Dividing the realm in order to govern : the spatial organization of the Song state (960-1276 CE) / Ruth Mostern.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mostern, Ruth, 1967- author.

Series:

Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series ; 73.

Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series ; 73

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Imperialism--Social aspects.

Imperialism.

Spatial behavior--Political aspects--China--History--To 1500.

Spatial behavior.

Human territoriality--Political aspects--China--History--To 1500.

Human territoriality.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London : Harvard University Asia Center, [2011]

Summary:

States are inherently and fundamentally geographical. Sovereignty is based on control of territory. This book uses Song China to explain how a pre-industrial regime organized itself spatially in order to exercise authority. On more than a thousand occasions, the Song court founded, abolished, promoted, demoted, and reordered jurisdictions in an attempt to maximize the effectiveness of limited resources in a climate of shifting priorities, to placate competing constituencies, and to address military and economic crises. Spatial transformations in the Song field administration changed the geography of commerce, taxation, revenue accumulation, warfare, foreign relations, and social organization, and even determined the terms of debates about imperial power. The chronology of tenth-century imperial consolidation, eleventh-century political reform, and twelfth-century localism traced in this book is a familiar one. But by detailing the relationship between the court and local administration, this book complicates the received paradigm of Song centralization and decentralization. Song frontier policies formed a coherent imperial approach to administering peripheral regions with inaccessible resources and limited infrastructure. And the well-known events of the Song--wars and reforms--were often responses to long-term spatial and demographic change.

Contents:

Prologue

pt. 1. The meaning of territory

The political economy of spatial change in imperial China

The spatial organization of state power in Song China

Following the tracks of Yu : depictions of imperial territory

pt. 2. The history of territory

"Strengthen the trunk and weaken the branches" : the fall and rise of the territorial state (750-1005)

"Enrich the state and let the people prosper" : spatial organization in China's long eleventh century (1005-1127)

The end of the middle-period spatial cycle (1127-1368)

Appendix: The digital gazetteer of Song China / Ruth Mostern with Elijah Meeks.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-342) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-68417-057-5

OCLC:

956711875

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9781684170579 DOI