The present article attempts to clarify one aspect of the Song Dynasty's reconceptualization of the idea of “the World” (
Tianxia 天下) by paying special attention to the title of provincial governor (
jiedushi 節度使) and the aristocratic status conferred on foreign heads of state under China's vassalage (
cefeng 冊封) system, while focusing on the continuity that existed from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms through the Song Dynasty period.
In concrete terms, the author begins with a discussion of the
jiedushi titles by identifying the entities granted such governor-ships, then examining the administrative structure which the Song Dynasty imagined was being implemented by those entities in the territories they ruled. The author then turns to an investigation of provincial governors on Song China’s periphery, with reference to the related discussion that developed in the field of Vietnamese history since the 1970s. He finds that the entities granted
jiedusi by the Song Dynasty were “irredentas” from the Five Dynasties period, which the Song Dynasty could not actually reunify into the Chinese world, meaning that the Song period continued to be an era in the history of China characterized by territorial division among powerful entities, just like during the Five Dynasties period.
Next, the discussion is focussed on the conferment of aristocratic status on the
jiedusi in question while referring to recent research on the Chinese world order, in order to examine the question of how the Song Dynasty reconciled the actual decentralization of the real situation with its ideally conceived “World”. The author finds that the Song Dynasty adopted the world order imagined by the political regimes in central China during the Five Dynasties period as containing “irredentas” (viz. the
jiedushi lords) in an attempt to reconstruct its own ideal conception of “the World”.
Finally, the author points out that not only was this conceptual reconstruction of ideological importance to the Song Dynasty, but for the
jiedushi grantees themselves, as well, it was significant as a shared conception that helped secure their political and economic bases within their own territories.
The author concludes that 1) the Song Dynasty was a “semi-unified dynasty” in the sense that it was incapable of actually re-integrating the divisive, decentralized conditions existing since the beginning of the Five Dynasties period and 2) given such conditions, it became a “virtually unified dynasty” by incorporating such entities as Xixia, Daliguo (Yunnan) and Southeast Asia within the context of reconstructed ideals about the nature of “the World”.
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