'Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern': The Spatial Organization of the Song State (960-1276 CE) (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series)
By
Ruth Mostern (Author)
Hardback
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States are inherently and fundamentally geographical. Sovereignty is based on control of territory. This book uses Song China to explain how a pre-industrial regime organized itself spatially in order to exercise authority. On more than a thousand occasions, the Song court founded, abolished, promoted, demoted, and reordered jurisdictions in an attempt to maximize the effectiveness of limited resources in a climate of shifting priorities, to placate competing constituencies, and to address military and economic crises. Spatial transformations in the Song field administration changed the geography of commerce, taxation, revenue accumulation, warfare, foreign relations, and social organization, and even determined the terms of debates about imperial power.
The chronology of tenth-century imperial consolidation, eleventh-century political reform, and twelfth-century localism traced in this book is a familiar one. But by detailing the relationship between the court and local administration, this book complicates the received paradigm of Song centralization and decentralization. Song frontier policies formed a coherent imperial approach to administering peripheral regions with inaccessible resources and limited infrastructure. And the well-known events of the Song-wars and reforms-were often responses to long-term spatial and demographic change. 8 halftones; 9 line art; 37 maps CPSIA choking or other US hazard warning - No California Proposition 65 hazard warning necessary
About the Author
Ruth Mostern is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced.
More Details
- Contributor: Ruth Mostern
- Imprint: Harvard University, Asia Center
- ISBN13: 9780674056022
- Number of Pages: 396
- Packaged Dimensions: 152x229mm
- Packaged Weight: 690
- Format: Hardback
- Publisher: Harvard University, Asia Center
- Release Date: 2011-06-01
- Series: Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series
- Binding: Hardback
- Biography: Ruth Mostern is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced.
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