Song China: Rule, Belief, Economy
Introduced| English | Meaning |
|---|---|
| imperial bureaucracy/ɪmˈpɪərɪəl bjʊəˈrɒkrəsi/ | imperial bureaucracy |
| Confucianism/kənˈfjuːʃɪənɪzəm/ | Confucianism |
| filial piety/ˈfɪlɪəl ˈpaɪəti/ | The duty of respect and care that children owe their parents. |
| Neo-Confucianism/ˈniːəʊ kənˈfjuːʃɪənɪzəm/ | A later revival of Confucian thought that absorbed Buddhist and Daoist ideas. |
| Buddhism/ˈbʊdɪzəm/ | The religion, founded in India, that spread across Asia along trade routes. |
| Champa rice/ˈtʃæmpə raɪs/ | A fast-ripening rice from Vietnam that raised harvests in Song China. |
| commercialisation/kəˌmɜːʃəlaɪˈzeɪʃn/ | commercialisation |
How do you govern a hundred million people?
- The Song Dynasty faced a problem every large state faces: officials far from the capital.
- Its answer was an imperial bureaucracy 官僚体系 staffed by exam-passing scholars, justified by Confucianism 儒家思想.
- The CED's phrase is traditional methods… to maintain and justify its rule — the system did both jobs at once.
The CED says the Song used Confucianism and its bureaucracy to...
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The system did both jobs at once — order, and the argument for it.
Continuity, innovation and diversity
- The CED describes 13th-century states across Afro-Eurasia and the Americas with three words: continuity, innovation, diversity.
- Song China supplies all three: an inherited Confucian tradition, a merit exam, and a distinctive scholar-official class.
- Those three words return in every state-building subtopic of this unit — they are the unit's frame.
Song China as one chain: agricultural gains pay for the bureaucracy that the examination staffs
Select all three words the CED uses for 13th-century states.
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They frame every state-building subtopic in this unit.
Chinese traditions travelled
- Chinese cultural traditions continued, and they influenced neighbouring regions — Korea, Vietnam and Heian Japan.
- Carried across: filial piety 孝道, Neo-Confucianism 新儒学, and Chinese literary and scholarly practice.
- Also travelling was Buddhism 佛教, which continued to shape Asian societies through branches including Theravada, Mahayana and Tibetan.
Build the Song engine
Champa rice, the canal and the examination are one chain, not three facts.
Select all the branches of Buddhism the CED names.
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Sufism is a strand of Islam, and belongs to subtopic 1.2.
Commercialised does not mean industrial or free-market. The CED says the Song economy became increasingly commercialised while continuing to depend on free peasant and artisanal labour — growth came from productivity and trade networks, not from a change in who did the work.
____ rice ripened fast enough to allow two harvests a year.
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Faster ripening supported a larger population, which supported more officials and artisans.
The economy grew because production grew
- The economy of Song China flourished as a result of increased productive capacity, expanding trade networks, and innovations in agriculture and manufacturing.
- Champa rice 占城稻 ripened fast enough for two harvests a year; the Grand Canal expansion moved the surplus; steel, iron, textiles and porcelain went out as exports.
- The result was commercialisation 商业化 — but the CED adds that the economy still depended on free peasant and artisanal labour.
Song commercialisation replaced peasant and artisanal labour.
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The CED says the economy continued to depend on free peasant and artisanal labour.
How the exam uses this
- Song China is the CED's worked example of a state that governs, believes and trades all at once.
- So an exam answer connects them: the exam system produced officials who valued agriculture, and the surplus paid for the bureaucracy.
- Naming a connection between two of the three earns more than describing all three separately.
Champa rice is the CED's neatest chain: a fast-ripening strain allows two harvests, two harvests support a larger population, a larger population supports more officials and more artisans — and the same surplus moves on an expanded Grand Canal to the cities that buy the porcelain.
Song China used Confucianism and an imperial bureaucracy to maintain and justify its rule. Chinese cultural traditions and Buddhism shaped neighbouring societies. The economy flourished through productive capacity, trade networks and innovation, becoming commercialised while still depending on free peasant and artisanal labour.
Write from two rice harvests
- Song farmers adopted a fast-ripening rice from Champa, in what is now Vietnam.
- The crop could be planted more than once in a year.
How did champa rice change food supply?
A faster rice crop raised the number of harvests.
What did champa rice change?
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Two harvests meant more grain.