Apprehending the realm: Territoriality and political power in Song China, 960--1276 CE

This project concerns political geography during imperial China's Song era. During the three hundred-some years of the Song regime, there were over a thousand occasions when counties or prefectures were created or abolished, or when counties were moved from the jurisdiction of one prefecture to another. These clustered in three periods of renovation, each associated with particular policy imperatives. The first period of territorial change was at the beginning of the dynasty. Politically, authority was held on a new footing, and administrative geography is one place that the new arrangement was revealed. Territories increased in number in the north and in the southwest, and were reduced drastically in the southeast. The second period of territorial change was approximately one century after the founding of the dynasty. Faced with military defeat, dreaming of frontier expansion, and managing fiscal crisis, reformers at court pushed for major changes in the organization of administrative geography. During two generations of reform, reaction, and counter-reaction, territories increased dramatically in number on the military and settlement frontiers of the northwest and southwest, and were slashed throughout the heartland of the empire. The third period of territorial change began with the invasion of the capital and the fall of the north, and continued as the regime was reconstituted in the south. During this generation of change, the number of territories remained stable, but they cycled in and out of existence rapidly, dictated by the movements of troops and refugees, and new territories were created throughout the tax-bearing hinterlands of the south. The production of maps, surveys, and documents describing the terrain and its attributes was a feature of each period of territorial change. This dissertation reveals that the manipulation of political territory was a way for the Song court, attempting to run a bureaucratic empire with limited resources and pre-modern communication, to govern its hinterland by balancing the need to extract tax revenue from all of its subjects with the desire to limit the costs of its field administration. It reveals, further, the mechanics by which the frontier was made into manageable civil space.