A definitive new history of China’s influential Song dynasty and its pivotal role in East Asia and beyond, by one of its leading historians

Despite constant pressure from the powerful steppe empires on its borders, the Song dynasty lasted for more than three centuries, from 960 to 1279, becoming one of the longest-running and most consequential dynasties in Chinese history. In this sweeping history, Christian Lamouroux, one of the world’s leading authorities on the period, offers a masterful reinterpretation of the Song empire, focusing on its interactions with its neighbors and emphasizing its crucial role in the longer economic, social, and political history of China, East Asia, and the world.

Reevaluating a century of scholarship, including the most recent historical approaches, The Song Dynasty explains how the Song monarchy differed from earlier and later Chinese empires and describes the measures the Song adopted to resist the steppe empires. Among the most important of these were profound institutional changes that encouraged unprecedented urban growth and economic and financial development. Lamouroux also tells how the Song gave birth to a bureaucratic regime in which scholar-officials, promoted through civil-service examinations, held social and political sway—a system that dominated the governing of China until the early twentieth century. He places the successes and failures of this literary class within the context of their relations with other branches of Song government, especially its military, and describes how the literati’s reinterpretations of ancient Chinese culture continue to fuel scholarly debate even today.

Distilling a lifetime of research, The Song Dynasty offers a compelling new account of a transformative period in Chinese history whose legacy continues to be felt in China and beyond.