The History of China - #145 - N. Song 12: The New Policies, Pt. 1

Episode Date: July 20, 2018

In this first part of a mini-arc, southern provincial nobody Wang Anshi rises above his station and attracts both the curiosity and the attention of Emperor Shanzong and his court by laying out a bold new vision to lead the Song Dynasty out of its economic malaise before disaster inevitably strikes. But when neither Wang nor his critics are willing to give an inch on their principles, sparks fly... Time Period Covered:  1021-1070 CE Relevant Historical Figures: Emperor Shenzong of Song (Zhao Xu) [r. 1067 - 1085] Wang Anshi, Economic Maverick [1021-1086] Sima Guang, Conservative Historian [1019-1086] Ouyang Xiu, "Old Drunkard" [1007-1072] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 145, The New Policies, Part 1. It's a fairly frequent question-slash-request for listeners of not just this show, but of history in general. Yes, yes, all these high falutin kings and emperors and lords and ladies are all well and good, rolling the ball of empire this way or that in their fancy clothes. But what about the little guy? What about Joe Schmo? What about the everyday lives of the regular folk? Why don't we hear more about them? It is a fair question. After all, I'd hazard a guess that most of us listening are among the

throng of average Joes of the world. Though, that said, if you're like the emir of Kuwait or something, what's up? Give me a call. The problem is, is that answering questions about the little guy across most of history tends to be really hard. Not necessarily impossible, at least not all of the time. and especially since more modern historians have done an increasingly good job at looking at the non-traditional sources to draw histories of the populace at large from, things like housing patterns, taxation patterns, consumption patterns, things like that. Even so, it still remains difficult a lot of the time to get much more than the broader outlines of such lives,

because for most of history, the populace at large has had very little voice. Writing and records have typically been the purview of the elite. That's true even in China, where literacy rates were higher than what they were in places like Europe at the same time. And the histories that I typically draw from, you're no doubt well aware, tend to focus on the high-level bureaucratic big picture of the empire writ large. And only from the perspective or focusing on the individuals who stamp their indelible mark into that process, they're the only ones who tend to make the cut. The average person who toiled their lives away in obscurity does tend to act only as an aspect of the scenery to those

big players of history. I'm aware of that gap. And as I've gone through this show so far, I've tried where I've been able to improve upon that great man of history sort of narrative telling, insofar as it's not impeded the overall narrative or or such that we devolve into a 10-episode mini-series on seasonal harvest patterns, and no, before you even start, you Legion of Rice episode lovers, no, no, we are not doing that, no. As I've been able, and found it narratively appropriate, I've tried to insert the slice of life elements into the narrative, usually not as like one chunk or episode unto itself, but rather interwoven into the stories of those who begin in the slums of life and then exceeded them into the annals of

history. People, for instance, like the Empresses Wu and Liu, both of whom started their lives as peasant girls in the farmlands of Sichuan. And that's sort of how we're going to be beginning today, looking at the early life of one of those figures from the late 11th century Song court, who most certainly did not begin his life or career at the nexus of political or social power, and yet by the end would have enumerated and put into practice a number of new ideas, laws, and reforms so transformative to the Song state that they have been debated, echoed, repealed, and then reenacted for the entire remainder of the dynasty. His set of ideas were so out of the box for his time that their collective name, Xinfa, literally means the new policies or new laws. And that man was Wang Anshi.

Now, to be clear, right off the bat, Anxiu was no peasant, farmer, or street rat. This is not one of those stories. His life begins comfortably in what we might refer to as the middle to upper middle class of Chinese society as a whole, and as such, can serve as a very reasonable proxy for the class of men as a whole who would improve their positions and careers, elbowing their way into the upper elite over the course of the 11th century. Hailing from the old heartland of northern China, the fertile yet troubled plains between the Yellow and Huai rivers, specifically from the capital of Shanxi province, Taiyuan City,

about 500 kilometers southwest of modern Beijing, the Wang family would be part of the wave of sojourners who abandoned the ancient heart of China amidst the destruction and upheaval that so ravaged the north over the course of the Five Dynasties period a century prior. In the course of their journey, they would settle in Fuzhou, a township in the region along the southern banks of the Yangtze River, known collectively as Jiangnan, literally south of the river. That is not to be confused with the modern Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province much further southeast. No, this Fuzhou would eventually be incorporated as part of the wider city of Nanjing, then called Jiangning, which is now a district name within Nanjing, and aren't historical

place names fascinating? They're just, they're fascinating. Anyways, we'll talk more about the rich history of the south capital later on in the dynasty, but for now, no, we need to remain focused on the Wang family. Right, focus. Wang Anshi's father, Wang Yi, was actually the first in his family to break into the official class by passing his Jin Shi exams in 1015. And yeah, just go right ahead and cue up the Jefferson's theme song into your head right now. He would spend his career holding a variety of low to mid-level bureaucratic positions, and yeah, just go right ahead and cue up the Jefferson's theme song into your head right now. He would spend his career holding a variety of low- to mid-level bureaucratic positions,

culminating in the office of Vice Prefect of Jiangning City. Even early on, young An Shi followed in his father's footsteps and was regarded as a dazzling scholar in his own right, so much so that he placed fourth in his class at his own Jianshi examination, which was no mean feat. In spite of his evident rising star status, Wang Anshi rebuffed repeated opportunities to break into the official circles of the capital city, preferring instead to remain close to the city he'd come to regard as home, Jiangnin, where he could, quote, better discharge his family and financial responsibilities, end quote.

Where he would begin formulating what would become his pièce de résistance, though, would be in Yin County, which is modern Ningbo, some 430 kilometers southeast on the coasts of modern Zhejiang province. Installed there as a magistrate, beginning in 1047, An Shi began promoting a series of agricultural policies that he would, in due time, apply to the empire as a whole. These included irrigation and land reclamation projects, as well as an early version of an agricultural loan measure that provided grain in the off-season to be paid back with interest at harvest time. Over the course of the following decade, he steadily rose

to the ranks of the local officialdom, reaching the distinguished post of Judicial Intendant of the Jiangnan Eastern Circuit as of 1058. It was from there that he attracted the attention of the Imperial Palace when he, expressing the rising concern among many within the intelligentsia of the era, wrote directly to the Emperor Ranzong what has become known as the Myriad Word Memorial, which proves to be an apt name. To give you just a taste, he begins, Your servant observes that your majesty possesses the virtues of reverence and frugality, and is endowed with wisdom and sagacity. Rising early in the morning and retiring late into the evening,

your majesty does not relax for even a single day. Neither music, beautiful women, dogs, horses, sightseeing, nor any of the other objects of pleasure distract or becloud your intelligence in the least. Your humanity towards men and love of all creatures pervade the land. Within the empire, the security of the state is a cause for some anxiety. And on our borders, It was a rhetorical question, in case you're worried, which Wang would go on to answer himself. He said that the root of the problem lay in the fact that the modern officialdom and its bureaucrats had strayed too far from the guiding principles of the ancient kings. He wrote, And from there, he goes on, and on, and on. In short, Long was arguing that the

predominant political culture had been overtaken by a class of men selected not for their ability to, you know, actually do their jobs or anything, but instead for their ability to memorize and replicate ancient poems and write flowery prose. And that was, well, not exactly ideal to the ongoing health of the imperial government. Who'd have thunk? From Smith, quote, It was these men, Wang may well have thought, who had suppressed the Qingli reforms, and it was certainly these men who would ensure that even when the emperor and court did promulgate the right kinds of measures, either they would not be acted on or they would be turned against the people, end quote. It's noteworthy that nowhere did Wang indicate that he expected people to act against their own self-interests.

But just the opposite. He continually proposed that the throne take measures to align its ministers' interests with its own. That, of course, being the well-being and continuance of the state and dynasty. It should do this by ensuring that they pay those officials well enough to keep them honest and focused on the essential tasks of state, rather than trying to bleed the peasantry dry. But what was perhaps the most striking was his continual insistence on returning back to the good old days, with a verve and force of argument that had rarely been seen. He seems to have been particularly taken with the policies and consolidation of the first

great dynasty of China, the short-lived Qin and its emperor Qin Shi Huang, following his own victory over the other warring states nearly a thousand years prior. He would write, for instance, in his treatise entitled Wang Linchuan Chuanji, that all ministers must share the same basic value set, as he put it, being, quote, uniformly instructed in the way of the ancient kings, end quote, and that the throne ruthlessly stamped out, quote, the heterodox learning of the hundred schools, and no one dared study them, end quote. Another argument of Wang's, one long out of favor within the empire, was that the civil and military arts had for too long been placed on separate and irreconcilable tracts. This had provided no service to the nation, instead only ensuring that those in high government offices

looked down on those guarding their very borders, and consequently, that such vital tasks had been, quote, sloughed off on the most corrupt, ruthless, and irresponsible elements of society, men who could not even maintain themselves in their native villages, but had to leave their families to muster in the army, end quote. Wang Anzhi's solution to all the empire's ailments, then, in their native villages, but had to leave their families to muster in the army. End quote. Wang Anzhi's solution to all the empire's ailments, then, was as straightforward as it was brutal and politically unthinkable. The empire suffers from heterodox thought, which leads to inaction and corruption.

Therefore, we must exterminate all heterodox thought in favor of a singular, unified vision of government. It's simple. We kill the Batman. Now, while this did not mean anything quite so brutal as, say, Qin Shi Huang's murderous oppression of the Hundred Schools of Thought, Huang wasn't talking about murder, at least not yet, it would be a little less forceful.

Once more drawing on those sage kings of antiquity, such as the First Emperor, Huang wrote, quote, Whenever the ancients aspired to great deeds, they never failed to exterminate their politically opportunistic opponents as a prelude to attaining their goals. Thus, the book of poetry says, But if his imperial majesty balked at such an idea, dynasty first exterminate his opposition and only then achieve his goals for the world. But if his imperial majesty balked at such an idea, as someone like then-Emperor Ranzong surely would have, Wang Anxiu was already prepared with the perfect follow-up. No, no, your majesty. You see, the ancient kings lived in a time of unparalleled corruption, and thus required unprecedented action to overcome it. our own time is not nearly that bad, since these opportunistic vulturous ne'er-do-wells were

far outnumbered by the virtuous citizens who would welcome such reforms as liberators. But by that same token, the fact that so many would surely welcome a return to virtue and prosperity, and so vastly outnumbered those few monkey-wrenches in the works, made it all the more intolerable that the Emperor, in his holy majesty, might ignore the cries of reform and change stacked up against the paltry chants by the self-interested to stay the course. Wang wrote, If your majesty sincerely hopes to bring the world's talents to the fore,

then this minister urges that you decide once and for all. Wang Anshu would learn in due course that perhaps words like exterminate were rather too extreme for any emperor to take very seriously at all, much less act upon. Yet over the course of the subsequent decade, though his language would become, as Smith puts it, less sanguinary, the underlying message to both Renzong and then Shen Zong, because he was literally out of town for the entirety of Ying Zong's brief reign, would remain fundamentally unchanged. Be resolute, crush dissent, and disregard murmuring opposition of vulgar opportunists. It would be in the cabinet of Emperor Shen Zong, himself a young, energetic, and activist monarch, that Wang Anshi

and his reformist ideas would at last come to the imperial limelight. As I mentioned, he had spent the entire three years of Yingzong's madcap reign outside of the capital, back in his home district of Jiangning south of the Yangtze. And yet his name came up again and again to the heir and soon-to-be successor, then Prince Zhao Shu. This had been done primarily by the young prince's personal tutor, the minister Han Wei, who would often say when discussing particular reformist ideas with the imperial heir, this is not my idea, this is the idea of my friend Wang Anshu. Encouraged by both Han and other ministers friendly to Anshu, upon assuming the throne, Shen Zong issued a

summons down to Jiangning, requesting that this Wang he'd heard so much about attend to him at court. Yet now, Wang played coy, refusing the summons to Kaifeng, even as he, much to the shock of everyone, including those who'd so talked him up, accepted a post in the south. Some six months later,

when the aged chancellor Han Qi at last resigned his post in the 9th month of 1067, again, Shenzong tried to coax Wang Anshi up to Kaifeng, this time by appointing him to the eminent ranks of the Hanlin Academy. Yet Wang was still a no-show for his date with destiny. For seven months, Emperor Shanzong drummed his fingers impatiently and wondered just what it was that this Wang guy could possibly be doing that he deemed more important than an

imperial appointment to the most prestigious academy in the empire. Until at last, fed up, Xuanzong issued not just a summons, but an outright imperial order that, quote, the newly appointed Hanlin academician Wang Anshe appear for an audience immediately, end quote. Oh, well, if you insist. Thus it was that in mid-1068, that the 47-year-old political maverick and ideologue would meet face-to-face for the first time with the 20-year-old sovereign of all under heaven. And what a meeting it was.

Anshu wasted little time in getting to the meat of what he thought the emperor should, nay, must do to correct the course of the badly listing dynastic regime. He quickly exhorted that the monarch needed to abandon his current model ruler, that of the great Tang Taizong, who I misrepresented last episode as Song Taizong, very sorry about that mix-up. No, you see, Shenzong needed to think bigger, grander, and much older than a paltry four centuries ago. His model needed to be none other than, say it with me now everyone, the Sage Kings of Antiquity, specifically Yao and Xun, the last two of the mythical five sovereigns. See episode two for more details. Shenzong was intrigued, but replied by asking

what the big darn hurry was. After all, the Song had managed to be just fine for the previous century in holding together all under heaven without any major disasters. To this, Huang replied that no, you're thinking about this all wrong. You can't just wait for disaster to strike before seeking to raise yourself and your reign above the normal. You can't just be content with mediocrity until emergency arises, because that's exactly how emergencies arise. That the Song Emperors had until now been good and virtuous, he continued, was beyond question, to be sure, but just as much as that, the dynasty had until now been pretty lucky as well, and if history showed anything, it was that neither imperial virtue nor good fortune

could be counted upon forever. And as Wang saw it, now just barely offset, quote, the problems of slavish conventionality typical of a period of decline, end quote. The emperor was surrounded by women, eunuchs, and nitpicking bureaucrats,

and had not yet emulated those activist rulers of old who discoursed with learned scholars on the methods used by the former kings to order the world. Anshu went on, quote, The reason the empire has suffered no great calamity is because the time has not yet arrived for the barbarians to explode onto the scene, and we have not been visited by great floods or droughts. Although it is attributed to the doings of men, this is Scott. nor can the affairs of men be idly left to their own time. The time for doing great deeds is right now. End quote. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's

descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms, or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Now, to say that Emperor Shenzong was more than a little starry-eyed at the vision laid before him by Wang Anshu was a given. Here was a guy telling him pretty much exactly what he wanted to hear in a minister. Do it, your majesty. Only you can. Be amazing. But neither was the emperor completely blinded by Wang's exhortations. He understood very early on that quite a lot of what Wang was saying was

less than practical in the modern era. No, we're not going to be going back to the reigns of demigod kings. Still, he really liked having Wang around, and determined that he should be brought into the council of state as an assistant civil counselor. This decision was met with tremendous opposition by the powers that be within the government, who regarded Wang as impractical, intransigent, unwilling to listen to reason, and, well, dangerous. The sitting assistant counselor summed that up in a private audience with Shen Zong when he stated, quote, If Wang is made a counselor, he will change many things and disrupt the empire,

and everyone already knows this, end quote, to which I assume Shen Zong's reply might well have End quote. To which I assume Shanzong's reply might well have been, well, duh, that's the point. In any case, their complaints were brushed off, and Wang Anshu assumed his place on the imperial council in the second month of 1069, with the emperor bypassing Wang's habit of turning down requests by simply ordering him to take the post. For his part, Wang seems to have been eager to, in his words, assist the emperor to accomplish great deeds, and to that end laid out a three-part proposal to enact such changes. The first step, he said, on the path

towards transforming customs and mores and establishing laws and institutions was to eliminate those within the government who opposed him and his grand vision. The emperor readily agreed, and within a month of his appointment, Wang had begun to systematically isolate and neutralize those who already had or were likely to stand against him. The other ministers of the court predictably cried foul, saying, whoa, whoa, he gets to eliminate anyone who disagrees with him? What's up with that? Minister Zeng Gongyang pointed to Shenzong's own great-granduncle, the Emperor Zhenzong, from the turn of the century, stating that he had believed that it was, quote,

it is important to have men of different opinions stirring each other up so that no one will dare to do wrong, end quote. To this, however, Wang Anshu declared hogwash, quote, if everyone at court agitates one another with different opinions, then how will it be possible to govern? This minister humbly believes that if the court ministers in charge of state affairs do not share one mind and one morality, nor cooperatively strive for unanimity, then none of the tasks facing the empire can be accomplished, end quote. In the short term, that meant silencing all opposition. And in the longer term, eliminating it altogether by ensuring that the generations of ministers to come would one and all be educated with a common morality and ideology.

What ideology? Why, Wang Anshu's ideology, of course. The re-education of the imperial ministry's scholars-to-be would come about through the establishment of a national school system, a complete overhaul of the imperial examination system, the promulgation and compulsory study of a complete set of the commentaries on the classic texts penned by Wang himself, obviously, and by packing the relevant imperial directories and bureaus with his own supporters and family members. Yet for all of that, Wang understood that it ultimately hinged on a single will that was not his own, that of the emperor, who could, through his own imperial prerogative, enforce or unmake Anshu's vision

at any time. Thus it was of paramount importance that Wang convinced Shen Zong to use that imperial prerogative to silence his own critics and to decide these issues once and for all in his favor. As Shen Zong continued to hem and haw between the urgings of Wang Anshi and the criticisms of his other ministers like Sima Guang and Ouyang Xiu, Wang attempted to convince the emperor that it was his own lack of decisiveness that was creating and perpetuating this problem at all. He wrote to the emperor, quote, Although your majesty is far more sagacious than his predecessors, because you are insufficiently resolute, you have not yet succeeded in transforming civic culture by unifying morality. As a result, the cacophony of opinions continues. It was therefore up to the emperor to, continuing

the quote, awe and intimidate the multitudes into compliance, so that the court can attend to affairs. It is just like heaven itself, which uses the yang qi, the positive light energy of change, to activate the myriad things. Heaven does not let the different things saturate one another, but rather conceives them all with the one essence. Just so, if the imperial resolve is strong, then all under heaven will comply without being commanded. If not, the factions of the vast party of conventionalists will strengthen by the day, while the imperial authority will daily wither." In other words, what's wrong, McFly? Chicken? To which Shenzong replied, nobody calls me chicken.

The emperor's saving grace, perhaps, was the fact that in spite of everything Wang was whispering and hollering about the need for what amounted to political purges of everyone, not him, and in spite of Shenzong's own broad agreement with both the ends and the means of Wang's suggestions, he never lost his respect for the other ministers within his government when they criticized and argued forcefully against Wang's propositions, and, quote, battled endlessly with Wang for the mind and heart of the emperor, end quote. As time went on, and Wang's inner circle of like-minded lackeys grew inevitably tighter

and removed those who found themselves on the wrong side of one particular issue or another, the voices that rose against his near single-minded focus on stamping out all dissent swelled in rank and volume. In 1075, for instance, after falling out with Wang, his former closest associate named Liu Huicheng spoke out in apparent horror about Wang's increasing mania. of saying that in the management of troops it is essential to enforce ranks, so that even those with the will to differ will not dare give voice to their opinions, and unanimity will be maintained. But in fact, Anshu acts this way, not only towards the army, but towards the entire nation. Wang regards all under heaven as an enemy, but even if he can manage to silence those closest to him, can he really silence all under heaven? End quote. And for a time, at least,

it seemed that he just might. Having secured the reins to political power and the imperial ear by 1070, the first of Wang Anshi's so-called new policies centered on economic reforms. This was in itself neither surprising nor particularly extreme, as the educated on all sides agreed that the state finances were in fundamentally bad shape, and something needed to be done. What differed, of course, were the solutions to that evident problem. The conservatives of the court, led by eminent ministers like Sima Guang, Ouyang Zhou, and Fan Chen, held three specific economic truths to be self-evident. First, that the production of heaven

and earth is constant, which is to say, in effect, that despite any other variable such as population increase, the economy itself and its ability to produce was fixed. This was very much in keeping with the long-standing Chinese understanding of their economy and its place in the larger world, in that it was a fundamentally closed system. Yes, their pie was the biggest, best pie on earth, but it was not an infinite pie. And as such, all economic transactions ought to take place within the national borders, since to trade with foreign agents was, in effect, to be giving slices of your own delicious lemon meringue in exchange for barbarian mud. This mindset is fundamentally at odds with our own modern understandings of economic interactions and trade, of course, but it's important to keep in mind that the government

ministers of the past, present, and future imperial history aren't just being intransigent and stodgy for its own sake when they so disdain international commerce and the merchant class. There was a rich, ancient, and, here's the thing, usually pretty successful track record of dynasties greater and more successful than their own doing exactly that. Anyways, the second conservative position was one that resonates with pretty much every conservative economic outlook ever in history. It was that the precise relationship between the rich and the poor is not just an inevitability, but in fact an objective and universal good for all parties.

From Smith, quote, The wealthy served as the pillar of local society, and the state and providers of capital, i.e. land and credit, and security to the poor, who in turn assisted the wealthy with their labor. End quote. They're the job creators, people. You can't eat the rich because they're pillars of the community. Finally, as a product of the first two ideas, the proper relationship between the state's government and its economy was to be left in balance by the government doing the absolute minimum and interfering with that harmonious system as little as possible. Thus, by their calculus, the cause of the current economic crisis was due to government overspending. The taxation that paid for such ventures unduly interfered with the natural equilibrium of the economy. The state could not expand either its

revenues or its spending for pretty much any reason except in short bursts as responses to acute emergencies, because the economy itself was closed and inelastic. A taxation system based on near-solely land ownership and the transport of goods, rather than income or market transactions, simply could not grow unless the empire itself physically got larger, a problematic proposition in itself since that seemed to inevitably incur even more costs just to maintain. Thus, the only way for a government to get itself out of a financial hole, if raising taxation beyond their traditional maximums was out of the question, was to cut spending across the board. And that meant getting

rid of excess officials, excess troops, excess expenditures, they all had to go. As put by Sima Guang in a forceful debate with Wang Anxue before the emperor, quote, the output of the world in money and goods is of a fixed and definite amount. If it is in the hands of the state, then it is not in the hands of the people, end quote. Wang Anxue and his reformers, as you may well expect, held a rather different view of the nature of the economy and the state's role in it. Listen, old man, Wang was in effect saying, times have changed. What you're saying is some eternal truism is just plain false, and I can prove it. You're saying that the economy is fixed and unchangeable? Do you even hear

yourself? Have you ever even been to the South? The economy is going gangbusters there. The government's just too stodgy and rooted in your precious traditions to recognize it. Ever since the five dynasties, the southerners have more and more recognized what you ministers sitting in your palace walls seem either unable or unwilling to realize. That cash and commerce, not land and transport tax, are the new economic hotness. Southerners aren't just subsistence farming anymore like your ancient charts and tables tell you. No, they're trading, they're commercializing, they're specializing their production for sale on the open market, and you codgers are too mired in your tradition to be getting a piece of the action. If the economy is stagnant, it's not because of some immutable law of heaven. It's because you're too blind to its growth.

What growth, you might be asking? Well, Wang and his crew had been well and truly fascinated and excited by the way cash could do what no physical good ever could. Money could multiply itself. A bushel of rice could only ever be a bushel of rice. Trade it for a bolt of silk and no matter how long you held on to it, you'd never have two bolts. But money, money seemed magical. You could conduct business with cash and generate profit rather than just commensurate trade. You could buy a bolt of silk when the price dips and then sell it when the price rose again and, get this, keep the extra. What's more, you could take that extra cash

and then loan it out to people for which they would agree to pay back even more than you'd given them in the first place. Something called an interest rate, yeah. Money could make more money appear out of nowhere. There's nothing short of magic. And you're sitting there telling me that the economy is fixed and permanent? Then where'd all this extra cash come from, huh?

Now, it's well worth pointing out that Wang's reformers, while they definitely had a point, were probably somewhat more enamored with the role of money and commerce in the economy than the agrarian Southlands than reality actually dictated. Though the monetary economy of commerce was indeed expanding and thriving at a never-before-seen rate, especially in the South, even so, the vast, vast majority of Chinese farmers, then and even now, operated at a fundamentally subsistence level, and in the Song times, at least rarely in anything

other than in-kind trade. Nevertheless, it was an economic revolution in progress, and the Wang reformists were right to be pointing out the government's failure to recognize or benefit from it. Another contrast of viewpoints between the conservatives and the reformists was the role of the government in the economy. Whereas Sima Guang and his ilk would have probably nodded sagely along with the Henry David Thoreau axiom that the government that governs best governs least, Wang and his reformers, quote, held that economic dynamism could be sustained only by the involvement of the state, end quote. Wang wrote in a 1059 memorial, for instance, that, quote, if the state improves its institutions so as to make the productive base grow strong and the

consumer and diminish, then the wealth of the country will be so great that no matter how much the state uses, it cannot possibly exhaust all of it, end quote. And stated later on in that same debate with Sima Guang that for men who were truly skilled at finance, it was possible to, quote, secure a surplus for the state without increasing the tax burden on the people, end quote. But where to get such skilled financial officials? Certainly there were far too few of them currently in the government to effectively implement and oversee these miracle reforms. So to that end, Wang proposed that a whole new governmental agency be created, under the oversight and staffed with

his own people, obviously. That was going to be called the Finance Planning Commission, whose aim it would be to carry out the government's increased participation in the imperial economy. This would prove to be especially controversial, since such a measure would not only expand the government's bureaucracy, rather than, as conservatives urged, shrink it, but it would likewise, by its very nature, upend the whole bureaucratic order of how such officials were selected. Wang had argued to the emperor, you may recall, that such officials must be chosen based on their proven talents, their formal credentials or lack thereof, notwithstanding. Apparently, Shenzong was convinced by Wang's rationale, for as the author of the extended continuation of the Zizhi Tongjian,

Li Tao, wrote even knowing him, the emperor would pluck him and in less than a day he would be appointed an imperial attendant. And you can almost hear the faces of every classically educated and officially certified scholar official across time and space simultaneously twisting in the sheer revulsion and horror of such a thought. What was even more rankling, though, was that Wang didn't want to stop there, but went around employing anyone he deemed sufficiently capable of finance, from traveling merchant to market trader to butcher. I mean, we might as well be asking the plow oxen and worms in the dirt

what their opinion on imperial economics is at this point. In any event, Wang was able to charge these newfound officials, or, as their political enemies termed them, these mean-minded practitioners of profit, with the task of finding and innovating upon new ways to build the imperial treasury, largely by using those trade skills that they had come to use with such great success in their own private businesses. This core of financial experts would be tasked with a two-fold mission. First, to rationalize the state's finances, and second, to break the market free from the death

grip held by monopolists and other so-called engrossers. The first policy to come out of this new financial planning commission was a proposal to, quote, replace the clumsy command extraction of goods with a market-oriented procurement system that authorized the transport intended to buy necessities and sell surpluses on the market, end quote. Market-based economic policies in the 11th century China? Who knew? Alas, this first proposal at least would not last long and was quickly rescinded. But more and further reaching policies were all ahead for Wang Anshu and his cadre of reformers. There is, as you can no doubt guess, a lot more to discuss about these policies and their effects,

both short and long term for the Northern Song Dynasty. However, I don't wish to drag this single episode out to potentially more than an hour and a half long. I thought about it, but I just don't think I'm capable of going down the Carlin-Balelli path of multi-hour shows just yet. So instead, I'll be breaking this up into three parts to be released one shortly after the other, so there's not going to be a two-week gap between them, as has become usual. I'll get done editing this first part, release it, and then immediately turn my attention to recording and editing the second two. So I anticipate a lag time of a few days between them, at most. So, until then, I hope you've enjoyed, and as always, thanks for listening.

400 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 the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts,

or go to pod.link slash pax.