The History of China - #157 - S. Song 4: Peace at What Cost?

Episode Date: January 23, 2019

Emperor Gaozong really, *really* wants his dad's coffin. Qin Hui really, *really* wants to give the Jurchen whatever they ask for. The Jurchen really, *really* want the Mongol khan to stop tweaking their emperor's beard. Time Period Covered: 1135-1160 CE Major Works Cited: Allsen, Thomas. “Chapter 4: The rise of the Mongolian empire and Mongolian rule in north China” in Vol. 6, Alien Regimes and Border States. Franke, Herbert. “Chapter 3: The Chin Dynasty” in Vol. 6, Alien Regimes and Border States. Tao, Jing-Shen. “The Move to the South and the Reign of Kao-Tsung” in Vol. 5, the Sung Dynasty and Its Precursors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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 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. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 157. Peace at what cost? Hello, and welcome back, and happy 2019 to all of you out there in the world. I'm back from my long trip to my hometown, as well as a whole host of other things I won't get into. We did have a great holiday full of skiing, presents, food, and snow, and now I'm back in gray, cold, rainy, uninsulated Shanghai. Fortunately, at this point, I only have about 10 days before my next vacation, so I'm hanging on. In any case, last time we concluded our two-part biopic on the mighty general of Song, Yue Fei,

and his treacherous undoing at the hands of Qin Hui, the Long-Legged. Today, then, we're going to examine the larger events going on and around and throughout and even beyond the story of the general and the chancellor. Especially the process of the states of Song and Jin's efforts to wind their conflict down and resolve it all the way with a peace treaty. What would by this episode's end be signed, sealed, delivered, and then abided by for about 20 years, known as the Treaty of Shaoxing. It's hard to know exactly when the Jurchen leadership came to the conclusion that total victory against the Song Chinese was out of their reach. This is due to several factors.

First, and as we'll shortly see, the Jin royal family was by no means of one mind on the issue. Second, is the fact that between both sides there is such considerable manipulation, massaging, and outright destruction of records, that it's been quite hard to be sure of just exactly what went on between the two warring states between 1132 and 1142. Especially given the myth-making that occurred surrounding Yue Fei and Qin Hui, both by Qin himself and then later historians attempting to undo his meddling, that Professor Tao Jingsheng describes much of this period as, quote, distortions piled upon distortions, and as a historiographical minefield.

Yeah, yikes. Well, let's step in. As early as 1132, there had been on-again, off-again peace talks that had amounted to little in the end. It wasn't until 1135, with the death of the retired emperor in captivity, Huizong, whom you will no doubt remember as the father of both sitting emperor Gaozong and his elder brother, emperor in captivity, Qinzong. It wasn't until then that the Jin really started to get serious about winding things down with the Song. Not only were they all of a sudden down one very valuable captive in their negotiations, but in 1135, they'd also seen Yue Fei carry out his devastatingly effective counterattack against the Jin's puppet state, Da Qu, along the Huai River Valley and then across

Henan. It wouldn't be until two years later, in 1137, that emissaries would be received from the Jin in the Song capital at Lin'an, which of course is modern Hangzhou. This regarded the Jurchen proposal. Notably, in the interim, the two imperial captives had seen a remarkable uptick in their quality of life. Or in the case of Huizong, quality of afterlife. When they'd first been dragged back to the Jin Great Capital in 1127 following the sacking of Kaifeng, both Huizong and Qinzong had been stripped of their imperial titles, like, you know, of course, and then given demeaning, humiliating new ones, the Marquis of Huande, or muddled virtue, for the father, and the Marquis of Chenghun, or doubly muddled for the son.

Yet by the time of the initial talks with Emperor Gaozong in 1137, such humiliations had been totally undone, and both now bore markedly more suitable titles. Huizong had been posthumously promoted to the prince of Tianshui Chun, and Huizong now sat one rung lower as the duke of Tianshui Chun, in deference, of course, to filial piety. That question of filial piety, that is, the duty that a son owes to his father, would play a central role in the negotiations to come. For the linchpin of these negotiations would be the body of Emperor Gaozong's, and of course Qianzong's, father, Emperor Huizong.

Namely, how far could, and should, that filial duty extend in comparison to the needs of the state as a whole? If one's duty as a son should conflict with the duty as a sovereign of a state, well, which of those, or must, take precedence? The answer, at least for Gaozong, was not as clear-cut as we might assume, nor the majority of even his own ministers. The GMP's proposal of 1137-1138 offered to end hostilities between the two states, cede back the territories the Song had lost south of the Yellow River, including the capital city Kaifeng, and return both Huizong and Gaozong's recently deceased mother's coffin back to Song for proper entombment. What they demanded in return was, well, breathtaking.

Not only would Song have to formally recognize the loss of all their territories north of the Yellow River and agree to pay an enormous yearly payment to the Jin, but Gaozong would need to formally submit himself and his state as vassals of the Jurchen. Unsurprisingly, there were very, very few in the Song court who were all on board these terms. From Tao, quote, A large group of officials opposed the opening of negotiations. In their arguments, they pointed out that the Jurchen had inflicted a great insult on the Song, and that there was no reason whatsoever for negotiations.

Several officials cited the passage of Li Zhi, which is the Book of Rites, that one could not bear to live under the same sky as an enemy who had inflicted insults upon one's parents, the standard canonical justification for vengeance and retribution. The emperor should not submit to the Jurchen and thus invite even more humiliation and insults both for himself and for his subjects, end quote. Plus, they argued, what was to stop those wily Jurchen barbarians from pulling a fast one? You know, extracting payment and concession and then not even holding up their end of the bargain. What if they decided not to deliver the imperial coffins as they promised? Since ancient times, they contended, barbarians had never wanted peaceful coexistence with the Chinese except when the empire was powerful, and the Song was certainly not powerful enough to force the Jin to negotiate.

All in all, it seemed most like the Jin were doing all of this just to muddy the waters and diminish Chinese morale in preparation for some future invasion of the Southlands. It seemed insidious indeed. In any event, the officials went on. Fuzi Lopadi was, of course, correct and good, in a time of peace. But in a time of war? No, no, no, we're sorry, your majesty, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or of the one. Song did not need two more coffins, and certainly not in exchange for half of the empire. The ministers were against this peace, as were the generals, as were the people as a whole.

Going down this road would lead to yet more internal disorders and a loss of faith in the regime overall. Instead, some of the most ardent anti-peace ministers argue that anyone who spoke favorably of such terms ought to be executed outright. So as you might well imagine, there was only a handful of men across the realm who were in favor of such an abjectly painful and humiliating course of action. And as it turned out, one of them had just returned from captivity by the Jin, a man of common birth but noble marriage by the name of Qin Hui. He and his small band of pro-treaty officials laid out their rationale as follows, that the treaty would recover not just the emperor's body, but also the sacred imperial temples and cemeteries of the royal ancestors. Moreover, they argued, giving in to Jurchen demands now would set the Song up to pull some fancy judo moves later on once peace was

established and then regain even more territories down the road. The key to winning, your majesty, was to trick the enemy into thinking he's won by, you know, at first letting him beat you completely. Somehow, this brain genius logic caught Gaozong's fancy, and Qin Hui got himself a cushy position on the censoret, the emperor's ear, and the beginnings of his personal dominance of the court for the next three decades. With rapidity, Qin Hui established himself as the one guy you definitely did not get on the bad side of, since he literally made his career around using the censoret to denounce, impeach, demote, or, of course, as we now well know, kill anyone who crossed him. The list of officials who Qin Hui managed to totally ruin is seriously impressive,

and of course far beyond the scope of what we're doing here, but we'll all of course remember that not even the top general in all of Song was immune to downfall by Qin's relentless vindictiveness. But, you know, more on that later. In spite of the widespread opposition to them, Gaozong at last ordered that the peace negotiations proceed. But what became an early sticking point was that since he'd actually sent a declaration stating that he would be willing to accept the humiliating terms of having his title and position formally invested by the Jin Emperor? Which is to say

that he would formally acknowledge the Zhezhen monarch as his own overlord and that he received his position and power directly from him. Well, he was now obliged to follow through on exactly that. At the last minute, Gaozong was able to wiggle out of such an abject humiliation by accepting his advisor's urgent suggestion that he was still in formal mourning for his father, and thus could not speak or participate in any such formal ceremony. Well, the ceremony still happened, of course, but it had to. It happened, however, without Gaozong in attendance and with, who else, Qin Hui accepting the rebestowment of the imperial titles on the emperor's behalf. Isn't that convenient? In spite of this, the Peace of 1138 would find itself stillborn,

thanks to, as we mentioned last time, a palace coup within the Jin imperial court overthrowing the pro-peace faction and launching a renewed assault on the Song front lines. As we discussed at length in our second UFA episode, though, the Song commanders were able to stave this renewed assault off with new weaponry and tactics that tore the tried-and-true Jurchen heavy cavalry charge to bloody shreds. And under the banners of General Yue Fei and Han Shizhong, advanced north all the way into Henan, recapturing Luoyang outright and routing the Jin armies outside of Kaifeng. Here, of course, their own government denied them the ability to continue their advance by cutting off free supplies and reinforcements that they required. Terrified that should the

generals drive north, falter, and fail, then there would be nothing left to stop the Jurchen from seizing the whole of the south. This forced the generals to finally heed their government's demands that they return to the south for their lavishly deserved praise, rewards, and then, for more than a few, their untimely doom. Once again stalemated, it was here that Qin Hui convinced Emperor Gaozong to reach out to the Jurchen court again, humbly begging for the restoration of peace. Markedly unlike the Proceedings of 1138, in which it had seemed that everyone wanted to

voice their opposition to Qin Hui's peace at any price proposals, the deafening silence to his plan now in 1141 amply demonstrated just how effective his ruthless purging of the government of any of his critics he could find. This had now included the strangled Yue Fei and his beheaded son. The peace process this go-round would find few detractors indeed. The only general who still even voiced his opposition, the vaunted Han Feizhong, was graciously allowed to retire from public life altogether for his outspokenness. But this time, the terms would be even harsher than 1138. The Song had just owned gold themselves by executing and or exiling their own most brilliant commanders,

and seemed to have a chancellor in Qin Hui who would just about do anything to give the Jin government any and everything it asked for. Why not just see how much he was really prepared to give? So, in spite of the fact that the war had last left off with the Jin very much on the defensive and losing ground, they came to the negotiating table willing to give up nothing and then demand even more for the pleasure of them agreeing to end the war. And, as they expected, the dealmaker supreme, Qin Hui, was only too happy to give in to their every demand and whim. From Tao, quote, In the winter of 1141, a new treaty was concluded between the Song and the Jin. The treaty declared the Song as a vassal state of the Jin as before,

with Gaozong referring to the Jin as Shangguo, or Superior State, and his own dynasty as Bi'i, Insignificant Fiefdom. In state letters to Jin, Gaozong referred to himself as Subject, and was not recognized as Emperor by the Jin government. It actually goes even further than that, since in one of the very few surviving texts of this period, which is no surprise given that the Song historians would have destroyed as much of this as they possibly could, it is noted that Gao Zong, whose given name was, remember, Zhao Go, was forced to sign off in each of his formal letters to the jinn not just as your subject, but your subject Go,

which is just about as humiliating as it could possibly get for a monarch in which the very mention of the sovereign's given name was legally taboo. Continuing from Tao, quote, the Song was committed to sending the Jin an annual tribute of a quarter million tails of silver and a quarter million bolts of silk. The border between the two states followed the Huai River in the east and to run south of the prefecture of Tangzhou and Dengzhou in the west. This new border was considerably south of the one negotiated in 1138 and left Kaifeng and Henan regions in Jin hands, end quote. So yeah, forget about that line about how it was worth it because we'd get the imperial tombs and cemeteries back because, um, turns out not anymore. This treaty reads to me like someone who's so

desperate to stop getting bullied that they agree to give themselves a wedgie, flush their own head in the toilet, and then lock themselves in a locker whenever they're told to while saying thank you just so long as it's not actually the bully doing those things. It's the height of masochistic statecraft. In any case, the treaty was accepted formally on October 11th, 1142, marking the Southern Song truly embracing the sub-role in this interstate BDSM relationship. The one upside, other than... God's on getting the coffins of his father and mother back, because that is what all of this was about, remember. We gotta get those coffins back the one upside was that in the end the southern song would in the long run prosper economically from the treaty of shaoxing trade was re-established

along the north for the first time in years with the song exporting tea spices medicinal drugs silk cotton coins cattle and rice and importing from their jinn neighbors slash overlords animal hides, pearls, ginseng, silk, and horses. Interestingly, it is noted that the Song banned the export of its coins, cattle, and rice, and at the same time the jinn banned the export of its horses to Song, but huge amounts of smuggling of all of those items took place nonetheless because, let's face it, crime pays often and it pays well. For the Song state, they enjoyed a lopsided export surplus with Jin and more than made up for the tribute payments they had to deliver back each year. The only thing they

couldn't get traded back was, of course, their dignity and Gaozong's brother, Qianzong, but then again, no one actually wanted him back anyway. If it sounds like I am totally dunking on Emperor Gaozong, it's because I totally am. Personally, I think he's made every wrong decision at the worst moment so far, and that has been largely the consensus of most Chinese historians for the past, oh, 800 years. Nevertheless, modern scholars do point out that actually, in the whole sweep of his reign, he did a reasonably okay-ish job. Between 1137 and 1142, he wasn't like trying to screw up. He was in a really difficult position, and he made the decisions that he did legitimately think were the best ones that he could with the information that he had. And of course, he was getting most

of that information from Longlegs Chen Hui, who I do still very much give the side eye to no matter how much the books i've read tell me well we can't actually prove he was a traitorous collusioner with a foreign power while homing the government so who can say all right so we cannot prove that ching hui was a fiendish traitor hellbent on undermining his nation to its enemy in a time of war but we can pretty definitively show with conclusiveness that he was an amoral, double-dealing, backstabbing jerk who was willing to say and do anything to get and maintain his personal power to such an egregiously responsible extent that he would have made Niccolo Machiavelli blush.

In terms of Gaozong's evolving style of rule, Tao interestingly notes that there was a marked shift in it before and after the events of 1141. In this early reign, Gaozong idolized the like of the Han Dynasty's Emperor Guangwu, who had restored the dynasty after it had been overthrown by Wang Meng at the beginning of the 1st century CE. Yet after 1141, when emulating that virtuous restoration of glory had become an impossible dream, Gaozong shifted his emulation of reign style to that of Emperor Wen, the cultured, in the very earliest years of the Han dynasty, the late 2nd century BC. Now now, hold on, don't break out the imperial genealogical charts just yet. All I'm

really getting at is that rather than an active approach to governance bent on restoration and centralized power, he was now much more of the Taoist concept of wu-wei, which is to say action through inaction. To achieve perfect harmony, the virtuous sovereign must do as little as possible to simply let his innate goodness flow out of the palace and cover the realm. The emperor's virtue would serve as an example for his officials to themselves be virtuous, which would then serve as an example for the people to be virtuous. And so, ideally, the emperor would need only sit in his throne, facing south toward the sun, unmoving, and that would thereby solve, ideally, the emperor would need only sit in his throne, facing south toward the sun, unmoving. And that would thereby solve, well, everything.

If you don't get it, all you need to do is go live in a cave and stare at a wall for a few years, and you'll understand that you don't understand anything, the universe you see is a lie, and that you can never understand anything. That's Taoism, baby. Oh yeah. Now, Gaozong wasn't quite as extreme as all that, but he did begin to believe and attempt to practice what he called Rou, or soft governance, of the realm. He was going to mix and match with his imperial ancestors, a little of Wen's Wu Wei, a bit of Han Guangyu's soft policies, and a dash of Song Ranzong's benevolent rulership. Thus he, like he claimed the northern Song's ruler before him, would never seek war and instead use the Wei of Softness or Rodao to control the Jurchenjin. Let's see just how well that works. Theoretically, this might have held

water. But what Gaozong's so-called soft power meant in practice was that the vast majority of his government was overseen and dominated by his right-hand man, and that was, of course, who else? Qin Hui. in the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore the tales of this amazing culture, from the legendary days of creation and the gods, all the way to Cleopatra, and everything in between. The History of Egypt podcast is written and produced by a trained Egyptologist. We go much deeper than your average documentary or magazine article to uncover tales of life, great endeavors, and the amazing arc of a mighty kingdom. The History of Egypt podcast is available on all podcasting platforms, apps, and websites. Come, visit ancient Egypt and experience a legendary culture. And even though Qin had been nearly single-minded in his pursuit of peace for the Jin at any price,

in terms of his domination of the Song imperial court, as we've already well seen, he was anything but soft. Again, from Tao, quote, Having already purged most of the war party from the central government, he systematically replaced his political enemies with his own relatives and trusted followers, end quote. He'd proved to have an exceptionally long time to do this as well, as his tenure of Chancellor of Southern Song would last for, well, the rest of his life, more than 14 years, from 1141 up until his death in 1155. Over the course of these two decades in power, Qin would remain Gaozong's one and only chief counselor. And though there would be a revolving door of assistant counselors, they would never have any chance of coming even close to arriving Qin's own position.

They often held their own posts for less than a year before being rotated out, quote, after which they were either posted far from the capital where they could have little influence on policy, or were simply impeached by the censors at Qin Hui's bidding, end quote. Qin became obsessed with what history would say about him, and spent a large amount of his tenure doing his best to make sure that the only things printed or allowed to survive him would have nothing but glowing reviews for his chancellorship and the peace treaty that would become his legacy. In practice, this meant a widespread campaign of literary suppression and destruction,

and a massaging of the approved histories to ensure that Chien himself was presented in the best light possible, or, as Tao intones, what amounted to distortions piled upon distortions. Quote, on special yellow paper, were required to be sent to the palace library. Local authorities were empowered to prevent the printing of and destroy the printing blocks of any works deemed not beneficial to learning. This escalated into an attempt to impose strict censorship, and it was applied with great severity to all unofficial writing of histories and political memoirs." Though at first only occasionally applied and widely ignored, as Qin's lock on the government grew and solidified, his power to

control the censorate as a means of controlling thought itself expanded and became severe enough that it caused the loss or voluntary destruction of the writings of many scholars and the scattering of important collections. The absolute worst aspect of Qin Hui's efforts to control what the history books were allowed to say about him was in the formation of the dreaded Gao Jie, the written denunciation of others for alleged anti-government views expressed not just in published works, but even private papers, correspondences, and even spoken conversations. They, in turn, quote, poisoned the atmosphere of politics, which became more oppressive and sharply polarized, end quote. As the years passed, Qin Hui's paranoia about criticism of him or his

government only grew more pronounced and vindictive as any perceived slight against him. Book burnings and bans increased in number and frequency, as did the encouragement and prosecution of denunciations, quote, leading to a reign of terror in which many officials and scholars who had been critical of Qin Hui or his policies were branded members of hostile cliques, banished, and even killed, end quote. The followers, associates, and even acquaintances of those thus persecuted were often punished as well, just to be sure. Just prior to his death in 1155, for instance, Qin Hui would oversee a mass treason trial against 53 suspected literati.

He was also to convict a lot of them and sign their death warrants, when, much to their collective relief, no doubt, respected literati. He was also to convict a lot of them and sign their death warrants, when, much to their collective relief, no doubt, death took him at the age of 65. As old man Qin's health took its terminal decline, he was more and more confined to his bed, and on the 21st day of the 10th month, 1155, Emperor Gaozong would make what was to prove his last visit to his longtime friend and ally. Qin Hui would die later that night. Tao concludes, quote, the list of Qin Hui's victims was impressive, but the greatest victim was the atmosphere of collegial trust among the court officials, end quote. The memory of Qin Hui would be preserved as he worked ceaselessly and ruthlessly to render it for the remaining decade of his patron Gaozong's reign.

Even so, Gaozong would reverse many of his late chancellor's more onerous policies, especially those aimed at persecuting Qin's personal and political enemies and their families. Several of Qin's most notable enemies, including Zhao Ding and, of course, General Yue Fei, would at last see their own reputations posthumously rehabilitated through Gaozong's imperial pardon of their so-called crimes. Many of Qin Hui's own relatives and partisans would find themselves quickly on the outs as well, and more than a few going the way of so many of their longtime patron's enemies, even being banished to the far corners of the empire, to backwaters like Hainan Island. Even Qin Hui's own son, the longtime commissioner of military affairs, and surely someone who expected to be able to cash in on his father's long-standing good relations with the emperor,

would find himself on the outs after trying, and failing, to secure his father's long-standing good relations with the emperor, would find himself on the outs after trying, and failing, to secure his father's former post as chancellor. He would be subsequently dismissed entirely from imperial service. In spite of this turnaround following his death, however, it had become and remained obvious that Emperor Gao Zong, whatever else he might have been, Qin Wei had in fact negotiated a treaty with their implacable foe, the Zhichen, that still stood the test of time. It had been hard. It had been embarrassing. Gaozong was still forced to call himself the subject of that barbarian emperor up in Shenzhen. But the peace had held, and Song was, in spite of everything, prosperous again. In 1156, as rumors increasingly began to swirl that Qin Hui's Treaty of Shaoxing

had been conducted in collusion with the Qin, and that the Jurchen were concocting plans to renew their invasion of the south, Gaozong dismissed such reports, issuing an edict that it had been he and he alone that had approved the final draft of the treaty, and which reaffirmed his opinion that the agreement must be scrupulously held to on their end. Quote, Gaozong's main consideration was security. He was able to obtain external security by concluding a peace settlement with the Jin, and achieve internal security by exercising complete control over the military. Qin Hui's reputation and his peace treaty would endure so long as Gao Zong was sovereign of the Song, and so long as the Jin respected their end of the bargain as well.

All told, it would be a peace that would last for 20 years. What might explain the Jurchen respecting this treaty as they did for such a long time when they had already shown time and again that they would press the Song state to and perhaps as breaking point at any opportunity. There are two primary factors that help us understand this sudden turn by the Jin court into respecting Song territorial sovereignty, one that's internal to the Jurchen state and one that's external. For the first, the Jin Emperor Shizong was a weak, young boy king who had been enthroned as a young child and never been an active or prominent role in his state's political or military decisions.

These he left to his clansmen and family members. forged their people into the empire of black and gold, Taizu and Taizong respectively. Xizong was weak-willed and uninterested in knowledge, leadership, or really much else beside his favorite vice, alcohol, which Frank notes he, quote, was even more addicted to drinking than was usual among the hard-drinking Jurchens, end quote. Such an absentee ruler would probably have remained tolerable had the times remained good and the profit margins high. But the times did not remain good, as more and more a new force was beginning to nip along the edges of the Jinn northern and northwestern border regions, bringing us to our second factor. Though the Jin had began as a mighty step-successor and conqueror of their once overlords, the Khitan Liao, they had by this point largely self-sinicized, adopting the government style, affectations, titles, and even dress and sedentary

lifestyle of the southern civilization of which they now owned half. Many of the officials within the Jin court were themselves ethnically Han, or at least partially so, as was much of the population as a whole. They had put, they had, put simply, gone soft. And there were other groups from the Northlands that now eyed them with the same mix of disdain and hunger that the Jurchen and Khitan before them once viewed Song China. And so it's here that we must again take a journey to the far north, to look at this next group of stepland up-and-comers. It's here that the Mongols make their first appearance in our tale.

The first appearance of the ethnonym Mongol is found in the Tang Dynasty histories by the name of Mengwu. Here they are described as a sub-branch of the larger ethnic group called the Shiwei by Chinese scholars. These earliest Mongol tribesmen were noted as coming from the area south of the Amur River, in the area around the lesser Qinggan mountain range in eastern Manchuria. You may recall that the Amur is known in Chinese as the Heilong, or Black Dragon River, and was also the birthplace of the Jurchen. Nevertheless, though stemming from a similar geographic region, the Mongols claimed little or no relationship

ties to the Jurchen, and instead identified both culturally and ethnically much more closely with the Khitan. Interestingly, while many of their neighboring and cousin peoples were largely or completely nomadically pastoralists in lifestyle on the steppes, the Shui as a whole, and the Mongols in particular, clung to the forests and rivers of the Hiengan, eking out a meager existence through a combination of pastoralism, primitive agriculture, pig farming, hunting, and fishing. Though widely regarded as fearsome warriors in their own right, the Shi Wei's lack of any centralizing tribal structure had meant that they rarely, if ever, posed any significant threat to their neighbors.

From Allison, Accordingly, there were usually made dependents of larger and more regionally powerful Khanates and Khaganates of the steppe, as noted in the Tang sources that they were a vassal people of the Gukturk Khans that held sway over the steppes between 553 and 745. It was during the 10th century that the Mengwu branch of the Shiwei is noted by the Chinese as beginning to migrate westward, away from the Amur River and the Hiengan Mountains, and towards the Arjun River, thereafter becoming the subjects of their distant ethno-linguistic cousins, the Khitan.

They would throughout the 11th century continue these migrations westward and southward, establishing themselves during the 10th hundreds along the headwaters of the Onan and Karolan rivers of what is today eastern Mongolia, under the shadow of the great mountain, Merkhan Haldun. This change of locale necessitated a change in lifestyle, with the Mongol tribes increasingly adopting more pastoral elements into their mixed economic systems, which is to say less fishing and farming, and more herds of horses, cattle, goats, sheep, as well as a new animal native to the Gobi, camels. The Mongols' own origin mythos, as recorded in The Secret History of the Mongols,

written sometime after the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, hints only at their eventual migration to the Onan-Karalun region, and gives no hint at their initial origin point along the Amur River. According to the secret history, the Mongol people's progenitor was a great blue wolf, Borta Shino, as a father, and a fallow white doe, Gua Maral, as a mother. It begins, There was a bluish wolf which was born having his destiny from heaven above. Do, Guamaral, as a mother. It begins, quote, There was a bluish wolf which was born having his destiny from heaven above.

His spouse was a fallow doe. They came, passing over the Tangis. There was Batashichan, which was born when they had encamped at the head of the Onan River at Mount Barhan Khadun. End quote. In the 11th generation, it continues, Batashi Khan's descendants, Dobun Mergin, and his wife, Alangua, had two sons together, and after Dobun's untimely death, Alangua was impregnated with a further three sons by, quote, a supernatural being riding a moon beam. end quote. It would be the youngest of the brothers, Bodenghar, who would grow up to found the Borzhigin clan,

the most ancient of the Mongol lineages, and the one to which a boy called Temujin would one day be born. Though of course fanciful, and at least partially obviously fictional, it is notable, as Allison points out, that the Mongols' own accounting lineage was not solely paternal, as we might expect in almost every subtle society, but instead shows a large degree of co-equality between a mother and father's lines. From Allison, quote, Although in theory all members of the Mongolian tribe and its senior lineage, the Borjigin, were consanguines, the membership of each included non-kinsmen. Thus, though Borengar was son to the passing star-lord and Alen Goa,

he would nevertheless be thought of as fully of the line of Doban Merhin, all the way back to Batah Hikan. This ability to create and impress the mutual import of kinship, real and fictive alike, will become very important later on in the forging of and expansion of the Mongol Empire. The first ancestor of the eventual Genghis Khan appears to have been alive during the last decades of the Liao dynasty in the early 12th century. The great-great-grandson of Bo Denghar, the man called Haidu, had by that point established a loose serenity over several of the Mongol lineages, including having successfully brought the Shiala years into the fold, which had, up until then, been a highly independent nomadic

group. But it would be Haidu's own son, Khabul, who is typically given credit for founding the first organization we might reasonably think of as a Mongol state. He would take the title of Khayan and is written, according to the 14th century Persian scholar of the Yuan dynasty, Rashid al-Din, ruled over the Mongols. It would be during Khabul's reign that tensions would develop between the Mongols and their Jurchen neighbors, who viewed this

evident rise of Mongol solidarity as a threat to their own security, a view that would ultimately prove quite prophetic indeed. There is one event of particular infamy that occurred between the Mongol Khan and the Emperor of the Jin, also known in Mongol sources as the Altan Khan, or the Golden Chieftain. Once again from Al-San, To neutralize the danger from this quarter, the Jurchen decided on negotiations to bring the Mongols into their tributary network. They invited Kabul to court, where a diplomatic fiasco ensued. The Mongolian leader, after first gorging himself at a banquet, began drinking heavily and, in an outburst, laid hands on the imperial person, tweaking the emperor's beard, and had to be

subdued. Initially, the Jain emperor decided to let the outrage go unpunished and allowed Kabul to depart for home. Having second thoughts, however, he sent his officials in pursuit to bring the upstart chieftain back to court for chastisement. The emperor's agent caught up with Kabul, only to be enticed into a trap and killed. The Jurchens were deprived of revenge when the Kabul died shortly after these events. Already soured thanks to Kabul's beard tweaking, and then murder of the agent sent to return him, the Mongol-Jinn relations would only continue in their decline. As Jinn sources detail, and yeah yeah, we may forgive the Chinese sources for having been rather preoccupied around this time, being, you know, forced south and subjected to defeat followed by abject humiliation and all that. The Jain historical annals darkly note that between 1135 and 1147, the whole of the northern frontiers were being continually

subjected to Mongol raids and harassment, necessitating extensive, and of course expensive, military countermeasures to reassert their control. The Mongols would themselves be subjected to a stark reversal of fortune not long thereafter. Following Kabul's death, the Mongols would find themselves embroiled in a blood feud with their more powerful neighbors, the Tatars. The Jain forces opted to back the side that, well, you know, hadn't tweaked their emperor's beard in an attempt to divide and therefore subjugate these upstart Mongol tribes. Now facing not one, but two powerful foes, the Mongols hurriedly convened a gathering to select a new leader, a Khairaltai, selecting by mutual assent the second son of Khaydu, Ambakhay, as their new khayan. This didn't last long, however, as Ambakhay was captured by the Tatars and sent in chains to the Jin court at Shangjing to face their judgment for his people's insults and crime

against them. The Jin emperor ordered Ambakhai to endure a cruel fate and deed. He was nailed to a wooden donkey and then left to die from exposure to the elements and starvation. Following Ambakhai Khayyam's execution by crucifixion, a second Khuraltai was held, electing the third son of Khabul, Khutula, as the new Mongol Khan, thus returning the title to the primary Borjigin line. Still, this would prove the downfall of the Mongol tribes as a heavily united front capable of taking on its neighbors, at least for the time being. The selection of Khutula angered the line of Amakhai, known as the Taichi Khud clan, a rift that would fester into a fracturing of the tentative Mongol

Union. Again, from Alsan, quote, said of the circumstance surrounding his demise, nor is there any mention of his successor. The decline and disintegration of Mongolian power and solidarity, whatever its precise causes, can be dated with fair assurance to the 1160s, the decade of Temujin's birth." Well, I guess it would appear that just when they'd been starting to pick up some steam, the Mongol tribes were put on the down and outs for good. I'm sure we won't be dealing with these pesky Mongols again. Well, perhaps that's for the best. They seem like they might have been trouble for a minute. Anyways, that's where we'll leave things today.

The Song and the Jin having reached a 20-year-long detente, and those pesky northern barbarians, those Mongols, put roundly in their place, surely for a long, long time, probably forever. So, next time, we'll see that Song-Jin peace break down and war resume between the Chinese and the Zhezhen. It won't go all that well for the Empire of Black and Gold, but hey, I bet they're going to have a long, long time to recover. 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.