The Eurasian Transformation of the 10th to 13th centuries: The View from Song China, 906-1279

This essay addresses the nature of the medieval transformation of Eurasia from the perspective of China during the Song dynasty (960-1279). Out of the many facets of the wholesale metamorphosis of Chinese society that characterized this era, I focus on the development of an increasingly bureaucratic and autocratic state, the emergence of a semi-autonomous local elite, and the impact on both trends of the rise of the great steppe empires that encircled and, under the Mongols ultimately extinguished the Song. The rapid evolution of Inner Asian state formation in the tenth through the thirteenth centuries not only swayed the development of the Chinese state, by putting questions of war and peace at the forefront of the court’s attention; it also influenced the evolution of China’s socio-political elite, by shaping the context within which elite families forged their sense of coorporate identity and calibrated their commitment to the court. I conclude that intersecting cycles of state-building in China and the steppe during the Eurasian transformation stimulated the rise of a Neo-Confucian ideology that helped the literatus elite transfer its energies away from the unresponsive and autocratic court to more local concerns, allowing it to gain autonomy from the Song state that had conceived it, adapt to life under Mongol rule, and project its influence over Chinese culture well into the late imperial era. In this essay I address the nature of the medieval transformation of Eurasia from the perspective of China during the Song Dynasty (9601279). Ever since the work of the Japanese historian Naitô Torajiro (1866-1934), historians have viewed the period encompassed by the Song and its late-Tang and Five Dynasties precursors—that is, roughly the eighth through the thirteenth centuries—as an era of fundamental change in all aspects of Chinese society.1 The primary engine of this medieval Medieval 10,1-3_f12_279-308 11/4/04 2:47 PM Page 279