(4) The empire of the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279)

1 _Foundation_

In the disaster of 1126, when the Juchên captured the Sung capital and
destroyed the Sung empire, a brother of the captive emperor escaped. He
made himself emperor in Nanking and founded the "Southern Sung" dynasty,
whose capital was soon shifted to the present Hangchow. The foundation
of the new dynasty was a relatively easy matter, and the new state was
much more solid than the southern kingdoms of 800 years earlier, for the
south had already been economically supreme, and the great families that
had ruled the state were virtually all from the south. The loss of the
north, i.e. the area north of the Yellow River and of parts of Kiangsu,
was of no importance to this governing group and meant no loss of
estates to it. Thus the transition from the Northern to the Southern
Sung was not of fundamental importance. Consequently the Juchên had no
chance of success when they arranged for Liu Yü, who came of a northern
Chinese family of small peasants and had become an official, to be
proclaimed emperor in the "Ch'i" dynasty in 1130. They hoped that this
puppet might attract the southern Chinese, but seven years later they
dropped him.


2 _Internal situation_

As the social structure of the Southern Sung empire had not been
changed, the country was not affected by the dynastic development. Only
the policy of diplomacy could not be pursued at once, as the Juchên were