The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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A-KU-TA AND THE FOUNDING OF THE CHIN DYNASTY 221
border with Korea and at the same time to rally more and more tribal groups
and clans to the support of the house of Wan-yen. The Wan-yen clan had their
original home in the valley of the An-ch'u-hu River (modern A-la-ch'u-k'o
River, east of Harbin,
a
southern tributary of the
Sungari).
This region
was
for
many years the center of the Jurchen state and became the site of the Chin
Supreme Capital (Shang-ching, situated near the modern town of A-ch'eng
southeast of
Harbin).
After the death of Wu-ya-shu, A-ku-ta was proclaimed
ruler of the Jurchens by the tribal elders in 1113 and was also appointed as
military governor by the Liao, following the usage of the past. The tribal
election of
rulers
had been practiced for a long time among
the
Jurchens,
and
there existed no strict rules for inheritance of the chieftainship, but the choice
was limited to the members of the Wan-yen clan.
Soon afterward, a full-scale war broke out between A-ku-ta's forces and the
Liao.
At first the trained soldiers under A-ku-ta's command did not exceed a
few thousand, but with each of his victories more leaders joined their forces
with the Wan-yen armies. The war was occasioned
—
but this was not much
more than a pretext on the Jurchen side
—
by A-ku-ta's demands for the
extradition of A-shu, a Jurchen leader who had deserted to the Liao many
years before. The Liao refused to surrender A-shu and ignored all subsequent
demands from the Jurchen side. Within a surprisingly short time A-ku-ta
succeeded in eliminating the Liao armies sent against him and in establishing
himself
as
the undisputed master of most of Manchuria.
The title of emperor
(huang-ti)
and the dynastic name Chin, "Gold," were
assumed in the spring of 1115. The name Chin was taken from the name of
the An-chu'u-hu River;
an-ch'u-hu
meant "golden" in the Jurchen language.
4
In adopting a river name as their dynastic designation, the Jurchens were
following the example of the Liao, who had taken their name from the Liao
River in southern Manchuria. At the same time a Chinese-style reign title
(Shou-kuo, "receiving statehood") was introduced, and A-ku-ta himself took
a Chinese personal name in addition to his native name. Ironically, his
Chinese name was Min, "compassionate."
Thus A-ku-ta had assumed all the regalia inherent in the position of a
Chinese emperor. But we are informed in the existing sources that the master-
mind behind this decision was a man of Po-hai origin, Yang P'o, who as a
young man had obtained the
chin-shih
degree under the Liao. In a memoran-
dum he pointed out that A-ku-ta should not be content with only the de facto
independence of the Jurchen tribes under his leadership but should aspire to
4 The name of the river can perhaps be reconstructed as
"ancuqu,
a word that has survived in the Manchu
language as ancun, meaning "earring" and, in some combinations, "gold." This word is not related to
the Manchu word aisin (gold), which formed part of Aisin Gioro, the family name of the Manchu
emperors.
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222 THE CHIN DYNASTY
the higher dignity of an emperor. He also wished to secure
formal
recognition
of A-ku-ta's imperial position and outlined the necessary steps in another
memorandum, which is of considerable interest because it enumerates the
qualities thought to be indispensable for legitimate emperorship.
Yang P'o invokes Chinese traditions of establishing a new dynasty by
pointing out that the founders of a state obtained their rank either by a
voluntary cession of power from a preceding dynasty or by the receipt of a
document of investiture. Therefore he drafted a list of ten demands to be
submitted to the Liao emperor. These were, first, recognition of A-ku-ta's
title Great Holy and Great Enlightened and of the dynastic name of Great
Chin. The use of a jade-ornamented state carriage, of imperial robes and
caps,
and of a jade seal should be conceded. Both states, Liao and Chin,
should communicate like elder and younger brothers, that is, adopt the
model of pseudofamilial relationships that had gradually evolved in the
multistate system since the eleventh century in continental East Asia. Regu-
lar embassies should be dispatched for the New Year festival and the rulers'
birthdays. This, too, had become diplomatic routine since the treaty con-
cluded between Sung and Liao in 1004. If granted by the Liao, all these
demands would have resulted in an uneasy coexistence between Liao and
Chin and would have permitted the continued existence of the Khitan state.
But other demands put forward by A-ku-ta on the advice of
Yang
P'o could
hardly have been granted by Liao because they would have affected the
material basis of their state: These were the unconditional cession of the two
circuits of Liao-tung and Ch'un-chou, and the promise to pay annually to
Chin the amount of 250,000 ounces of silver and 250,000 bolts of textiles.
These sums amounted to practically the whole tribute paid annually to Liao
by the Sung. It seems therefore that A-ku-ta and his advisers, from a very
early time on, intended to eliminate the Liao state completely.'
At the Liao court the danger posed by the Chin was soon recognized, and
the years following the rise of Chin to imperial status were full of halfhearted
attempts to placate the Chin and of abortive military actions against the
Jurchens. In spite of the war between the two states, diplomatic communica-
tion was not completely severed. However, the more military successes the
Jurchens achieved, the more their demands were increased.
After a defeat of the Liao armies, or rather their wholesale desertion in the
beginning of 1117, A-ku-ta again tried to impose new demands on the totter-
ing Liao. In 1118 he outlined his conditions for a peace. This time A-ku-ta
demanded to be recognized by the
Liao
emperor
as
elder brother, which meant
5 For a detailed account of early Chin—Liao relations, see Herbert Franke, "Chinese texts on the Jurchen:
A translation of the Jurchen monograph in the San
ch'ao pei metig hui
pirn,"
Zentralasialiscbe
Sluditn,
9
(i975).
PP- 15'-66-
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A-KU-TA AND THE FOUNDING OF THE CHIN DYNASTY 223
a reversal of the status proposed in 1115. Liao should cede three more circuits
in Manchuria and send a prince, a princess, and an imperial son-in-law as
hostages to the Chin court. Above all, the diplomatic documents referring to
the relations between Liao and Sung, Hsi-hsia, and Koryo should be submit-
ted to the Chin court. This would have allowed the Chin to become the
legitimate receivers of the tribute paid hitherto by Sung to Liao and to
assume the status of a major power vis-a-vis the flanking states in the east and
west, Koryo and Hsi-hsia.
6
This dilatory attitude on the part of T'ien-tso of
Liao
was not well received
by A-ku-ta and his court. Repeatedly A-ku-ta refused to accept diplomatic
letters from Liao because they did not sufficiently take into account his newly
acquired imperial status. He could afford to do this because he had in the
meantime conquered the rich and fertile lowlands of southern Manchuria,
including Liao-yang, the "Eastern Capital" of
Liao,
which was a center of Po-
hai civilization. Many of the Liao military leaders, not only Khitans, but also
members of other tribes such as the Hsi (originally a Turkic-speaking people
living in the southwestern highlands of the Liao empire), defected to the
Chin and were frequently incorporated into the Chin armies together with
their subordinate troops. Sometimes these defectors proved unreliable and
rebelled against their new overlords, but A-ku-ta could crush these short-
lived revolts very quickly.
At this point it should be remembered that from the beginning, the
Jurchen armies had included many non-Jurchen elements, chiefly drawn
from tribes and ethnic groups who had joined them earlier. A-ku-ta was able
to resolve the problem of military leadership over a multinational army,
whereas the last ruler of Liao proved unable to handle his own ethnically
mixed forces. All the attempts at compromise on the part of
Liao
failed in the
end. When the Liao court promised to invest A-ku-ta as "King of the State of
the Eastern Sea," he resisted fiercely, because the title of king (wang) was
plainly inferior to that of emperor of the great Chin, which he had already
assumed years before. The longer the abortive negotiations were protracted,
the stronger A-ku-ta's position had become in the meantime, and compro-
mise no longer seemed necessary. The total overthrow of the Liao empire,
although it might perhaps not have been A-ku-ta's major political objective
in the early stages of his rise to power, was now definitely in sight, certainly
after 1119.
All these successes achieved by A-ku-ta, however impressive they were,
must be regarded as still within the reach of any determined and able
military leader and did not require superior diplomatic skill, except perhaps
6 T'o-t'o et al., eds., Liao shih (Peking, 1974), 28, pp. 336—7 (hereafter cited as LS).
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224 THE CHIN DYNASTY
in the handling of his followers. But A-ku-ta was more than just a ruthless
and able general who could score victories against an adversary weakened by
inept leadership, severe internal dissent, and disorganization. He emerged as
a brilliant diplomat and strategist when after 1117 the bilateral Chin-Liao
relations were replaced by
a
triangular power system that included the Sung.
The fourth powerful state with which the Chin had to reckon, the Hsia
state of the Tanguts, was at that time not yet directly involved. The Tanguts
supported the Liao to some extent before n24 and it was only afterward,
when Chin and Hsia become contiguous, that the Chin claimed suzerainty
over Hsia, having supplanted the Sung as their direct neighbors. The formal-
ization of Hsia—Chin relations was achieved under A-ku-ta's successor Wu-
ch'i-mai and secured for Chin an additional rise in status.
7
The Jurchens had,
as we have seen, already established peaceful relations with the Sung court
during the early part of the Northern Sung dynasty, and their rise to hege-
mony in the north had been followed closely by observers in K'ai-feng.
Recall that after 1005, Liao—Sung relations had been based on a treaty
arrangement whereby the Sung had bought peace on their northern border
through annual payments to the Liao and by formally recognizing the Liao
conquest of the Sixteen Prefectures in north China, including the region of
Yen (Peking). The growing weakness of the Liao having become apparent,
the Sung looked for potential allies to help them recover the never-forgotten
Chinese territories that had been lost to the Khitans during the period of
political disunity in the first half of the tenth century. Now the Chin state,
with its deep-seated grudge against the Liao, became in the eyes of Sung
politicians a natural ally against the Liao, and hopes of recovering the lost
territories with the assistance of Chin began to be entertained in the Sung
capital. In n
17
a Sung envoy was sent to the Chin under the pretext of
buying horses, but in reality to negotiate a Sung—Chin alliance against Liao.
Between 1117 and 1123 Sung envoys traveled altogether seven times to
the Chin court, and six Chin embassies went to K'ai-feng, not counting the
steady flow of diplomatic correspondence. Three major points of negotiation
emerged during these diplomatic contacts: a joint Sung-Chin attack against
the tottering Liao empire, the territorial problems (return of the Sixteen
Prefectures to Sung), and the problem of the annual payments formerly paid
to Liao. The bargaining position of the Sung during those years deteriorated
rapidly because A-ku-ta had soon discovered that in spite of some prepara-
tions in the Sung empire, the Chin armies would not need to wait for the
assistance of Sung troops to conquer for themselves the southern part of the
7 For a chronological account of Chin—Hsia relations, see chaps. 61 and 62 of T'o-t'o et al., eds., Chin
shih
(Peking, 1975) (hereafter cited as CS), and for additional information, the monograph on Hsi Hsia
in chap. 134.
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A-KU-TA AND THE FOUNDING OF THE CHIN DYNASTY 225
Liao state, with Yen (Peking) as its center. The Sung, on the other hand,
thought that they could make their own territorial claims acceptable to the
Chin only by offering a military alliance. Soon the Chin also put forward
their claim that they should be regarded as the legitimate successors of Liao
with regard to the annual Sung "tribute" payments.
By the time a formal treaty was finally concluded in 1123 - the first one
between the two states
—
the military situation had radically changed. Sung
attempts to capture Yen had failed, whereas the Chin armies had not only
forced the Western and the Central capitals of Liao to surrender but, by the
end of 1122, had also been able to conquer Yen, its Southern Capital. The
Liao emperor had already become a fugitive in the far west; the end of his
empire was in sight. With Yen in the possession of the Chin, A-ku-ta's
position had become unassailable, and the Sung were forced on the defensive.
They had to accept A-ku-ta's conditions concerning the return of the Yen
region to the Sung. Not all of the six prefectures of the Yen region were to be
handed back to Sung, and in addition to the annual payments formerly
granted to the Liao, the Sung had to pay the Chin a huge compensation for
the loss of tax income from the Yen prefectures.
One might ask why A-ku-ta consented at all to conclude a formal treaty
with Sung, as his military position was so strong. A possible answer is that
he wanted to formalize the question of annual payments. These amounted to
200,000 taels of silver.and 300,000 bolts of silk, a sum perhaps not ruinous
to Sung China's treasuries but important as a source of income for A-ku-ta's
own young state of Chin. The treaty was, in addition, a way to have his own
imperial status solemnly recognized. The treaty text, as was usual in Chinese
diplomacy since early times, was couched in the form of two parallel and
identical oath-letters, and no differentiation in status between the parties is
implied in the texts of the respective documents. A-ku-ta is addressed as
"August Emperor of the great Chin," and the Sung ruler accordingly. This
meant that Chin had now achieved a state of equality with Sung, only ten
years after the formal foundation of the Chin as a dynasty.
These oath-letters were exchanged during the third and the fourth month
of 1123. Their texts do not, however, contain any details about how the
cession of the six prefectures to Sung should be carried out. Other details,
such as delimiting the borders, were also left to be worked out in corollary
agreements. The general instability of the situation, together with the points
left undecided, became the reason that instead of leading to a stabilization of
China's northern border, the treaty of 1123 marked the beginning of a long
period
—
lasting for almost twenty years
—
of violent and devastating warfare
that more than once threatened the very existence of Sung China.
By the time A-ku-ta concluded his alliance with Sung, the Liao state had
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226 THE CHIN DYNASTY
suffered fatal defeats. In 1122 the Liao Central Capital (modern Tsaghan
Suburghan in Jehol Province, Manchuria) fell to Chin armies. The Liao
emperor T'ien-tso fled west. In the Southern Capital (modern Peking) an-
other member of the Khitan imperial clan was proclaimed emperor but died
soon afterward. Chin armies reached Peking. The Khitans were unable to put
up organized resistance despite local attempts to withstand the onslaught of
the Chin forces. In 1125 the last Liao emperor T'ien-tso was captured and
degraded to the status of a prince. This marked the formal end of the Liao
state that had been such a formidable adversary of Sung China. But in its
place the Sung now had as their northern neighbor a state that was at least as
dangerous an opponent as Liao had ever been. A-ku-ta did not live to see the
final extinction of Liao and the humiliation of Sung; he died a few months
after the treaty of 1123 had been concluded. The foundations he laid re-
mained, however, the basis for the future exploits of Chin.
FROM WAR TO COEXISTENCE: CHIN-SUNG RELATIONS
BEFORE THE TREATY OF II42
A-ku-ta was succeeded by his younger brother Wu-ch'i-mai (1075—1135),
whose posthumous temple name was T'ai-tsung. The new ruler, like his
deceased brother, displayed great military and diplomatic astuteness in the
rather confused situation that confronted him in 1123. Although an agree-
ment had been reached with the Sung, the task of implementing the terms of
the treaty was still unresolved. The Sung state was evidently the Chin's most
formidable potential adversary. So Wu-ch'i-mai tried to strengthen the
Chin's position on its other borders. The final annihilation of
the
remnants of
Liao had been relatively easy, but there was still the state of Hsi Hsia on the
Chin's western border, a state that was certainly not strong enough to be a
serious menace but that could always stir up trouble in the western parts of
the Chin state. Wu-ch'i-mai adopted a conciliatory policy toward Hsi Hsia
and concluded a peace treaty in 1124 by which Hsi Hsia acknowledged the
Chin's suzerainty by declaring itself an "outer vassal." At the same time the
Chin ordered the repair of its frontier defenses against Kory6, its eastern
neighbor. Some local unrest in the Po-hai districts was also quickly brought
under control, so that the Chin was in a position to concentrate on its
relations with the Sung.
These were, at first, outwardly normal. Despite the outbreak of fighting
in 1124, the Sung, even as late as 1125, sent an embassy to the Chin court in
order to offer formal congratulations on Wu-ch'i-mai's succession to the
throne. The situation was full of tension but had not yet degenerated into a
full-scale war. Perhaps the chief reason that this occurred was the affair of
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CHIN-SUNG RELATIONS BEFORE 1142 227
Chang Chiieh, a case that illustrates the fluid and chaotic conditions result-
ing from the collapse of the Liao state and the advance of
Chin.
Chang Chueh
had been a Liao military governor residing in P'ing Prefecture (modern
Yung-p'ing east of Peking). He assassinated the former Liao commander of
Yen (the Eastern Capital) who had joined the Chin side, under the pretext
that this official had caused unnecessary hardships to the population of
Yen,
a
great portion of which had been evacuated to P'ing. At the same time Chang
Chiieh declared his allegiance to the Sung and was reappointed by them to
his former office.
All this had happened before the death of A-ku-ta, but his successor was
not slow to react. A Jurchen army attacked P'ing Prefecture. Chang Chiieh
fled to Yen where Kuo Yao-shih, a former Liao commander, had likewise
joined the Sung side. But the Chin regarded Chang Chiieh as a traitor and
rebel and demanded his extradition. The Sung court agreed and gave orders
for his execution; his head was sent to the Jurchen. Kuo Yao-shih thereby
realized that the Sung was not in a position to protect those who had
prematurely declared their allegiance to this state and so submitted to the
Chin, who reinstated him as governor of Peking. The decision by the Chin
court to wage a full-scale war against the Sung was taken in autumn of the
year 1125, and although the Chang Chueh incident was not its only motivat-
ing force, it certainly contributed to this decision. Within a few months the
Chin armies occupied the greater part of Shansi and Hopei, and early in 1126
they crossed the Yellow River and laid siege to the Sung capital of K'ai-feng
(see Map 15).
The Sung court found itself in a desperate situation. No auxiliary armies
that could have forced the Chin to lift the siege were in sight. On the other
hand an attack against the walled capital of Sung was a military venture that
could have cost the Chin armies heavy losses in men and materiel. The Chin
commander, Wo-li-pu, the second son of A-ku-ta, therefore accepted the
Sung offer to negotiate a withdrawal of the Jurchen forces. Wo-li-pu had to
conduct his negotiations with the Sung without the possibility of contacting
his ruler Wu-ch'i-mai in faraway Manchuria, but we may assume that he had
full plenipotentiary powers in both military and diplomatic affairs.
The terms demanded by the Chin side for their withdrawal were exorbi-
tant. The three prefectures of T'ai-yiian, Chung-shan, and Ho-chien were to
be ceded to the Chin (this implied the loss of the greater part of the modern
provinces of Shansi and Hopei). Moreover, an enormous war indemnity was
to be paid in addition to the normal annual payments, and a Sung imperial
prince was to be sent as a hostage to the Jurchen camp. Two versions of the
oath-letter in which the Sung acceded to the demands of Chin have been
preserved, and both reflect the hopelessly inferior position of the Sung. The
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lung-sl
112£xii.
Chin
army
withdraws
1127with
two cap
tiveSung-
Emperore
>
Campaigns 1125,x.—1126.V.
• Campaigns
1126.x.—1127,
iv.
Western campaigns 1127—29
-=<•<> Return route
-""• Return route
Ju-chou
1127.XM.
100
MAP
15. The Chin invasions of Northern Sung
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CHIN-SUNG RELATIONS BEFORE II42 229
annual payments were increased to 300,000 taels of
silver,
300,000 bolts of
silk, and 1 million strings of
coins.
The war indemnity imposed on the Sung was so high that it amounted to
not less than 180 years of annual payments. As hostage the prince of K'ang, a
younger brother of the Sung emperor Ch'in-tsung, went to Wo-li-pu's camp.
He was accompanied by Chang Pang-ch'ang, a high-ranking official who had
been in favor of appeasing the enemy. The negotiations had lasted for about a
week, and after Wo-li-pu had consented to the revised version of the Sung
oath-letter, he gave orders on 10 February 1126 to lift the siege of the Sung
capital. The continued existence of
the
Sung state as a power on equal footing
with Chin had been bought at great expense, but, as it turned out, only for a
brief period. One of the immediate results of the military and political
disaster had been the elimination of the chancellor Ts'ai Ching and his
followers, who had dominated Sung politics for many years. Another had
been the abdication of the Sung emperor Hui-tsung (r. 1100—26) in favor of
Ch'in-tsung (r. 1126—7). A side effect of the new situation was that the king
of Kory6 declared himself
a
vassal of Chin in the summer of 1126. The two
major states bordering on Chin
—
Koryd and Hsi Hsia
—
had thus now recog-
nized the overlordship of the Chin emperor.
The war between Sung and Chin soon flared up again. It must remain a
matter for speculation if the reason was that Chin had realized how weak the
Sung was militarily arid therefore resolved to annihilate the Sung empire once
and for all, or whether the reasons that Chin sources give us for the resump-
tion of fighting were real reasons and not just facile pretexts. As it was, the
Chin soon complained that Sung was breaking the armistice and was even
trying to induce some former Liao generals to attack the Chin. Once again
the Chin armies marched south and crossed the Yellow River in the eleventh
month of 1126 to lay siege to K'ai-feng. This time the resistance of the city
had to be overcome by force. On
9
January 1127 the victorious Jurchen army
entered the city after heavy fighting and pillaged relentlessly. Emperor
Ch'in-tsung and ex-Emperor Hui-tsung, together with a host of courtiers and
family members, were made prisoners; the prince of K'ang, enthroned as the
new emperor (Kao-tsung) tried to organize resistance in regions not yet
threatened by the enemy. The de facto surrender of Sung was total and
became formalized through the degradation of Ch'in-tsung and Hui-tsung to
the status of commoners. In May 1127 the two former emperors were
marched north with their entourage, thus leaving a sort of interregnum in
the central parts of the Sung empire.
The Chin at first did not try to incorporate the territories under their
control into their state but instead set up a new Chinese dynasty under
Chang Pang-ch'ang. The name given to this state was Ta-Ch'u, "Great
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230 THE CHIN DYNASTY
Ch'u," reminiscent of the ancient state of Ch'u in the Yangtze valley. The
capital was Chien-k'ang (Nanking). Chang Pang-ch'ang's role of a quisling
appointed by the Chin did not, however, last long. He was killed, or rather
forced to commit suicide, on the order of the Sung court. This showed that
Chin domination was still by no means absolute. Also, in the northern
parts of China, numerous towns under loyal commanders still held out, and
in many places the resistance against the Chin was organized by volunteers.
This taxed the military resources of the Chin so much that for the moment
a continued attack into the regions south of the Yangtze River was impossi-
ble.
Another factor that slowed the Chin aggression was the death of Wo-li-pu
and of Wo-lu, another military leader, in 1127 and the death of Che-mu in
1129.
They all were close relatives of the emperor. Wo-li-pu was a son,
Wo-lu a cousin, and Che-mu a brother of A-ku-ta. Contrary to Chinese
and, in particular, Sung custom, members of the Chin imperial clan were
prominent in both military and political affairs. Clan affiliation was thus an
extremely important factor in the Chin empire, as contrasted with the more
nonfamilial and, at times, partisan composition of the ruling circles in the
Sung state.
In the next few years following the Sung defeat in 1127, Chin troops tried
repeatedly to gain strategic footholds south of the Yangtze River (see Map
16).
This forced the Sung court to abandon Chien-k'ang (Nanking), which
had become the temporary capital in 1129, and to withdraw to Shao-hsing in
Chekiang Province. But even Chekiang was raided by advance forces of the
Chin. The chaotic conditions prevailing in China north of the Yangtze,
however, prevented the Chin from permanently incorporating these areas
into their empire. The whole of the Central Plains was a battleground where
Chin troops, Sung generals, and independent militia leaders fought with no
conclusive results. The Chin tried again to resolve their problems by creating
a buffer state, not only for protection against the Sung, but also in the hope
of attracting more military and civilian defectors from Sung to a state under
nominal Chinese rule. Another reason for this attempt to create a new state in
north China was that the Jurchens lacked the trained personnel with which to
exploit these regions for their own benefit.
Their choice fell on Liu Yii (1079-1143?), a native of Hopei who had
passed the
chin-shih
examination in about 1100 and had served the Sung in
various provincial and metropolitan offices. When he was prefect of Chi-nan
(Shantung), he changed sides in 1128 and joined the Jurchens. He was
favored by T'ai-tsung and some leading Jurchen generals and finally, toward
the end of 1129, was appointed as emperor of great Ch'i. The capital of this
state was first at Ta-ming in Hopei, but Liu took up residence in Tung-p'ing
(Shantung), his Eastern Capital, and later moved into the former Sung
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