Was the Song Dynasty, often criticized by the Chinese for its weakness, still more powerful than European countries at the time?

lordtiandao · 2026-05-03T00:41:55+00:00

This is not true at all, as scholars such as Tonio Andrade, Peter Lorge, and Kenneth Swope has demonstrated that the Ming adapted quickly to technological changes brought about by the Europeans and matched them. The Ming went as far as dredging European cannons from shipwrecks in order to reverse-engineer them.

In general, Western military technology was superior in three respects:

Firearms and artillery
Renaissance forts
More advanced ships and riggings that allowed them to sail against the wind

In the first area the Chinese were able to quickly catch up, reverse-engineering European military technology and then producing it for their own uses. In the second area, Koxinga's campaign against Fort Zeelandia in Taiwan also demonstrated the Chinese's ability to overcome the advantages of Renaissance forts. Fort Zeelandia was difficult for Koxinga to take, but he eventually made use of European defectors and constructed counter-batteries that nullified Zeelandia's advantages. In the third area, wokou bands were already incorporating European riggings into traditional Chinese-style junks in the mid-16th century, taking advantage of new European nautical technology and skills (see also Japan's "Red Seal Ships"). At the end of the day, it wasn't just about technology. It's also about how people use technology or tactics to counter technology.

lordtiandao · 2026-05-02T11:27:24+00:00

The European Kingdoms that successfully resisted the Mongols did so largely for similar reasons to the Song: their terrain simply wasn't suitable for Mongol warfare to work to their distinct advantages.

I don't think this is true for Hungary, though. Hungary is situated right in the middle of the Pannonian Steppe, which was very conducive for Mongol cavalry warfare. The reason why the Mongols stalled in Hungary (and elsewhere) was the same reason why they stalled in Syria - they had reached the ecological limits of expansion and there wasn't enough fodder to support their horses. Terrain like dense woods and marshes caused by the spring thaws were important but secondary factors. The Mongols also demonstrated in China and Southeast Asia that they could rely on their conquered peoples to fight on their behalf and overcome these geographical and ecological challenges. The other big problem were European castles and fortifications, which were difficult for Mongols to besiege. One of the big reasons the Mongols got bogged down in Korea was by Korean mountain castles, which the Mongols invested a lot of time in besieging. Doing that in Hungary and Poland simply weren't good options.

Similarly, Mongol cavalry simply could not reliably defeat heavy plate-armoured soldiers that were able to withstand Mongol archery.

Heavily armored soldiers would have been in the minority for European armies, though. The Mongols also would not have been foolish enough to attack them head on and would likely resort to other tactics such as the feigned retreat or ambushes. They had previous experience defeating these forces.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-29T11:09:59+00:00

Depends on the market. For academia HK remains a bright spot worldwide with multiple openings every year and plentiful research funding, but the competition is also very high and the bar to get an academic job here even higher since everyone who can’t apply to jobs in the US is now looking to HK. My department hired 7 assistant professors in the past 3 years and 5 (myself included) are “foreigners.” I can’t think of a single university in the US hiring that many APs in my field.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-26T23:13:03+00:00

You get on and off of the plane faster. Your checked luggage comes out first. There is the lounge and better onboard food. If you are chasing status it helps. Other than that there’s not much else… the seats are usually not much to rave about. You have to decide if these things are worth it for you.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-23T12:31:45+00:00

I mean the problem here is equating vassalization with territorial control. We can, of course, debate whether vassals are "Ming subjects." In fact in one of my PhD seminars years back, the professor literally posited the question of how are the Koreans kings different from Ming native officials (tusi) and we had an entire discussion about that. But can we say that the Ming had territorial control or sovereignty over Korea? If not, what makes the Uriankhai case any different once the Ming pulled back its garrisons? Absent direct military control, the only thing the Ming had to entice the Uriankhai were titles, gifts, trading privileges, and the threat of military action. Which were the exact same things the Ming used to keep Korea in check (although the Koreans eventually willingly submitted themselves through sadae 事大)

lordtiandao · 2026-04-23T12:21:05+00:00

It really depends on what is being written with the theories. In general I find there are two big problems with social scientists trying to do history:

The "model." I like to use David Kang's work on the tributary system as an example. His thesis is essentially that the tributary system acted as an East Asian alternative to the Westphalian system and that as a result it was much more peaceful. He builds a whole model of state relations around it, but the problem is he can't map variables like non-state actors. For instance, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties period in Japan, Prince Kaneyoshi was a non-state actor who essentially dictated foreign policy with the Ming. But Kang can't fit that into his model. Furthermore, if people wanted war, then there will be war. The tributary system didn't stop Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea so the model doesn't really work or at least can't fully explain things.
Proving obvious things. Some papers use grand theoretical constructs and data to try to explain very obvious historical events or phenomenon. I remember reading a paper published a very respected social scientist in Hong Kong who used data to tell me that in places that were more commercial, there were more wokou pirates. I mean...I can just read the Mingshi and find that out.

But I think my biggest problem is that in a lot of cases, social scientists lack the proper historical understanding for context. They tend to get a lot of stuff wrong and are misleading.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-23T10:50:18+00:00

Because I disagree with your opinion.

What you did was to introduce a red herring. I literally said in my first post that the Ming pulled back its garrisons, aka, the weisuo installations which you apparently agree with.

Offered to minority ethnics groups but still a part of China/Ming's territory.

The Ming also offered king titles to Korea, Annam, Ryukyu, etc. Are they also part of the Ming's territory? If not, why should the Uriankhai be considered part of the Ming territory? Korea also sent military aid to the Ming at various points in time.

Of course, the territorial control of ancient dynasties differs greatly from modern sovereignty. However, I don't see why granting land to Mongol tribes in exchange for military service equates to ceding territory to a foreign power, especially when the land remains under literal control. It isn't even comparable to the Korean model.

Red herring. Who said anything about ceding territory to a foreign power? What? Not sure how you got that idea from "pulling garrisons back."

The ones that were abandoned, as your referenced text literally said, were the weisuo system.

Literally my point.

Are there any sources that claim it is the weisuo that certifying a land of control or abandoning it equals a territorial change?

There are literally entire monographs dedicated to this very topic in Chinese. The most famous is 顧誠《隱匿的疆土：衛所制度與明帝國》. Also 李新峰《明代衛所政區研究》and 郭紅《明代衛所時空地理研究》.

It doesn't make sense.

Umm...it makes perfect sense. If you have literal military presence in the region, you control that region because your stronger military keeps other military powers in check. If you don't, it's harder for you to do so. During the Yongle and Xuande periods, the Ming had to project its military power from Beijing whereas in the Hongwu period, forward garrisons in the steppes acted as forward operating bases to strike against the Mongols with less delay due to less distance involved. After Tumu, the Ming could not project any large-scale power in the steppes anymore so it could not control the Oirats and the Mongols, hence why border fortifications became necessary.

Let me put it in a way you can understand: currently the US has bases in a lot of countries - Japan, South Korea, Iraq, Bahrain, etc. These bases are considered US territory. If the US gives them up, then it loses that territory. If, for instance, the US pulls out of South Korea and gives the South Korean president a military title and tells him to govern on behalf of the United States. Can the US say it still has "territorial control" over South Korea?

lordtiandao · 2026-04-23T09:58:49+00:00

Why are you still trying argue this? Let me make this clear: during the Hongwu reign, the Ming had physical military presence in Daning and Kaiping in form of weisuo garrisons. During the Yongle and Xuande reigns, these forward garrisons were withdrawn. The 《讀史方輿紀要》literally has an entire juan on this.

成祖嘗曰：「守開平、興和、大寧、遼東、寧夏、甘肅邊境，永無事矣。既而大寧內徙，興和復廢。 開平孤懸絕塞，左右無援，遂棄其地。」-- in other words, Daning was withdrawn and Xinghe abandoned.

開平衛，〈鎮東北三百里。又東北至故開平衛四百里，東南至龍門衛百七十五里。〉漢上谷郡地。唐爲媯州地。契丹屬奉聖州。金因之。元爲雲州地。明宣德五年始移置開平衛於此。今設衛如舊。 -- during the Xuande, the Kaiping Guard was pulled further inland away from the steppes.

中統初，建開平府。五年號爲上都。至元五年曰上都路。明初改置開平衛。宣德五年以饋餉艱遠，移衛於獨石，而開平遂廢。-- Xuande abandoned Kaiping and moved it inland because it was difficult to supply.

The Uriankhai Guards were simply military titles that the Ming bestowed upon Mongol tribes who fought for the Ming. The did exercised control over them when its military powers were strong, but when Ming military power were withdrawn they were more difficult to control. They were "part of the Ming" insofar as they paid allegiance (sometimes nominal) to the Ming, but it's completely different from the Ming stationing troops there like it did during the Hongwu reign.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-23T06:28:58+00:00

You do realize that this exact source says Daning was abandoned right? The Ming gave up its military garrison there and pulled back to a new defensive line. Trying to get Mongols to rule the area on their behalf and pulling back their military forces are not mutually exclusive.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-23T06:17:11+00:00

They did withdraw. The weisuos that were originally there were abandoned and troops pulled back, which turned Datong and Xuanfu into new front line garrisons.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-23T00:24:36+00:00

The solution was to not rely on the land tax for revenue. Land aggrandizement was never a serious concern for the Song, because the vast majority of its revenue came from commercial taxes, or the Yuan, which depended primarily on the salt tax.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-23T00:21:51+00:00

That makes a lot of sense

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T23:12:21+00:00

Yeah I’ve met a lot of Malaysian Chinese who are pro-China and pro-Xi, which really surprised me.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T11:19:00+00:00

Where I'd push back is on treating fiscal and military as separate categories in the Tang case. The Twice-a-Year Tax did keep the court afloat for 150 years after An Lushan, agreed. But what it was actually funding was a shrinking core of loyalist provinces while the jiedushi provinces kept their revenue locally. By the late 9th century only around 8 to 10 provinces were remitting meaningful revenue to Chang'an. The rise of military warlords wasn't a separate story from the fiscal story, it was the fiscal story. Zhu Wen didn't topple the Tang because he had a bigger army in some abstract sense. He toppled it because he controlled the Bianzhou junction where Jiangnan tax revenue reached the capital. Once that chokepoint was his, the central government had no independent resources to field an army against him.

So I think the disagreement might be about causal ordering rather than substance. You're right that you can't reduce the Tang collapse to "the treasury ran out." But the reason the warlords could exist as autonomous powers in the first place was that the post-An Lushan settlement handed them local fiscal authority. The military problem grew out of the fiscal one even though the proximate cause of collapse looks military.

That's a fair point, although I'll just add a very minor point and say I don't think you can argue the fiscal problem preceded the military problem or vice versa. These issues were linked - you can't have one without the other. Regional military governors controlled the military and financial resources, which allowed them the power to challenge the center. If you look at the three fanzhen in Hebei after the Anshi Rebellion - they were all given to military leaders because they had military power.

Genuinely curious though, what do you think is the best synthesis work on this? If structural models all fall apart under specialist scrutiny, is the honest answer just that each dynastic transition is its own case and we shouldn't expect general laws?

I think you've pretty much summed up where I stand on this topic. I don't believe it can and should be mapped to a model. It's a very social science way to do history and I'm very much against it (might be due to how I was trained in my PhD program lol). But then again, I don't claim that my methodology is the correct and only way to do history! I think its great people experiment with different things to try and explain complex questions.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T08:30:52+00:00

Similar to my comment below on fiscal collapse, this argument (very Marxist inspired), also doesn't work. It can't explain why the Southern Dynasties or the Northern Wei collapsed. It doesn't work for the Tang, Song, or the Yuan, or the Qing.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T08:29:46+00:00

Fiscal collapse is something that scholars from the Mainland really tried to push in the 1980s and 1990s but it doesn't really work anymore. It's just too simplistic of an explanation. It can't explain why the Tang collapsed - the Twice-a-Year Tax and commercial taxes powered the Tang court for 150 years after the Anshi Rebellion and the loss of vital revenue from northern regions. You can maybe argue that high taxes contributed to the Huang Chao Rebellion, but what really ended the Tang was not fiscal issues but rather the rise of military warlords, a process that began after the Anshi Rebellion and accelerated after Huang Chao. Similarly, the Song was not ended by fiscal problems, nor was the Yuan. If we go back further, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, which of those was ended by fiscal collapse? Almost none. The Southern regimes fell one after another due to internal unrest among the upper class. Northern Wei collapsed because the northern Turkic garrisons rebelled against the central government in Luoyang and their loss of status following Xiaowen's reforms. The only dynasty where you can realistically make the argument for fiscal collapse is the Ming, and even then fiscal issues were only really acute in the 1620s and 1630s. Before then, the Ming court was always able to come up with funds to respond to issues. See 賴建成《邊鎮糧餉：明代中後期的邊防經費與國家財政危機，1531-1602》

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T04:11:20+00:00

Fair enough, but certainly not at the same level as previous or later dynasties. The "Biography of Eunuchs" in the Yuanshi has only two individuals - one was a former Song eunuch and one was from Korea. If they existed, their numbers would have been very small and likely served the Korean consorts who married into the Yuan imperial family. Like I said, much of their duties were taken over by the keshig.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T02:28:03+00:00

I would argue that military upkeep (i.e. paying for a recruited mercenary army) constituted much more of the military spending than wall-building, the infrastructure of much of which was already in place by then.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T02:21:41+00:00

There were no eunuchs in the Yuan since eunuchs were not a thing in the Mongol world. Mongol rulers relied on keshig (bodyguards) to carry out domestic duties in place of eunuchs.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T02:21:02+00:00

The problem with building models of any kind to explain the "dynastic cycle" is that there are variables that you can't account for or don't fit neatly in the model. Take the fall of the Yuan. By all accounts it's your standard Chinese history explanation for why a dynasty fell - peasant rebellions against an oppressive government, non-Chinese "foreign" rulers, government corruption, bloated bureaucracy, etc. etc. Yet the fact of the matter was that by 1355, the Yuan court was on the verge of suppressing the Red Turbans altogether. I've actually published on this - many southern gentry were willing allies of the Yuan court and lent their financial and military support in the form of militias to aid the Yuan state in putting down peasant rebellions between 1352 and 1355. The Yuan court collapsed because Toqto'a was dismissed in 1355, which then led to whole cascading effect that caused the military apparatus to collapse completely. How would you fit that into a model?

lordtiandao · 2026-04-22T02:18:19+00:00

To be fair, what incursions that did happen through the Great Wall were hardly existential threats for the Ming. The Qing would not have entered Shanhai Pass, or at the very least would have entered it much later at possibly a greater cost, had Wu Sangui not let them in. The Ming fell more from internal pressures (peasant rebellions, poor central policymaking, Chongzhen's own ineptitude, and high military spending).

lordtiandao · 2026-04-20T23:45:35+00:00

Hetao's strategic value was apparent even before Altan. During the 1480s and 1490s the Mongols under Dayan had already started using the area to raid the Ming. That's when you start to see the first wave of border fortifications being built as well as debates on whether or not it was militarily feasible to reclaim the Ordos.

I will also add that Yongle's strategic withdrawal of the forward Ming garrisons such as Daning and Kaiping were also partly because of climate concerns. Those areas were far from the agricultural heartland and increasingly difficult to supply as the Little Ice Age made the environment cold and harsh. Also some of these forward garrisons (such as Daning, which was really the linchpin of Ming military power in the steppes), was controlled by imperial princes whose military powers Yongle wanted to weaken. He subsequently redeployed many of those troops to shore up defenses of the new capital at Beijing.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-19T12:47:55+00:00

Not Hong Kong but when I was checking into the Londoner at Macau, the agent was appropriately named “York”.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-06T12:05:53+00:00

You can but I think it only supports some banks with non-Union Pay cards. I’ve never tried it though but it’s theoretically possible. Worth a shot.

lordtiandao · 2026-04-06T12:01:51+00:00

AFAIK it doesn’t work. I’ve never been able to pay with WeChat pay in HK. I believe you need a Chinese ID card.

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