An Exploratory Study On The Military Geography Of Gao Family In JingNan State

During the period of Five Dynasty of China, the whole country was in a split state. There existed the Central Plains Regime, the North Minority and his client state regime, the Southern Separatist Regime. The particularly thorny national conflict and the desire of the Central Plains Regime to unite the mainland made this period seething with political unrest.This thesis mainly studies the military geography of Gao Family in JingNan state in the Five Dynasty and takes the unified warfare between the early Northern Song Dynasty and the southern states as an example. Gao Family in JingNan state located in the central and western part of Hubei province, and belonged to the Middle Reaches of Yangtze River. The natural features in this area such as the fluvial plains, hilly Areas and densely covered river-networks and so on were representative military topographies of Middle Reaches of Yangtze River. Profited from the superior geographical position, JingNan was always a member of WuDai-ShiGuo and was not being annexed even if it only had a narrow territory and was a place open to attack from all directions. The reason was that JingNan state had a well-developed transportation system which was the transport hub at the time of China, so it always existed as a buffer of war in Five Dynasty. With the strengthen of national unify trend, the function of JingNan as a buffer of war disappeared in the early Northern Song Dynasty, and at last it was annexed by the Northern Song Dynasty for its geographical environment, shipbuilding and waterborne troops power. The Northern Song Dynasty obtained an important channel and a logistical support base at once for waging wars towards the southern parts after merged the JingNan state. The whole Middle Reaches of Yangtze River was controlled by Northern Song Dynasty through controlling JingNan state and the Yangtze River defense system was also broken, this made a solid foundation for the victory of the unified warfare between the early Northern Song Dynasty and the southern states. Through studying the military geography of Gao Family in JingNan state in the Five Dynasty, we could know the strategic importance of the Middle Reaches of Yangtze River such as JingNan state in the warfare between the early Northern Song Dynasty and the southern states. We hope this can attract the attention of the academic circle to study on historical geography of the Middle Reaches of Yangtze River.