The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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THE HAN CHINESE UNDER ALIEN DOMINATION 41
The Mongols erupted into the Chinese scene far more violently than had
the Jurchen. Their first major onslaught, on the Tangut state of Hsia, came
closest to the image of the Mongolian terror that gripped the popular imagi-
nation throughout eastern Europe and Iran. The Tangut state and its sophisti-
cated culture were almost wiped out. Next it was the turn of the Jurchen
Chin, which was destroyed and its territories reduced to anarchy for almost a
quarter-century.
Until the accession of Khubilai, China was a sideshow for the Mongols,
simply one part of their enormous empire, a rich source of booty and plunder,
captives with special skills, and unrivaled artisans. It was during this period
of the unbridled ravaging of China's resources that the Han Chinese popula-
tion living under one of these alien regimes first suffered widespread disrup-
tion and destruction at every level of society. For the first time, too, the
Chinese elite, with a few personal exceptions, was excluded from government
service.
The conquest of Southern China proceeded quite differently. Khubilai was
determined to erect a state structure incorporating many of the features of a
Chinese empire. But still the Mongols avoided the dependence on Chinese
officials that had characterized the Khitan and Jurchen empires, for the
Mongolian elite had members of other racial minorities, the gentry from
Central and Western Asia, to act as their managers, tax farmers, and interme-
diaries. Some Chinese literati refused to serve their new masters and deliber-
ately withdrew from public life to live as recluses. But nonetheless gradually
some Chinese took office; many more served as clerks and minor functionar-
ies;
and the elite literati life, though no longer lived with the primary aim of
service as an official, continued. Many educated men took up new professions
as teachers, doctors, and business managers. Elite "Confucian" values were,
as a result, spread more widely through society than had been the case before.
One area into which they spread was among the ruling elite of Mongolians
and their
se-mu
allies, many of whom themselves became accomplished writ-
ers in Chinese and full participants in Chinese culture. To a limited extent a
minority of the non-Han elite was absorbed into the Chinese intellectual
world.
The end of the Yuan came in the mid-fourteenth century, not from inva-
sion by yet another fresh wave of invaders, but by collapse from within. It is
still far from clear what factors lay behind the many local uprisings that
eventually toppled the dynasty: Natural disasters, epidemics, and a deteriora-
tion of climate all exacerbated the effects of misrule, exploitation, and admin-
istrative mismanagement. What is clear is that by the 1340s and 1350s there
was massive disaffection at every level of the Han Chinese population, taking
the traditional forms of banditry on a large scale, emergent sectarian move-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
42 INTRODUCTION
ments, and mutinies among the armies. These phenomena were those tradi-
tionally associated with the fall of Chinese dynasties, but they were given a
new edge by the fact that the government and many of its agents were
foreigners.
The twenty years of constant civil war that ended in the Ming founding
must have been at least as destructive as
the
Jurchen conquest of north China,
and more so than the Mongolian conquest of the south. Only the first phase
of the Mongolian conquest of the north exceeded it in ferocity and devasta-
tion. But even before these civil conflicts broke out, Yiian China had been
subjected to stresses far greater than those caused by the conquests of the
earlier regimes.
Did the dynasties of conquest really represent a major setback in the
"natural" development of Chinese society, the Chinese economy, Chinese
political institutions, and Chinese culture? Without them, would the pattern
of rapid growth and rational organization that had characterized Sung China
in the eleventh century have continued? Did they abort what some scholars
regard as the emergence of
a
"modern age" under Sung? Or were these Sung
developments in any case a dead end, doomed by limitations on the state's
effectiveness, by China's very size and diversity, and by the failure of the
Chinese elite to give due weight and attention to the practical and prag-
matic? Why did the Ming, when they had finally driven the Mongols from
Chinese soil, not resume the more sophisticated models of government pro-
vided by the Sung and, instead, continue
so
many of the institutional develop-
ments of the Chin and Yiian eras and revert to the T'ang models that all the
conquerors had admired? These are complex questions, perhaps unanswer-
able.
But they certainly suggest that the complicated and diverse periods
covered in this volume deserve detailed scrutiny as a most important integral
stage in China's development, a period that certainly did not close with the
withdrawal of the last Mongolian armies across the frontier.
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CHAPTER 1
THE LIAO
INTRODUCTION
The founding of the Liao dynasty at the beginning of the tenth century
opened a second period of extensive foreign dominance in China, a period
that would last for almost half
a
millennium and that reached its climax with
the conquest by the Mongols of
all
of China in 1279. Never before had China
suffered such a degree of political and military domination by foreign peoples
for such a protracted period. The Khitan Liao, the Tangut Hsi Hsia, the
Jurchen Chin, and the Mongol Yuan in turn exercised an ever-increasing
control over Chinese territory. The surviving Chinese regimes were forced to
acknowledge these conquest dynasties on Chinese soil as equal if not superior
powers, to establish permanent diplomatic relations with them on an equal
footing, and to pay them annual subsidies or tribute. Such a state of affairs
was totally at variance with the traditional Chinese worldview, which saw
China as the center of the civilized world around which other peoples and
nations had to orbit, and to which they were expected to display submission
and deference.
Nothing better illustrates the new power of the north Asian tribal peoples
than the fact that throughout Eurasia the name of the Khitan, the founders of
the Liao dynasty, in such forms as Kitaia, Cathaia, or Cathay, became a
synonym for China.
1
In Russia and throughout the Slavonic world it still
remains the standard designation for China.
The Khitan in fact controlled only a small and peripheral part of China
proper. But their rule lasted for more than two centuries, and because their
area of domination stretched from the borders of Korea in the east to the Altai
Mountains in the west, it effectively blocked China's direct communication
with Central and Western Asia. As a consequence, in the west there was an
In writing this chapter I have had constant recourse to the following monumental volume on the Liao:
Karl August Wittfogel and Feng Chia-sheng, History of
Chinese
society:
Liao (907-1125) (Philadelphia,
•949).
which is by far the most thorough and comprehensive treatment of the subject in any language.
1 See Paul Pelliot,
Notes
on Marco
Polo
(Paris, 1959), vol. i, pp. 216-29.
43
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
44 THE LIAO
unavoidable impression that the Khitan, now the intermediaries between
East and West, were the real masters of
China.
The misleading and exagger-
ated image that the long period of Khitan rule imprinted on the minds of
contemporaries elsewhere in Asia persisted long after the Khitan dynasty of
Liao had disappeared.
THE PREDYNASTIC KHITAN
The early history of the Khitan is not well documented.
2
Chinese historical
sources first mention the name Khitan (Ch'i-tan) in the fourth century
A.D.
But there are many anomalies
in
these early accounts and considerable
confusion about what group of people is referred to under this name. There
does seem
to
be general agreement that the Ch'i-tan originated from the
Yii-wen branch
of
the Hsien-pei, the group
of
peoples that dominated
the northeastern frontier of China from the second century onward. In 345
the Yii-wen were crushed by the stronger Mu-jung group of Hsien-pei, who
had founded the state of
Yen,
and they split into three tribes, one of which
was called the K'u-mo-hsi,
to
which the Khitan belonged.
In
388 this
group again split
to
form the K'u-mo-hsi (later usually called simply the
Hsi) and the Ch'i-tan. Wei Shou's history of the Northern Wei, the
Wei
shu,
completed
in
554,
is
the earliest
of
the standard dynastic histories
to
mention
as
independent nations the Ch'i-tan,
the
K'u-mo-hsi, and
the
Shih-wei, all of which
it
describes as descended from the Hsien-pei.' At
that time
all
were nomadic pastoral peoples, the Ch'i-tan living
in
the
grasslands of the upper valley of the Liao (Shira muren), in what is today
the western part of Liaoning and Kirin provinces bordering on Inner Mon-
golia. The K'u-mo-hsi lived
to
the south and west of them
in
the moun-
tainous borders adjacent to Hopei and northern Shansi, and the Shih-wei
inhabited the territory north of the Ch'i-tan on the border between Inner
Mongolia and western Heilungkiang.
It is not entirely clear whether by Wei Shou's time Ch'i-tan was the name
of a separate Khitan nation or whether these people were still a part of a larger
tribal conglomeration called K'u-mo-hsi. To complicate the issue further,
some of the smaller tribes that the
Wei shu
account of the Khitan identifies as
parts
of
their nation also appear elsewhere
in
the same history
as
quite
independent peoples. These seeming contradictions probably reflect both the
imperfect sources available to Wei Shou when writing his history and also the
fact that during the long Northern Wei period (386-535), the situation
2 The most detailed account of the pre-dynastic Khitan is by Otagi Matsuo, Kittan kodai shi no kenkyu,
Toyoshi kenkyu sokan, no.
6
(Kyoto, 1959).
3 See Wei Shou et al., eds., Wei shu (Peking, 1974), 100, pp. 2221-4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE PREDYNASTIC KHITAN 45
among these peoples was in constant flux: The Khitan first separated from
the K'u-mo-hsi and then gradually developed into
a
Khitan nation incorporat-
ing other previously independent tribes. The Khitan were defeated by the
T'o-pa founders of the Northern Wei and became their tributaries. In 479 a
large section of the Khitan, threatened by the expansion of the Jou-jan in
Mongolia, moved southeastward into the middle valley of
the
Liao.
But they
continued to grow steadily stronger into the sixth century.
The precise ethnic affiliations of the Khitan and their neighbors are ob-
scure. Not surprisingly, the Chinese sources are of little help in solving this
problem. Traditional Chinese historians writing about foreign peoples were
not interested in anthropology or descriptive ethnography but, rather, in the
relationship of the foreign peoples with the Chinese court, even when, as in
the case of the Northern Wei, this was itself the court of an alien dynasty.
The foreign peoples were interesting either because their submission in-
creased the prestige of the Chinese court or because they threatened China's
national integrity.
The historians' identification of the Khitan with the K'u-mo-hsi and
eventually with the Yii-wen, the classification of the Khitan and their neigh-
bors the Hsi and Shih-wei as being commonly descended from the Hsien-pei,
and even the later attempts to link them with the Hsiung-nu who had ruled
over northern Asia under the Han are thus little more than equations be-
tween unknowns, for we cannot define exactly the ethnic identity of any of
these peoples. Their names often designated political groupings, rather than
stable ethnic groups, with which the Chinese were in contact. In the no-
madic society of northern Asia such political groupings were always highly
fluid, with many small and intricately interrelated tribal groups that would
join together in military confederations in times of
crisis.
These confedera-
tions were always very unstable and dependent above all on the personal
charisma of their leaders and, after a short period of common purpose and
unity under strong leadership, would inevitably split again.
Contemporary scholars have attempted to solve the problem of Khitan
origins on the basis of linguistic evidence, but studies of the Khitan language
have not so far supplied any solid evidence. We know that syntactically the
Khitan language resembled the Altaic languages (all the languages of the
northern steppe were closely related), but this still leaves a wide range of
choice among the Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic subfamilies of Altaic. To
narrow the choice we have a meager vocabulary of
some
two hundred known
words, half of them listed in the vocabulary appended to the
Liaoshih,
a work
compiled as late as the fourteenth century. Unfortunately, the bulk of this
vocabulary consists of names, titles, and appellations, items that tend to be
readily passed from one language to another. Because the Khitan were long
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46 THE LIAO
under the strong political influence of Turkic-speaking peoples, first as vas-
sals of the T'o-pa, then of the T'u-chiieh, and later of the Uighurs (with
whom the Liao founder's tribe had long-established marriage relations), it is
quite natural that many of
the
tribal titles and names of Khitan offices have
Turkic origins. What little we know of the basic vocabulary that tends to be
least affected by word borrowings suggests links between Khitan and either
Mongolian or Tungusic. Thus the Khitan may have spoken either a proto-
Mongolian language influenced by Tungusic vocabulary or a Tungusic lan-
guage influenced by Mongolian vocabulary, in either case using many Turkic
loan words.
Evidence from customs and material culture is equally difficult to inter-
pret, as such things too are liable to be borrowed from other peoples. We
cannot expect such evidence to offer any definite solution to the origins of the
Khitan, particularly because their territories lay in the border area between
the arid grasslands and deserts of
the
west, inhabited by Turkic or Mongolian
tribes,
and the forested plains and mountains of Manchuria to the east, the
home of the Tungusic peoples. It is only natural that Khitan culture should
have traits in common with each of its neighboring peoples.
One cultural trait, however, supports the
Wei shu's
statement that the
Khitan, Hsi, and Shih-wei shared a common origin. This is their male
coiffure. As is proved by both textual evidence and Liao mural paintings,
Khitan men shaved their heads in a sort of tonsure, leaving the hair on both
temples hanging down to the shoulders or over the chest. This same hairstyle
was used by both the Hsi and Shih-wei and also by the Hsien-pei, who were
believed to be their common ancestors.
The evidence from customs and material culture gives us little more than
linguistic evidence concerning the Khitans' ultimate origins. It is clear
enough, however, that their ancestors belonged among the heterogenous
conglomeration of peoples called Hsien-pei. Beyond that we are left in the
realm of conjecture.
The Khitan tribes in the sixth century still formed only a weak confedera-
tion. In 553 they were disastrously defeated by the Northern Ch'i, who
enslaved a great number of them and drove off much of their livestock.« At
the beginning of the Sui period the Khitan were engaged in constant interne-
cine warfare, and shortly after 586 some of their tribes became vassals of the
T'u-chiieh Turks, and others submitted to the Sui. The
Sui sbu
(completed in
636) denounces them as the most primitive of all barbarians, a judgment that
probably reflects their still unstable state of organization rather than the level
of their culture. In times of peace, each tribe lived its own life, tending its
4 See Li Pai-yao et al., eds.,
Pei
Ch'ishu (Peking, 1972), 4, p. 57.
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THE PREDYNASTIC KHITAN 47
flocks of sheep and horses and hunting in its own territories. Only in case of
warfare did their chieftains meet and elect a temporary leader.'
The Khitans' political fate was largely determined by their far more power-
ful neighbors and by the ever-changing balance of power between the succes-
sive regimes ruling northern China, on the one hand, and belligerent tribal
neighbors to the north, northeast, and northwest, on the other. When China
was strong, as under the T'o-pa Wei in the fifth century, the Khitan were
drawn into its political orbit. When China was relatively weak, they became
vassals of other nomadic peoples such as the T'u-chueh, the Turkic people
who in the sixth century succeeded the Jou-jan as the lords of northern Asia.
Some Khitan tribes in the east even paid allegiance to the state of Kogury6
centered in southeastern Manchuria and northern Korea.
Nevertheless, when temporarily united, the Khitan could become
a
consid-
erable military threat, as was proved in 605 when they staged a large-scale
invasion of Sui territory in Hopei and northern Shansi. This provoked a
major Sui punitive expedition, which inflicted grievous losses on the Khitan
nation, leaving them temporarily much reduced in numbers.
6
In the 620s and 630s the situation changed radically with the rise of the
T'ang, not only as a powerful Chinese dynasty, but also as a power that
claimed hegemony in the northern steppe following their defeat of the T'u-
chueh in 630. During these years the Khitan again gradually drifted into
China's political orbit. One of their chieftains visited Ch'ang-an in 623, and
another came to offer formal submission in 628 after calling a conference of
tribal leaders. During T'ai-tsung's campaign against Koguryo in 645, some
Khitan tribes fought on the side of the T'ang, and in 647 a confederation of
eight tribes under the chieftain, K'u-k'o, of the Ta-ho clan submitted to
T'ang suzerainty. ?
It is not clear whether K'u-k'o was a temporary leader elected during a
period of crisis or a new type of leader elected for life or whether he had
become leader by hereditary succession. The leader who had led the tribute
mission in 628 had been a member of the same Ta-ho clan. It may well be
that by the 640s the Khitan confederation had become more stable and
cohesive under the influence of their erstwhile overlords, the politically more
sophisticated T'u-chiieh. The T'ang court decided to control them indirectly
5 See Wei Cheng et al., eds., Sui shu (Peking, 1973), 84, pp. 1881-2.
6 See Ssu-ma Kuang et al., comps., Tzu chih t'ung Men (Peking, 1956), 180, pp. 5621-2.
7 On the Khitan during the T'ang, see Liu Hsu et al., eds., Cbiu
T'ang
shu (Peking, 1975), 199B, pp.
5349-54 (hereafter cited at CTS); Ou-yang Hsiu and Sung Ch'i, comps., Hsin
T'ang
shu (Peking,
1975),
219, pp. 6167—73 (hereafter cited as HTS); Wang P'u,
T'ang
hut yao
(Shanghai, 1935; reprinted
Peking, 1955, 1957), 96, pp. 1717-19 (hereafter cited as THY). See also Denis C. Twitchett and John
K. Fairbank, eds., Sui and
T'ang
China, 589—906, pt. I, vol. 3 of The Cambridge history of China
(Cambridge, 1979), pp. 314—16, 438—40.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
48 THE LIAO
through a strong hereditary leadership loyal to China. To achieve this they
bestowed on K'u-k'o the T'ang imperial surname Li and appointed him
governor-general of Sung-mo, an office specially created for the indirect
management of the Khitan tribes. By these measures the court hoped to
ensure K'u-k'o's cooperation with the T'ang and the compliance of
his
fellow
tribespeople.
For a while the T'ang court's policy worked successfully, and for almost a
century most of the Khitan leaders came from the Li (Ta-ho) clan. Following
the pattern common to all the nomadic peoples of northern Asia, however,
the succession did not always pass only to the leader's direct descendants but
often went instead to mature collateral clan members such as uncles or
brothers and was usually subject to "election" at periodical meetings of the
tribal chieftains. In such a society, in which the ruler exercised direct per-
sonal authority, there was
no
way that a child, a weakling, or an incompetent
could be tolerated as ruler.
A
similar pattern of succession continued into the
Liao dynastic period. Until the 690s, successive members of the Li clan were
appointed to office and noble ranks by the T'ang court, and several served
with distinction as T'ang generals.
Relations between the T'ang and Khitan, however, were by no means
smooth. At the end of the seventh century the T'ang grip on the border
regions was loosened. From the early years of Kao-tsung, when T'ang armies
ranged across Asia from the Tarim basin to Korea, China had gradually
retreated into a defensive posture. The Tibetans had become their main
strategic concern. Meanwhile, from about 680 the T'u-chiieh again grew
powerful and began to reestablish their hegemony in the steppe. The T'ang
attempt to conquer Korea had ended in abject failure, and a new state of
Chen (later to become Po-hai) was emerging in eastern Manchuria. Finally,
the Khitan sought to rid themselves of T'ang tutelage. In 696—7 their leader,
Li Chin-chung, provoked by his mistreatment at the hands of an arrogant
Chinese local official, raised a rebellion and launched a massive invasion of
Hopei, which drove deep into T'ang territory and captured several large
cities,
imposing crushing defeats on the T'ang armies. But the invasion
failed, for two reasons. The T'u-chiieh khaghan had no interest in fostering a
rival steppe power, and he attacked the Khitan in the rear, defeating them
and driving off many of their family members and herds. Then when the
T'ang court mobilized new armies against them in 697, the Hsi, who had
originally joined the Khitan in their uprising, changed sides and submitted
to the T'ang. The demoralized Khitan army collapsed and was routed, with
massive casualties. The T'ang swiftly drove the Khitan back from Chinese
territory but could not immediately regain control over them.
It was not until 715, after the decline of T'u-chiieh power and the resur-
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THE PREDYNASTIC KHITAN 49
gence of T'ang expansionism under Hsiian-tsung, that the Khitan again
submitted. In 716 the Khitan chieftain, still a member of the Li (Ta-ho)
clan, appeared in person at the court in Ch'ang-an to present tribute. As
before, the leaders were granted high offices and titular ranks from the T'ang
court and, to strengthen further the bonds, a "princess" from the imperial
clan was given in marriage to their leader, and members of the Khitan ruling
clan were sent to Ch'ang-an as "hostage princes." An indirect administration
incorporating the eight subordinate Khitan tribes was established. The next
few years marked the height of T'ang influence over the Khitan.
Their control, however, proved short-lived. Relations soon disintegrated,
owing to internal dissension among the Khitan. Despite their investiture by
the Chinese court, the leadership of the Li (Ta-ho) clan declined. A Khitan
minister named K'o-t'u-yii emerged as their de facto leader, enthroning and
deposing a succession of kings from the Li clan. Although he never chal-
lenged the Li clan's hereditary right to rule and never attempted to usurp
their position
himself,
he held unchallenged authority. In the late 720s he
attended the Chinese court, where he was treated rudely by the chief minis-
ter. As a result he developed a deep hatred of the T'ang and on his return in
730 killed the Khitan king, forced the Khitan and Hsi to become vassals of
the T'u-chiieh, and rebelled. Although he and his puppet king were killed by
the Li faction in 734, the T'ang court could not reimpose its control over the
Khitan. Their attempts to impose on them a new leader chosen by them-
selves ended in failure. Moreover, these internal troubles led to a change of
leadership. The Ta-ho clan, backed by the T'ang court, were replaced by a
new ruling clan, the Yao-lien. We will return to this later.
In 745 the T'ang tried unsuccessfully to restore relations by means of a new
marriage alliance. But this failed; the royal bride was murdered and the
Khitan again rebelled. An Lu-shan, the T'ang military governor of Fan-yang
(modern Peking), then attempted to subjugate them by force. In 751 he
invaded Khitan territory but was defeated with heavy losses. In 755 he again
sent a larger and better-prepared force against them. This time his army was
victorious and the Khitan were routed. But later in the same year An Lu-shan
himself rebelled and invaded Hopei with a force including large contingents
of Khitan, Hsi, and Shih-wei cavalry. A bloody and protracted civil war
ensued in China, a war that threw the empire into disorder for a decade and
brought the T'ang to the verge of destruction. They would never fully
recover.
Many Khitan, Hsi, and Shih-wei continued in T'ang service, especially in
the military. Some of the Khitan and Hsi generals who had served under An
Lu-shan and subsequently surrendered to the T'ang played a significant role
in the semi-independent provinces of Hopei. The important province of
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50 THE LIAO
Ch'eng-te, for example, which had a Chinese population of three and a half
million before the rebellion, was ruled by a Hsi family from 762 to
781,
then
by three generations of Khitan governors from 782 to 820, and finally by a
family of Uighur descent until the end of the dynasty. The almost equally
large province of Wei-po was governed by a Hsi general from 822 to 826. We
do not know what links these governors kept with their own tribal peoples
beyond the T'ang borders, but they employed fellow Hsi and Khitan exten-
sively in their armies and provincial administrations.
After 755 it becomes extremely difficult to follow the history of the
Khitan tribal people. They did not take advantage of China's temporary
weakness to take the offensive against the T'ang and encroach on their
territory, as the Tibetans were doing in the west. Perhaps internal strife and
the heavy losses inflicted on them by An Lu-shan immediately before his
rebellion had seriously destabilized the confederation. In any case, the border
region immediately adjacent to Khitan territory was the stronghold of the
powerful rebel regime. Instead of intervening, the Khitan remained peaceful
and accepted the suzerainty of the Uighurs, who had succeeded the T'u-
chiieh as the lords of northern Asia.
This did not mean breaking all links with the T'ang. Both the Khitan and
the Hsi had long had a special relationship with the military provincial
governors
(chieh-tu shih)
of Fan-yang (later renamed Lu-lung), based at mod-
ern Peking, who had traditionally held the concurrent title of commissioners
for the control of the Hsi and Khitan
(Ya Hsi Ch'i-tan
shih).
After the An Lu-
shan rebellion, the governors of Lu-lung, now semi-independent, retained
this title and its duties for themselves. Because of their considerable military
power, there was little trouble on their border, and the Hsi and Khitan rarely
raided the Chinese frontier. The Khitan, despite their having become vassals
of the Uighurs, regularly sent tribute-bearing missions to China. When
these embassies arrived at the provincial capital at Yu-chou (modern Peking),
the governor would select a few dozen men to visit Ch'ang-an and keep the
remainder at his headquarters. We know of at least thirty such embassies
between 756 and 842. Successive emperors entertained and rewarded their
visitors as custom demanded, but they no longer granted the chieftains
Chinese titles or noble ranks, as the court was well aware that the Khitan
were Uighur vassals.
When after 840 the Uighur empire in the steppe collapsed, the situation
changed again. In 842 the Khitan chieftain Ch'ii-shu renewed the allegiance
to the T'ang, repudiated their former tributary relationship with the
Uighurs, and requested formal investiture from Wu-tsung's court. The T'ang
government renewed the Khitans' former official titles to symbolize their
submission.
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