilding the nation. The later victories, under the Ding, Lei, Li, and Zhen dynasties after then, also followed the prestige of this great victory. The Battle of Baikdang has great fame, and resounded for thousands of autumns thereafter.

It was not only glorious in its own time. Li Yan would not have too terribly long to dwell on his embarrassing defeat against Annam, as in 942, he grew ill and would soon thereafter die, leaving his kingdom defeat against Annam, as in 942 he grew ill and would soon thereafter die, leaving his kingdom to his eldest son Liu Hongdu. Sima Guang would summarize his reign as follows, quote, Gaozu was observant and capable of political tactics, but was self-important, often referring to the emperors of the central plains as prefect of Luo prefecture. Lingnan was where rare jewels could be gathered, so he was luxurious in his living and favored beautiful things, adorning his palaces with gold, jade, and pearls.

He was cruel in his punishments, using methods including cutting off noses, cutting off tongues, dismemberment, cutting pregnant women open, tying people to heated iron poles, and boiling people. He also sometimes put poisonous snakes into water and threw criminals in, referring to this as water prison. In his later years, he was particularly suspicious of intelligentsia and became trusting of eunuchs. Therefore, from this point on, Southern Han had many eunuchs." And yeah, that is just one long, shrill dog whistle about the horribleness of Liu Yan from the perspective of a Song historian. It has everything from classic tyrannical punishments like nose-cutting and boiling people to the out-and-out monstrous, all the way to the truly and utterly unforgivable act

of trusting eunuchs. All that's really missing is some sort of demonization of Empress Ma. Suffice it to say, I love you Sima Guang, but we can definitely tell which team you're batting for here. I do love the bit, though though where Liu apparently liked to refer to the northern emperors as the prefect of Luo in his own court, all while being super duper careful to make sure he never referred to himself as emperor in any messages sent north. Yeah dude, you are so brave. In any case, Liu Hongdu would become the aptly named Emperor Shang, meaning short-lived, since he'd only be on the throne for about a year and change before his brother, Liu Hongxi, citing his excessive and cruel reign, took the opportunity of the emperor getting blackout drunk

at a feast featuring an arm-wrestling competition to have the arm-wrestlers carry the stupefied monarch to his chambers and once inside, beat him to death with their bare hands, because again, they're arm wrestlers. I mean, you wouldn't have a swordsman use a bow, you wouldn't have an archer use an axe. Arm wrestlers' needs must beat people to death. It's the rule. Hongxi would reign as Emperor Zhongzong for the subsequent 15 years. In 951, under Zhongzong, southern Han took part in the ripping apart of the Chu kingdom, along with southern Tang, seizing for itself the southernmost ten prefectures while Tang gobbled up the rest. All this was done under the guise of, get this, helping one of the Chu princes,

Ma Yin's younger son, Ma Xiyin. Liu wrote a letter to Prince Xiyin, stating, It was unfortunate that Uncle 35 and Uncle 30 fought with and slaughtered each other, such that they surrendered the ancestral foundation to the enemy of the North. I heard that the Tang forces have already taken over Changsha. Now I can see you are about to fall, so how can I not save you? I have launched an army to head toward you by water and land. I will surely let you, Uncle Chancellor, always have a military command and always control territory. End quote. Gee, how considerate. Also, I love how even in this formal writing, Liu notes just how ridiculously large the Ma family was by referring

to its members only by their ordinal numbers rather than their specific names. By the late 950s, with later Zhou on the warpath southward, Zhongzhong began to worry about the possibility of being conquered from the north by this powerful northern resurgence, and began to build up troops in defense. But then he decided, eh, screw it. No, really, he said, quote, It would be fortunate for myself to be spared. Why worry about future generations? End quote. And so he resumed what had become his regular habit of heavy drinking and feasting. And he was, as it turned out, quite right. The

following year, he died, and it would be Liu Jixing, his eldest son, who would get to deal with the collapse of his kingdom's power and its ultimate subjugation under the Song Dynasty. Thanks, Dad. Well, that about wraps up our quick and dirty overview of the Southern Kingdoms between 870 and 960. Next time, then, we launch back into the narrative proper to begin watching as the Governor General of Songzhou begins his campaign to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves.

And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.