From Battlefields to Counties: War, Border, and State Power in Southern Song Huainan

Abstract

Beginning in 1128, troops from the state of Jin, who had recently toppled the Song capital at Kaifeng, invaded the circuits of Huainan in an attempt to eradicate the remnant state to the south. In the early 1130s, a Song counteroffensive was staged from the same region. Fighting was fierce in Huainan, and the effects of the battles were devastating. The two circuits of Huainan East and West (Huainan dong; Huainan xi), with a combined population of more than 1 million households in 1102, had only about 150,000 households in 1162. Even a century after the Jin invasion, the population had rebounded to only one-third of its prewar level. Huainan was a “real” battlefield in the twelfth century. By the time the Song and the Jin signed a peace treaty in 1142, Huainan, once some 500 miles from the nearest interstate border, had become a frontier province.