The Mongols

Origins & self-conception

(Munkh-Irdene 2011)
Ulus: community of the realm, a political entity
- The Mongol ulus was a population, yet administratively organized under the rule
of a khan within a given territory, a category of government or the state.
Irgen: community of language, custom and descent (an ethno-cultural identity)
- Identified through language, religions, customs and ways of life
- Appears as descent units of a kinship metaphor, that depicts the rulers as the
fathers/ancestors of the peoples they ruled, and their genealogy as that of their
subject populations. Designed to enhance political unity and authority.
Territorial dispensations & civil war
(Allsen 2001)
- How did it work?
- Dividing up of irgens & the paying of dividends (money, silk, etc.) to
respective princes, many of whom did not physically preside in the realm
they were given
- Dispensations calculated in households not land
- Divisions by Chingges, according to Juvayni:
- Jochids - the Rus principalities, the lower Volga, the Kazakh steppe and
North Caucasia (later the Golden Horde)
- Chaghadai - West Turkestan
- OgodeiCentral Mongolia
- Tolui received eastern Mongolia
- China and Iran (the Yuan and the Il-Khanate): originally apportioned by Chinggis
between his various bloodlines, to be ruled jointly, but later monopolized by the
Toluids
- Möngke to Hulegu and Kublai; descendents of the latter two established
legitimacy & authority by seeking support from the Qaghan/Khagan
 - The Toluid’s assertion of immediate control over the richest and most
populous parts of the empire made them the most powerful princely lines
and created new tension and enmity.
- Apportionment occurred in all other realms as well
- Khwarazm, Turkestan, Transcaucasia, Tibet, etc.
- This was a potential source of conflict; but was originally meant to act as
cohesive ‘glue’, a system respected due to its status as Chinggis’ patrimony
- Natanzi: ‘Chinggis Khan divided the empire and assigned each son several
possessions in the territory of the others so that in this way envoys would
continuously pass to-and-fro between them.’
- Territory as diplomatic tool in shifting alliances (civil war):
For example, it is very likely that the Yuan court made the large addition
of 6,000 households to the Jochid holdings in China in 1281 as a means of
inducing them to reconsider their alliance with the lines of Ogodei and
Chaghadai, who at the time were bent on deposing Kublai and to this end
were assailing Yuan forces in Mongolia and Uyghuristan.
Civil war (1259 onwards) & territorial disputes
‘Hulegu’s campaigns against the Ismailis and Abbasids were the last joint military ventures of the unified
Mongolian Empire. Thereafter, the Chinggisid princes increasingly turned their military energies inward
in a confrontation that lasted, with fits and starts, into the fourteenth century.’
- The Ilkhanate
- Hulegu, sent by Mönke to complete the Mongolian conquests in west
Asia, received military command over Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt,
Asia Minor and Transcaucasia.
- His main rivals were the Jochids, the rulers of the Golden Horde, who
pressed their rights in Khorasan and Georgia, hoping to extend their
influence throughout the Middle East. Hulegu drove the Jochid princes
and agents from the lands under his military control, and this termination
of Jochid rights in Iran and Transcaucasia had been viewed as a usurpation,
since the territories were supposed to be held and managed by the
Chinggisid family collectively. Toluid power was projected along the
 southern flank of the Golden Horde and the vast economic and cultural
riches of the Middle East monopolized rather than shared.
- Once Berke became Khan of the Golden Horde and Möngke passed from
the scene, open warfare broke out in the Caucasus. In 1262 Berke launched
a major assault which devastated northern Azerbaijan and in the next year
Hulegu countered with a campaign that reached the Terek in southern
Daghestan.
- Kublai (east)
- Hulegu’s brothers Kublai and Ariq contested the succession to the throne,
which resulted in a Toluid civil war in 1260-64. Hulegu and Kublai became
firm allies against their cousins and rivals elsewhere in the fragmented
empire and in consequence China and Iran were drawn into a new and
intimate relationship. (close relations Iran & China)
- Outcome: Kublai successfully claimed the Khaganate in 1264; the empire
had fragmented into four regional and independent khanates. The new
alignment saw the formation of one Jochid, one Chaghadaid, and two
Toluid polities; the Ilkhans, nearly surrounded by hostile states, made
every effort to maintain close ties with the court in China.
Trade
(Wing 2014)
Economic prosperity: state encouraged & protected trade; flow of resources
Tabriz as focal point: situated on the east-west caravan route made possible by the
Mongol imperial enterprise
- Marco Polo: ‘The city is so favorably situated that it is a market for merchandise
from India and Baghdad, from Mosul and Hormuz, and from many other places;
and many latin merchants come here to buy the merchandise imported from
foreign lands… It is a city where good profits are made by traveling merchants.’
- The Mongol authorities encouraged east-west routes (Mongolia and northern
China, central Asia, and Khurasan and Azerbaijan) and north-south routes (the
Qipchaq steppe, Volga, and northern Black Sea shores).
 - Merchants
- Partnership with court: their linguistic skills made them valuable to the
Mongols as both cultural mediators and sources of military intelligence.
- Protected routes & passports? Merchants given official sanction as the
representatives of the dynasty, subject to its protection and authority
- Elites
- Control over markets and commercial routes allowed resources and wealth
to flow into the khan’s court & the elite.
- How? The economic relationship of the merchants and the ruling
elite involved the merchants’ movement of resources along routes
controlled and protected by Mongol military power, and thus the
transfer of a portion of those sedentary, agrarian resources to the
control of the khan and the ruling elite.
- Foreign trade
- The consolidation of the Mongol conquests, particularly by the Jochids on
the steppe north of the Black Sea, helped to make trade links possible
between Italian and northern Black Sea markets.
- After the Mongols (before v. after)
- The end of Chinggisid rule after the middle 14th century in much of
Eurasia contributed to a decline in the activity of independent merchants
traveling to central Asia and China. Such a decline illustrates the
significance of active Mongol interest in encouraging foreign trade and
maintaining conditions for long-distance travelers, which fell away with
the collapse of a stable political order.
- It also negatively affected foreign trade - Italian merchants were expelled
from Tabriz, and Genoese trade along the southern route through Iran
came to a halt.
Examples of successful exchange between the Ilkhanate & China:
Agriculture (cross-regional transaction in agronomy knowledge)
- Structure of agricultural institution
 - Bolad founded & headed the Office of the Grand Supervisors of
Agriculture, an institution charged with the oversight of agriculture,
sericulture, and water resources in North China under the Yuan.
- When Bolad arrived in Iran he had a wealth of experience with Chinese
agriculture, and assuredly communicated some of his knowledge to Rashid
al-Din and Ghazan, the chief architects of extensive reforms in the Ilkhan
realm which had as their principal objective the revival of agriculture.
These measures included a rationalization of taxes, curtailment of the
depredations of the Mongolian-Turkic elite, a crackdown on bureaucratic
corruption, and measures to improve productivity.
- Agricultural manuals (Allsen 2004)
- One of the most prominent of the Persian manuals, ‘The Book of the
Monuments and Living Things’ by Rashid al-Din, data on Chinese
agriculture is so extensive and detailed that it confirms the suspicion that
Rashid al-Din had access to the vast Chinese literature on agronomy. It
includes discussions on fruit trees, cereal crops, vegetables, mulberries
and silkworms, contents that overlap with Chinese agricultural
compilations.
- Exchange of agricultural products (Allsen 2004)
- Rashid al-Din: ‘to all distant lands, such as the countries of India, China
and others, [Ghazan] sent envoys in order to obtain seeds of things which
are unique in that land.’
‘Varieties of fruit trees have been brought from every country and planted
in orchards and gardens there [Ta-tu, the new capital].’ This is confirmed
by Marco Polo, who notes also the fruit trees of many sorts growing in the
palace complex at Ta-tu.
- Chinese of the Ming dynasty believed that the watermelon, ‘western
melon’, was introduced under the Mongols. Though it was in fact during
the Five Dynasties period that watermelons were introduced and the Ming
commentators were inaccurate in their estimate of the chronology, their
 mistaken opinion is itself an important cultural fact. Many new items,
plants in particular as well as cotton, were demonstrated in the
pre-Mongolian era but only popularized under the Yuan, which
transformed social and cultural patterns in China, and this left Ming
scholars with the mistaken impression that this constituted the initial
introduction.
Failure example: introduction of paper currency (chao) in Tabriz, 1294
- Designed to centralize the Ilkhanid monetary system and bring in hard currency
under the control of the central administration, which had hitherto not
introduced a standardized coinage, but relied on irregular issue of money from
provincial mints.
- Disastrous consequences. Although people were forced to accept the chao under
penalty of death, commerce ground to a halt as private individuals refused to deal
in it. Word of the chao spread beyond the city, and caravans stopped arriving.
Theft and the incident of bandits rose. After two months, Sadr al-Din and
Gaykhatu Khan each issued decrees repealing the ban on metal currency, and
commerce resumed in Tabriz.
- The failure of the chao experiment demonstrated the limits of the power of the
ruling elite to meddle with the economic life of the city. The elite could
encourage trade through protection along routes, close relationships with
merchants, and investment in urban infrastructure, imposing an innovation as
drastic as paper money was beyond their power.
Art, culture & architecture
Complex imperial culture:
- Imperial agents (diplomats, merchants, administrators, artisans, soldiers, and
hostages) as prime movers.
- The culture conveyed through the empire was most frequently the culture of their
sedentary subjects. What the Mongols left behind was something different than
their own indigenous culture - unlike other empires they did not enforce their
 language or religion on their various subjects and were willing to adopt useful
elements from other civilizations.
- Demographic balance
- Nomadic practicality: the Mongols’ multicultural outlook deriving from
the steppe dwellers’ long familiarity with various languages and religions,
none of which were considered exclusive.
Example: China
- Illustrations of Chinese history in the Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh: artists in Tabriz looked to
Chinese models.
- In the section recounting the reigns of individual emperors, the artists
copied from Chinese woodblock-printed scrolls, but without
understanding all the implications of the original iconography.
- For example, on the page depicting the emperors Shi Huangdi of the Qin
dynasty and Gao Zu of the Han dynasty, the emperors are shown reclining,
but seem to float awkwardly in mid-air as the artist did not depict the
requisite pillows used in the originals.
- The Ilkhanid artists also did not understand all the implications of the
sartorial details. Emperor Shi Huangdi, for example, wears inappropriate
headgear, the soft cap with tails donned by servants rather than the
imperial mortarboard.
- Artists in Rashīd al-Dīn’s scriptorium similarly adapted illustrations in Chinese
geographies.
- The scene depicting the “Mountains between India and Tibet” resembles
the map of the Yinxian border in a copy of the Baoqing Simingzhi, a
gazetteer of the Siming region printed in 1272. Not only is the general
composition similar in both illustrations, but so is the way in which rivers
are represented by segmented patterns.
Religion
Religious diversity & toleration
(The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck)
During his visit to Mangu’s court, he observed that ‘some Christian element was to be
found’, and that the dwelling had ‘belonged to a Christian wife to whom [the khan] had
been very attached and who had borne him this daughter’. Yet when he attempted to
preach Christianity - even to convert the khan - he was rather brusquely dismissed,
partly due to his own almost complete lack of understanding of the Mongol court, partly
in line with the Mongols’ culture of seeing all religions as equal.
(Pfeiffer 2006)
Conversion to Islam among the Mongol elite in the Ilkhanate
There is no doubt that Hülegü never converted to Islam, and his son Abaqa, his
grandson Arghun, and even his great-grandson and later convert to Islam Ghazan Khan
were all Buddhists for part, if not all of their lives. The inscriptions on Ilkhanid coins are
a good example of the way in which the Mongol elite of the Ilkhanate appropriated the
existing, predominantly Muslim, discourse, and integrated it into their own worldview. Whereas
Abbasid gold dÊn§rs had borne the message ‘With God is the Command in the Past and
in the Future,’ the new message on the dinars minted under Hülegü immediately after
the conquest of Baghdad reads:
Say: “Oh God! Lord of Sovereignty! You give sovereignty to whom You please, and You
withdraw sovereignty from whom You please: You exalt whom You wish, and You abase
whom You wish.’
This inscription is likewise Quranic. While using the Arabic script and the religious
language prevalent in the area, the Quranic quotation expresses the message of divinely
sanctioned Mongol world domination. This is what ‘conversion to Islam’ most probably
meant in most cases: the selective appropriation of elements that were felt to be enriching,
with the possible exclusion of others that were not approved of from a Mongol point of
view or sanctioned by Mongol customs.
[See Allsen for more details]
Mobility & migration
[leave the ordinary ppl alone!!!]
(Biran 2019)
- Army mobilization:
 - As the Mongols spread across Eurasia, they appropriated the defeated and
submitted populations & organized them in decimal units that were
assigned to Mongol commanders and sent to fight across the continent.
Soldiers with special skills (such as catapult builders) were singled out and
allocated to later campaigns, while myriads of others were taken captive
during the battles.
- The advance of this formidable army in turn instigated a massive flight of people,
as refugees of all classes and professions tried to escape the Mongol campaigns.
- The empire transferred myriads of farmers and artisans to repopulate and revive
the areas formerly devastated by Mongol troops.
Terminology
Pax Mongolica
- Transmission of art & ideas
- Connectivity
- Religious tolerance
- Economic connections, trade & prosperity
- Mobility of people & resources
- Peace (questionable)
Historiography & historians
Primary:
Juvayni
- Persian historian who wrote in the 1260s
Natanzi
- Writing in the Temurid era
Marco Polo: traveler (bias? Loyalties involved? Identity as Italian?)
Rashid al-Din
Tidbits according to The Secret History…
- Chinggis Khan regularly shared out defeated peoples and prisoners of war among
his family and chief officers.
Secondary:
Noticeable opinions concerning origins?
Other
Significance of coinage:
- Projection of authority or loyalty to the Qaghan, religious connotations
- Quranic design (square shape, etc.)
- Arabic & religious language
- Qaghan v. Ilkhan: declaration of loyalty & means of legitimization

Song Dynasty
Timeline
- Before Song
- Territorial fracturing - aftermath of the fall of Tang
- Five Dynasties Ten Kingdoms period
- Founding 960
- New Policies 1069-1076, Wang Anshi (see also: fractionalization)
- North to South, 1127
- Fin. 1271; the start of Yuan
Economy
The dynasty is often considered an era of remarkable economic growth. (P.J. Smith 2004)
- From its early stages, expansion into south China stimulated surpluses in food
production and advances in rice agriculture, which broke the cycle of agrarian
self-sufficiency and allowed producers to specialize in market-oriented crops and
handicrafts.
- As landowners and peasants throughout China were drawn into the production
and trade of daily necessities as well as luxury goods for the rich, trading
networks expanded beyond regulated urban centers of distribution and
consumption into rural markets and intermediate towns. (Policies behind this?)
New Policies
 - Only success: the tea-and-horse trade (see: foreign conflict)
- Failures
- While the activist economic policies of Wang and his successors generated
huge cash reserves for the state, the redistributive rationale (state activism)
that animated the reform economic measures was quickly subverted by the
court’s inexhaustible hunger for revenues to be stockpiled in preparation
for its irredentist wars.
- The New Policies fiscal reforms were transformed from a collective effort
to liberate the productive resources of peasants, small merchants,
middling landowners, and consumers into an interlinked set of new taxes
and fees, all collected by agents of the state energized by an
action-oriented incentive system that rewarded the most draconian
fulfillment of their tasks. Wang Anshi’s experiment in economic activism
degenerated into confiscatory taxation, creating a legacy of levies and
extractive mechanisms that turned the late-Northern and Southern Song
states into economic predators.
Military
Technological advancement (What were the policies behind this?)
- Development of permanently stationed navy
- Incendiary devices, gunpowder-powered projectiles
Military impotence (& resilience?)
(see also: external conflict)
- For the sake of centralization, the Song court had systematically excluded men of
military specialty and experience from strategic decision making, replaced regular
troops and effective generals with local militia, and transferred military authority
or even field command from generals to top-ranking civilian officials. Although
the general staff was not dismantled, it was transformed into a bureaucratized
and subordinate appendage of the civilian-dominated state. (P.J. Smith 2004) (see:
bureaucracy)
 - It was also an expansion of the scope of government activity to
accommodate surplus of available personnel (see: examination system)
- Even with advances in technology, the Song were unable to effectively deploy
them due to:
- Arbitrary governance. It undermined the court’s ability to reach
broad-based, well-considered decisions about issues of war and peace and
paralyzed the Song policy-making apparatus at the very moment that the
dynasty confronted its greatest threat. Resulting in:
- Increasingly timid and indecisive frontier policy from 1200 onwards.
- As Peterson shows (how?? pp.301-2), the court was too fearful of
provoking even a deteriorating Jin regime into war to give support
to anti-Jurchen rebels in Shandong or even to undertake military
preparations of its own. From 1217 to 1224 Song forces fared well
against a series of attacks launched by Jurchen armies made
desperate by Mongol assaults further north; but the court’s
ambivalence towards the Shandong rebels eventually pushed the
most powerful of them into the hands of the Mongols in 1226, quite
possibly depriving the Song of “a golden opportunity to strengthen its
position in the northeast and even to lay the basis for the occupation of
parts of [Henan, Jiangsu, and Shandong]”. (P.J. Smith 2004, pp.301-2)
- Failure of the New Policies to strengthen weakened military & national defense
(for war details see: foreign conflict)
- How?
- Navy. The southern Song government created a powerful navy and strengthened
its fortified city walls; largely due to these new systems of defense, the Song
dynasty survived for a century and a half beyond the fall of North China. Yet
again, advantage is offset by military impotence, since without cavalry horses
(see: tea-horse trade, foreign conflict) the declining dynasty had no chance of
projecting power beyond what could only be passive defense, and hence had no
means to recreate a new environment in developing bureaucratic power and
 marketing capacity. (P.J. Smith 1991?? Should’ve done proper referencing bc now
this is coming back & biting me in the ass)
- How was it used?
- Does this imply that after the fall of the North the fall of the dynasty was
inevitable?
- Keep in mind that eventually it was the navy that made the last (major)
stand & was defeated by the Mongols
Royal authority
Centralization of power
- Emperor; bureaucracy (literati);
The Song emperors (esp. Taizu) were eager to recentralize power from the military
governors whose autonomy and authority had precipitated the collapse of the Tang, to
the apparatus of a bureaucratic state, at the center of which lay the supremacy of the emperor.
- Taizu peacefully demobilized his general staff, severing personalized links
between commanders and their troops that made the ‘praetorian coups’ - which
were so common in the post-Tang era that Taizu himself was brought to power
by one of them - possible.
- Neutralizing the power-brokering role of great generals: The military was
subordinated to bureaucratic control under the unchallenged authority of the
emperor, while the military governors as a ruling elite were dismantled alongside
their territorial jurisdictions, and replaced by civilian officials chosen from an
expanded imperial examination system, also directly under the authority of the
capital.
- A new class of litero-centric political elites (see: literati) & royal authority
Taizu adapted Tang and Five Dynasties precedents to recreate a network of
county, prefectural and circuit officials that implanted imperial authority
throughout the empire through a growing bureaucratic apparatus increasingly
staffed by graduates of an expanded examination system.
 The literati possessed little of the independent wealth or hereditary official status
of their Tang aristocratic predecessors, thus posing less of a challenge to the
absolutist inclinations of the Song emperors. (P.J. Smith 2004)
Literati & bureaucracy
The Shanyuan settlement coincided with the transition from battle-hardened dynastic
founders to court-nurtured successors, precipitating a shift in political power from an
absolutist throne to an increasingly complex and self-confident bureaucracy. (Weerdt
2020)
Imperial examination system
- Opportunity for greater social mobility; path to serve the state
- Generated excess personnel to fill a limited number of positions. Thus producing:
Semi-autonomous class of landed elites (independent from bureaucracy)
The increasing ratio of degree-holders to government positions made entry into the
civil service progressively remote and turned the examination system into as much a
mechanism for acquiring status and connections as a ladder to official success. Thus
although official position probably remained the quickest route to power and fortune
throughout the late-imperial era, for any given lineage the downward slide out of the
civil service was far more predictable than entry into it.
Under the circumstances, elite mobility strategies gradually clustered around the control
of land, commerce, and credit, supplemented by the widespread pursuit of the social and cultural
rather than the official rewards of education. As elites came to focus on mobility strategies
that were independent of the state, the autonomous state of the eleventh century gave
way to the autonomous elite of the late-imperial era… The growing localism and
independence from government service of the gentry as a class fostered a preference for
minimalist, non-interventionist, provisioning economic policies on the part of
individual gentrymen when they did serve as members of the government. (P.J. Smith
2004)
Bureaucracy organization
- (P.J. Smith 2004, pp.292-3) In the decades that followed the Shanyuan settlement
the shidafu bureaucratic elite was still relatively small and cohesive and the
 still-evolving bureaucratic apparatus relatively robust. As a result, the arbitrary
exercise of state power was restrained by the constitutional division of authority
over civil affairs under the Secretariat-Chancellery, military matters under the
Bureau of Military Affairs, and economic administration under the Finance
Commission, while an institutionally embedded system of checks and balances
prevented a single chief councilor from dominating the Council of State and
subjected all the state councilors to independent oversight by a fully-developed
system of policy critics and censors.
- At the same time, governance was characterized by a relatively conciliar
approach to decision-making, exemplified most graphically by the reliance on
broadly staffed interagency ad hoc committees to advise the emperor on
important policy issues.
Loyalism
- Major reinforcement of emperor’s central authority
- (Weerdt 2020, pp.423-4) Loyalty was commemorated as a form of filial piety and
masculine virtue, an ideology that was deeply ingrained even before the Song; in
the Song court, men who had proven their loyalty were conferred honorary
names, given burials equivalent to that accorded to those of the highest ranking
in the court, and transcribed into narratives of Song dynastic history. (example?)
- (Weerdt 2020, pp.419-20) The emergence of two major powers (Liao and Song) in
the late tenth century resulted in a hardening of attitudes against those who
valued personal loyalties over loyalty to one court or one emperor. This new
model of loyalty was justified not only in philosophical discourse but also in
critical histories of tenth-century courts and biographies of political and military
elites. We could interpret the painter Hu Quan’s assertion that suicide was
preferable to the acceptance of Jurchen demands as an example of the impact of
the eleventh-century redefinition of loyalty. His letters, however, suggest that
loyalty was determined by other overarching values. Loyalty was due to an
emperor and a court that defended Song sovereignty over the realm and all its
territories. (see also: irredentist ambitions) The Song emperor therefore had to
 insist at all cost on governing ‘the realm’ (tianxia) rather than ‘the area south of
the Yangzi River’. An emperor’s failure to do so required that officials and
commoners alike demonstrated loyal protest even to the point of self-sacrifice.
Constitution & checks on power
“Ancestors’ Instructions” (Deng & Lamouroux 2005)
A set of principles entailing behavioral norms, teachings of ancestors and principles of
governing that the emperors could not ignore - seen as filial patrimony
- Shared values, not departed from:
In 976, Taizong declared, ‘the previous emperor launched an enterprise for
almost twenty years: he took preventive measures for every wrongdoing. Once
the basic principles and codes were fixed, every being was put on a firm basis. We
must make efforts to respect this legacy without any transgression.’
This willingness to strictly and fully apply the previous regulations was likewise
present in the texts of many literati, who frequently lamented the lack of family
rules, who explained that ‘to serve one’s sovereign with loyalty is to serve one’s
parents with filial piety’.
- The emperor was charged with respecting this dynastic patrimony, and
conversely, the legitimacy and power of the Song bureaucracy was grounded in
its ability to hold the emperor accountable. Reference to the ‘Ancestors’
Instructions’ appeared when the sovereign and his ministers perceived abuses
they wished to eradicate. In search of some general principles of good governance,
they considered the ‘Ancestors’ Instructions’ to be a means for resolving
problems within the court and the administration.
Examples:
- Renzong once criticized the premier, Li Di, for his appointment of
censors: ‘The Ancestors’ Instructions cannot be violated. If the premier
could himself appoint censors, no one would dare to speak of his faults.’
- After the military’s defeat in Shaanxi by Tangut Xi Xia, the emperor
Shenzong ordered the execution of the responsible officer. But the premier
and his colleagues refused to obey, giving as their reason that ‘since
 ancestral times, there has not yet been a punishment like the execution of
a literati-official. Let us not begin with Your Majesty.’ - keep in mind this
might not have functioned in all cases
- Me (ha): Royal prerogative and the bureaucracy worked in tandem to create a
centralized state that excluded the threat of autonomous military leaders, and
promoted a literary elite who were able to balance the emperor’s decisions with
ancestral principles, and whose cohesion and allegiance were guaranteed by
loyalism.
Division of the realm (R. Mostern 2011)
- According to the nineteenth century political reformer Kang Youwei (bias?
Involvement in Qing politics?) the Song bureaucracy had been one of the most
effective in China’s history because ‘prefectures were small’: the Song organized
the realm into ‘discrete, contiguous and observable jurisdictions that formed the
basis for governance’, rearranging administration, revenue collection, census
taking and war according to the organization of territories deemed most
appropriate and politically viable.
“Tacit complicity” of localities (see too: centralization of authority): (S. Chen 2017)
The interests of court officials and local informants often coincided and thus enabled
them to cooperate in court procedures.
- Give examples?? Specific locality?
Fractionalization
- Irredentist ambitions leading to state activism, leading to the New Policies
- New Policies (Xin fa), advocated & proposed by Wang Anshi and staunchly
supported by Shenzong (because of its promise to secure resources to sustain the
emperor’s territorial revanchist aims & irredentist adventurism)
- What were they?
- (P.J. Smith 2004) The New Policies advocated by Wang Anshi
represented the epitome of state activism in the imperial era, and
dominated the political agenda for the last half-century of the
Northern Song. Under the banner of enriching the state without
 emisserating the people, Wang recruited young, ambitious
‘bureaucratic entrepreneurs’ to staff a bevy of new, reform-specific
agencies.
- How exactly did this work? How are policies which primarily focus on
peasant labor and urban markets mean to achieve these military aims?
- How successful was it? - factionalization of the court
Inherent flaws in the bureaucracy (Weerdt 2020)
- The bureaucracy was staffed by men from different parts of the empire, with
potentially conflicting political views, interests and affiliations; it drew on a pool
of examination graduates that grew faster than the number of available posts,
even as entry into government became the most prized avenue of social mobility.
Irreconcilable policy differences and intense competition for office would
eventually fracture the solidarity of the bureaucratic elite under the weight of
factionalism and the concentration of power in increasingly hegemonic
ministerial regimes.
How it happened (P.J. Smith 2004)
- Dissent against the New Policies remained silenced for the duration of Shenzong’s
reign. After the enthronement of Zhezong, despite the transfer of power to
prudent, conservative men, political culture had been too thoroughly transformed
by the heated partisanship of Shenzong’s reign for a return to the relative
collegiality of the post-Shanyuan decades.
- The subsequent period was one of fluctuation and bitterly hostile factional
infighting. While Wang Anshi’s political enemies moved to reverse his policies,
they emulated Wang’s techniques of capturing the Council of State and monopolizing
the censorate and remonstrance offices. On the other hand, the Yuanyou partisans
(so named for the Restoration reign period from 1086 to 1094) suppressed
opponents with a sweeping counter-purge of New Policies adherents, only to be
ousted from office in 1094 when Zhezong brought back his father’s reform
measures and proponents.
- Partisanship/Factionalism & irredentist ambition
 - Undermining constitution; arbitrary exercise of state power - loss of power of the
bureaucracy
From this point on, Northern Song political culture was engulfed in a virulent
factionalism that reached its peak around 1102, when Zhezong’s brother and
successor Huizong authorized his chief councilor Cai Jing (1047-1126) to
proscribe all members of the “Yuanyou party” and extirpate their political and
literary legacies. As Huizong asserted in 1108, it was Cai Jing’s suppression of
policy opponents that enabled the emperor to fulfill his father’s goal of annexing
the Tibetan domains centered on Qingtang, intended to be the first step in
Shenzong’s irredentist war with the Tanguts: ‘If he had not banished the doubting
multitudes then how could we have fully realized our forebear’s ambition to spread our
majesty among the caitiffs beyond the borders?’ Through the reigns of Shenzong and
his sons, then, irredentist ambition and imperial support for the chief councilors
and statist policies that could help bring that ambition to pass had irreversibly
undermined the constitutional division of authority that checked the arbitrary
exercise of state power (see: early bureaucracy). The Song political system from
the New Policies through the very end of the Southern Song saw a growing
consolidation of executive authority in the inner court comprised above all of the
sovereign and his long-reigning chief councilors.
- Thus from the New Policies onwards, purges, suppressions and
irreconcilable policy differences fractured the solidarity of the
bureaucratic elite, eventually driving a wedge between the inner court and
the ministerial political apparatus that commanded the bureaucracy as a
whole.
- (But didn’t this bureaucracy still have a common education and a
sense of shared purpose/loyalty to hold them together?)
- Monarchical autocracy gave way once more to ministerial domination
when Xiaozong’s abdication in 1189 deprived the Southern Song of its last
effective sovereign. Yet the onset of a protracted era of weak emperors did
nothing to reconstitute the relatively conciliar, professionalized
 governance that had evolved under the passive rule of the post-Shanyuan
rulers. Instead, the vacuum created by imperial withdrawal was quickly
filled by palace favorites and powerful chief councilors, who either
muzzled their civil service critics through heavy-handed purges or
neutralized tem through more cunning tactics of manipulation and
cooptation.
External conflict
The Song Empire faced the rise of great steppe polities including the Khitan Liao,
Tangut Xi Xia, the Jurchen Jin, and later the Mongol Empire, whose militarization and
rapid evolution of statecraft required far greater economic resources than pastoral
society could provide, stimulating the demand for invasions of wealthier sedentary
regions, such as China, to secure predictable supplies of external resources.
- Early shift from military expansion to diplomacy
- Why? In 979 Taizong launched an invasion of Northern Han that Liao
forces were unable to repel, bringing the break-away Shansi region back
under centralized control for the first time since 951. But this was as far as
the Song could get towards restoring control over north China. For the
entire duration of the northern dynasty the Song were unable to recover
the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, a region that was previously a
crucial natural barricade against peoples further north and without it the
Song dynasty was exposed and vulnerable to attack.
- Great humiliation for contemporaries, but a mark of flexibility & resilience
- (Weerdt 2020) The Song signed the Shanyuan Treaty in 1005, in which it
agreed to make annual payments (200,000 bolts of silk and 100,000 taels of
silver) to the Khitan and disavow any claim to the Sixteen Prefectures of
the Yanyun region. This suggests a recognition by the Song court that the
territorial and financial costs of a diplomatic parity and a purchased peace
were far less burdensome than the costs of mobilizing the country for a
protracted irredentist war that exposed the empire’s military shortcomings
 and seemed increasingly unlikely to be successful. The result was a period
of peace and political stability that lasted half a century.
- For successive generations the post-Shanyuan decades became a point of
reference: they tried to recapture the peace and equilibrium. This meant:
- carving out a safe haven for the regime in the rebellious south
- suppressing demands for a reconquest of the north, instead opting
to secure peace through rapprochement with the Jurchen Jin.
- Military impotence
- Diplomacy inconsistent
- Ineffective strategic planning
Example: Song reluctance to extend appropriate diplomatic recognition to the new Xia
emperor instigated a four-year war (1038-1042) that highlighted Song deficiencies in
strategic planning, tactical execution, and troop battle-fitness, forcing the court to sign
a treaty in 1044 that brought the same kind of indemnified peace with which it placated
the Liao.
- Song’s irredentist ambitions & revanchist territorial concerns
- Why? Especially when it’s so draining & impractical, an expensive
distraction from the formulation of other policies?
- see: loyalism
- Status in wider geographical sphere: The rapid evolution of Inner Asian
statecraft in the tenth to thirteenth centuries allowed states on the
northern frontier to support formidable armies that offset agrarian China’s
advantages in wealth and numbers, thereby blocking Song from assuming
a position of supremacy at the center of a China-dominated world order
and relegating it to a position of equal participant in a multi-state East
Asian system. (P.J. Smith 1991)
- A series of inconclusive confrontations & decisive defeats
- (see also: military, failure of New Policies) Wang Zengyu argues that
almost all campaigns in the 1080s and the first two decades of the 1100s
were either outright disasters or time-consuming, costly stalemates,
 without ever unseating the Tanguts from their commanding position in
the Ordos, or regaining the vital Yanyun prefectures that were
geographically significant in the defense against the north.
- (P.J. Smith 1991) The only exception (the only strategic & military success of
the New Policies), Wang Shao’s preemptive invasion of the three
easternmost prefectures of Xihe (when was this?), were critical in opening
supply lines to the major Qinghai pastures and enabling the Tea and
Horse Agency to wield its bureaucratic authority to supply Song armies
with horses to fight northern cavalries.
The tea and horse trade testifies to the Song’s adaptability and resilience as well as its
inability to fully utilize the advantage - the Song generals and their large, ineffective
armies failed to capitalize on the first reliable supply of horses to stabilize the frontier,
eventually dooming the trade. Once the Jin conquered North China in 1126 and severed
the dynasty’s access to the last good Asian pastures, the cavalry lost their supply of
horses.
Historical records of the Song
[How do we know about them?]
Communication; shared intellectual ideas among the elite; common literate culture

Crusades
What the hell are they
A manifestation of the Christian Holy War, fought against ‘infidels’ in the Levant, in
Spain and in the Baltic region, and against heretics, schismatics and Christian lay
opponents of the Church, as a defensive measure or for the recovery of property and
land.
- Chronology
- First Crusade - against Muslim control of Jerusalem (later crusaders draw
on the ‘successes’ of the First Crusade to help them define their own
purpose and roles)
- Second Crusade - the loss of Edessa and the vulnerability of Antioch
provoked the preaching and sending of the Second Crusade in 1147-8
under the command of Conrad III, the German emperor, and Louis VII,
the French king. This Crusade was a fiasco. It made for Damascus and
conducted an unsuccessful siege of the city. The Crusade then fizzled out,
without recapturing Edessa or stemming the mounting power of Nur
al-Din.
- Third Crusade - the defeat at Hattin and the fall of Jerusalem (Saladin,
1187) triggered a new Crusading enterprise: the three most powerful
monarchs of western Europe, Frederick Barbarossa of the HRE, Phillip of
France and Richard the Lionheart, embarked on the Third Crusade. It
ended with a truce in 1192; it was agreed that the Franks should hold most
of the coastal strip whilst Jerusalem remained in Muslim hands.
- Fourth Crusade - after Saladin’s death, from 1193 onwards, the Crusaders
focused much more attention on attacking Egypt, believing that it held the
key to reconquering Jerusalem (called for by Pope Innocent III). Egypt was
the ostensible target of the Fourth Crusade in 1202. However, this
notorious Crusade did not fight Muslims but instead ended with the
conquest of Constantinople (1204) and the establishment of the Latin
empire of Constantinople.
- Why? The leaders of the crusade commissioned the Venetians to build a
fleet to transport 30,000 fighting men to the Levant, but could only recruit
a third of that anticipated number, which meant they did not need (and
did not have) the financial resources to pay for the ships Venice had built.
Venice faced financial ruin. However, a Byzantine prince, Alexios, the son
of the deposed Emperor Isaac II Angelos, offered to finance the entire
expedition to the Holy Land and contribute no less than 10,000 Byzantine
 troops to the crusade, provided the fighting men first deposed the
usurper, who had murdered his father and seized the Imperial throne.
At this point, many of the crusaders refused to take part in the attack on
Constantinople. (Among those who refused was Simon de Montfort, later
famous for his crusade against the Albigensians in Southern France.)
Furthermore, Pope Innocent III vehemently condemned the diversion of the
crusading force to an attack on the Christian city of Constantinople. This
means that the attack on Constantinople no-longer had papal sanction
and was, therefore, not a legitimate crusade at all.
Initially the French/Venetian forces that took Constantinople in 1203 did
not sack or damage the city. Instead, they put Prince Alexios back on the
throne of the Eastern Empire, and remained encamped outside, waiting
for him to fulfill his promises to them for payment and troops. Instead,
Alexios was murdered, anti-Latin forces came to power and the crusaders
realized they were not going to get paid (oho, clowns). The new Greek
emperor appeared to be preparing to attack them, and they had no funds
to pay their own troops any more, so they initiated their own attack.
- Popes (urgh)
Why
Justification & rhetoric
Meritorious war
Traditional theory of just war
1. NOT synonymous with Holy War
- For Just War theorists force of arms is intrinsically evil, for Holy War
apologists violence is morally neutral and draws moral coloring from the
intentions of the perpetrators
- “Injuries to be avenged” (in just war theory) could include any violation of
righteousness, God’s laws or Christian doctrine.
- As late as the thirteenth century Hostiensis seems to have believed that
Christendom had an intrinsic right to extend its sovereignty over all those who
did not recognize the rule of the Roman Church or the Roman Empire.
2. NOT inherently a war of conversion
 - Although there remained an undercurrent of the belief in the missionary
crusade, Pope Innocent IV authoritatively restated the conventional views
in the middle of the thirteenth century. He asserted that infidels had rights
in natural law and that a war of conversion was illegitimate; but he also
argued that the Holy Land was rightfully Christian property.
3. What is a just war?
- Must have a just cause: a past or present aggression or injurious action by
another.
- Must have the right intention: participants must have pure motives and
war must be the only apparently practicable means of achieving the
justifiable purpose for which it was to be fought.
- Must be proclaimed by legitimate authority.
*Traditional narrative still a major part of the new narrative:
1. Holy land
It must be defensive, fought to avenge injuries inflicted by others including violation of
God’s laws or Christian doctrine. It is in this case that the Fifth Commandment (divine
prohibition against homicide) can be set aside.
Pope Urban II preaching the First Crusade: called for a war of “liberation”
- Liberation of people, the baptized members of the eastern churches, especially
the church of Jerusalem, from Muslim domination and tyranny
- Liberation of place, the city of Jerusalem consecrated by Christ’s blood and the
focus of God’s interventions in this world
Examples.
*Rumors of the sixth Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim, persecuting the Christians within his
realm and destroying the Church of the holy Sepulchre, contributed to the growing
desire in Christian Europe to launch the First Crusade and rescue what were perceived
as the endangered holy places of Christendom.
*Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243-54) argued that the Holy Land was rightfully Christian
property, thus justifying the idea that the expeditions to the East were merely
recovering territory that rightfully belonged to Christians.
 2. Within Europe
Heretics, infidels, pagans (difference?)
- The pope could proclaim a crusade against a pagan ruler, not because he was
pagan but because he posed a threat to Christians or had sinned by, for instance,
refusing to allow Christian missionaries to operate in his territories.
Examples.
*The premise for the reconquest of Spain, for instance, was that it had once been
Christian land but great parts were ‘subjected to infidels’. (why? Hasn’t this been the
case for centuries? What changed?)
*Surviving evidence for the Albigensian Crusade (aka the Cathar crusade) suggests that
the vow was made to war against the heretics and enemies of faith in Languedoc.
What was new about the crusades?
Newness (example): writing in 1108, Guibert of Nogent, a learned monk, approvingly
called the crusade ‘a new means of attaining salvation’
New links were being made, starting in the late eleventh century:
- 1. meritorious war to the needs of a universal Christendom, to the Church or to
Christ himself, rather than to those of a particular nation or region. (It was not
the property of the Byzantine Empire or of the Kingdom of Jerusalem that was
liberated or defended by the crusades to the East, but territory belonging by right
to Christendomm or to Christ.) - overarching narrative, common cause
- Underlying philosophy: (quite literally “Kingdom of Heaven”)
Christendom was not merely a society of Christians but a universal state,
the Christian Republic, transcendental in that it existed at the same time
in heaven and on earth. The leaders of the First Crusade could write of the
spreading of “the kingdom of Christ and the Church”.
- Later notion (esp. Innocent III & IV, though not necessarily everyone that
participated; earlier notion likely rather undefined) that Christendom was
a universal and the crusade was its army
- 2. between the convention of just war and the penitential devotion of pilgrimage
(Blake 1970 ‘The Formation of the Crusade Idea’)
The theory of just war and the military campaign against infidels, when fused to the
‘most charismatic of all traditional penances’, pilgrimage to Jerusalem, produced an idea
of fighting for the remission of sins which was likely unprecedented in the early 1080s.
This produced a distinctive form of meritorious violence, moving towards an articulate
conception of the ‘crusade’ as penitential warfare, with the objective of delivering
Christians in the empire of Constantinople from the ‘infidel’ and to restore the Church
to unity.
- When Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade, the dangers of war were
said to give added value to the penitential merit gained by a pilgrim, and
that crusading, the superlative, most dangerous form of pilgrimage,
merited a full remission of sin.
- Terminology used:
Contemporaries began using in relation to the military campaign of the crusade phrases
that had previously applied only to monks - the knighthood of Christ, the way of the
cross, a journey to the heavenly Jerusalem, spiritual warfare - while in monastic
commentaries, the association between penance and war was given coherence and
intellectual validity. (Riley-Smith 1977)
*How closely did it resemble pilgrimage?
- There was a very close relationship between the vows of crusaders and pilgrims.
Canon lawyers made little differentiation between them and it was only around
the year 1200 that they mentioned the crusaders’ vows independently.
- The obligation of a crusader was to make what was regarded as a kind of
pilgrimage and many of his privileges had previously been enjoyed by
pilgrims; the rites with taking the cross were associated with those for
making pilgrimages.
*Why was it so attractive to contemporaries?
- Glory
- Faith: the holy land specifically occupied an exalted position in the medieval
imagination - Holy Sepulchre, etc. (see below: economic circumstances)
- Remission of sin, means to salvation
 - Death, they were told in sermons, tracts and chronicles, was martyrdom.
The prospect of immediate entry into paradise was constantly held before
them by propagandists like St Bernard.
[Thus creating a new identity: the warrior pilgrim]
- The new rhetoric created a distinctive morale, a group experience and identity, centered on the
theme of penance, piety and deliverance of Holy Places that came to be unique to the warrior
pilgrim.
- New status & prestige for a warrior aristocracy as well

*Comparison: military orders (Riley-Smith 1977)

- All orders “are united in defense of the Church against infidels”.
- But however closely the Orders’ aims were in accord with those of crusades, the
brothers were not crusaders.
- Some, like the Templars, took vows which, at least in the actions to be
performed (the reconquest of Jerusalem and the defense of the Holy Land)
had similarities to those of crusaders, but others did not.
- The promises made by a brother of the Hospital of St John - to be obedient
and chaste, to live in poverty as a serf and slave of the sick - made no
reference to the defense of Christendom. Even when a military order did
impose a vow upon its members to defend Christendom, the form the
promise took made it fundamentally different from that of a crusader.
- A brother of a military order was permanently committed to his duty; he
was not a pilgrim, whose condition was essentially temporary, and so the
concept of pilgrimage did not enter into his vow at all.
Social & economic circumstance
Pope Urban II
- In the 1090s the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus called for aid against the
Seljuks
- Opportunity to heal the schism between the eastern & western churches (reunite
Latin & Greek churches)
- Consolidate his own authority: the period from the middle of the twelfth century
to the middle of the thirteenth saw developments in papal authority supported by
 a gradually evolving theory of papal monarchy. From the late eleventh century
onwards the papacy began to assert itself as an independent power by excluding
secular influence and enforcing ecclesiastical authority. It claimed jurisdiction in
both spiritual and temporal affairs. The communication between the papacy and the
secular rulers from the north-eastern periphery of Latin Christendom which
influenced the formation of papal policy on the Baltic campaigns was part of this
development of firmer ties between Rome and the Christian princes.
Overpopulation
- In the absence of a strong central power able to tap the wealth of a whole realm
effectively and hand out patronage, or to wage effective and distant war,
aristocratic families relied more and more on their estates. To preserve family
lands, inheritance practices became increasingly exclusive, so that there was a
marked trend in France and England towards primogeniture by which the lands
of the father were vested only in the eldest son. This meant that the children of
the elite unable to count on an inheritance had to leave home to seek their
fortune.
- In addition, the elite of the ‘Catholic core’, which was highly militarized,
generated numerous young crusaders susceptible to the emerging crusade
message.
- In an age when state authority was weak, those who had wealth or who
guarded it for others had to be soldiers. They lived in fortified houses,
castles, in and around which they developed a common style of war based
on the heavily armed and armored soldier who could fight effectively on
horseback or on foot. They enjoyed tales of noble warriors narrated in epic
vernacular poetry. The elite of the “Catholic core” thus produced
numerous young swords for hire, some of whom made spectacular careers
in distant lands. (J. France 2005)
- + example of famous young sons who embarked on a crusade?
Intense competitiveness - Catholic core power struggles
It is an apparent paradox that this divided “Catholic core” was expansive, yet the source
of this expansionism was its very violent and competitive nature. The competing
dynasties made victims of the weak, and along the frontiers of the “Catholic core” were
neighbors at once troublesome and vulnerable.
- In North Germany the dukes of Saxony led raids against their pagan and recently
Christianized neighbors and in time frontier zones, marches or Marks, arose,
whose very purpose was expansion.
- In Norman England the lords of the Welsh march expanded into Wales.
Such violent and unstable places attracted adventurers for whom the conditions offered
opportunities, and these could be replicated elsewhere. Other forces in turn lent their
strength to the outward drive - merchants seeking profit, kings attempting to solidify
their grasp on power.
Economic & security benefits - Baltic crusades
The proselytizing and crusading endeavor was perceived by merchants in terms of
increased profit and security.
- ​The crusaders had to be equipped, supplied and transported; crusading privileges
also appealed to many merchants, sailors and other townsmen
- Security motives also underlay the merchants’ investment of labor and money in
the east Baltic region. With the establishment of Riga, the merchants secured a
base of operations from which important Russian trade could be conducted
without the interference of the Scandinavians and thus a staple market of their
own. For the early Hanseatic merchant, independence from foreign markets and
security in pursuing trade were the ultimate profits of supporting the crusading
effort.
Comparison: crusades to the Holy Land (Riley-Smith 1977)
- One should not confuse the motives of colonists to Palestine and Syria, who
emigrated after the region had been conquered, with those of crusaders, most of
whom returned home once an expedition was over.
 - There may also have been a difference between the motivation of the poor, who
had nothing to lose (& perhaps nothing to gain either, in monetary terms) and
about whom very little is known, and that of burgesses, knights and nobles.
It is clear that the last thing most sensible crusaders would have expected was material
gain. The costs of war to individuals planning to join the First Crusade were daunting
and they rose inexorably as the Middle Ages progressed. These costs were borne also by
the crusaders’ families, which were prepared to accept the mortgaging and selling of
patrimonial land to provide members with funds.
There is no question but that we are faced by a genuinely popular devotional activity.
Authorization [bloodthirsty popes who have no idea what they’re doing!!!]
Papal legitimization
- The highest legitimizing authority that those taking the cross answered to was
the papacy, rather than temporal rulers of kingdoms.
- The pope was seen as the representative of God on earth.
- The popes could act with effect in the proclamation, preaching and financing of a
crusade; but once the army was on the march their powers were more theoretical
than real.
Procedures
- Participants were to take the Cross and make a vow to join the military
expedition in a formal, public ceremony; in return for vows and performance of
the actions promised, the crusaders gained certain privileges, including the
protection of their family and assets during their absence, and spiritual privileges
in Indulgence.
- Privileges
- Promise of protection of family & property
- Release from excommunication by virtue of taking the Cross
- The license to have dealings with excommunicates while on
crusade without incurring censure
- The right not to be cited for legal proceedings outside one’s native
diocese
 - Privileges descended / extended from pilgrim privileges
- At the time of the First Crusade, pilgrims were subject in the
same way as clerics to church courts
- Their persons protected from attack, assured that
lands and possessions seized by others during their
absence would be returned to them; they could
demand hospitality from the church; they were in
theory exempted from tools and taxes and immune
from arrest; and they may already have had the right
to a suspension of legal proceedings in which they
were involved until their return.
- Crusaders enjoyed these same rights.
- INDULGENCES
A free and generous remission of all punishment, detached from the nature of the
penance performed, could be granted by the pope on God’s behalf, was already implicit
in the writings of St Bernard at the time of the Second Crusade.
- “Take the sign of the cross and the supreme pontiff, the vicar of him to
whom it was said, ‘Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’,
offers you this full Indulgence of all the sins you confess with contrite
hearts.”
- Participation from all social classes
- Kings, magnates and knights
- Though the pope(s) intended that the elites would lead the expeditions, the
appeal of the crusades was not confined to a specific class and a part was
played by artisans, merchants, burgesses of all kinds, women (in some
cases), and even criminals, whose sentences could be alleviated in return
for participation in the Holy War.
- Spread of crusading message / popularization of the crusade - Disparate regional
communities received and framed crusading ideas in similar terms.
 - Charters of departing crusaders (example?) reduced the key features of the
expedition to a core collection of essentials: papal authorization, the
penitential quality of crusading, the prospect of reaching the Holy Land,
and service of the Lord. (Bull 1993)
- Chivalric romances & chansons de geste: important lay instruments for
propagating crusading ideas
- The chansons, even before the First Crusade, often included within
them interactions between the Christian and Islamic worlds,
expounding upon strong adherence to the Christian faith and the
dichotomy of religious unity and inconstancy between Christians
and their adversaries (creating & reinforcing stereotypes). They
described a world in which the Christian frontier was threatened by
a religious outsider at whose expense it was eventually enlarged.
The chansons were popular and reached a wide audience, extending
beyond French-speaking areas and translated into Provençal and
Middle High German.
Uniform practice? [inconsistencies & variations]
Personnel
- There existed the practice of substitution of redemption in which many who took
the cross did not actually go; whereas those who went did not all take the cross,
and among crusaders there had also been a large number of camp followers.
- Interspersed among the large ‘waves’ of crusading movement that historians later
identified, were small, scattered bands of men departing at different times,
sometimes without the sanction of authority. This was particularly so in the late
1170s and later 13th century. (why?)
Inconsistency in procedure - legitimacy, authorization, indulgences, etc.
1. see: Baltic crusades below
2. Wars against secular lay powers in the West
 - Crusades launched against secular opponents of the papacy justified the
traditional way: Hostiensis suggested that there was no difference between
the “disobedient” and schismatics and heretics.
- Example. Innocent III preaching the Cross against Markward of Anweiler:
“We concede to all who fight the violence of Markward and his men the
same remission of sins that we concede to all who go against the perfidy of
the Muslims in defense of the eastern provinces, because through him aid
to the Holy Land is impeded.”
Changes over time
By the end of our period, certainly, there is a clearer definition of crusading. But at the
start, papal authority to authorize a crusade, and the relationship between crusading
and pilgrimage (as well as the logistics of crusading) were contested and rather unclear.
*Historians such as Tyerman even went as far to argue that there were no real crusades
in the twelfth century. [fragmentation v. coherence/organization]
- Eugenius III showed little interest in establishing a new, clearly identifiable
ecclesiastical institution or movement: he sought to give a specific response to a
specific problem, the threat to Christian Outremer, and did so by calling for a
repetition of the 1096 expedition. In this period what is called ‘the Crusades’ in
fact covered a fragmented series of military and religious activities that lacked
coherence, including only one general expedition, and a number of private armed
or unarmed pilgrimages, many of which could not be proven to have been
undertaken in response to papal authorization. Each had a distinct motive and
implementation, without any effort to incorporate these diverse strands into one
institution, theory, or even give it a general name.
- Tyerman further argues that the First Crusade lent pilgrimage to the Holy Land a
new dimension, but did not create a separate tradition, making it difficult to
identify crusading as a distinct attitude. Chroniclers continued to use the word
‘pilgrim’ indiscriminately, perhaps because they did not see much of a difference.
(pp.567-9)
Concl.: Though the lack of a formally, clearly defined crusading institution does not necessarily invalidate
the existence of a crusading culture or a unique set of crusading ideas, it is true that the crusades should
not be understood as a consistent movement by itself, and that in practice its perceptions and
undertakings had been far from uniform.

Other historians: Tyerman’s argument (that there had been no crusades in the twelfth century, &
were merely the continuation of already existing ideas and practices, only really coming into being with
the crusade programme of Pope Innocent III) won little support. Many historians have
emphasized the changing quality and different stages of crusading, and several
emphasize the innovations seen in Innocent III’s pontificate. This study
(Fonnesberg-Schmidt 2007) of how the Baltic wars became crusades offers a contribution to
the ongoing discussion about the validity of definitions of crusades in general and about
the weaknesses of the pluralist definition (Riley-Smith: penitential warfare + defensive war in
the name of a universal Christendom + papal sanction) in particular, adding to the
suggestions that this definition really only applies with respect to the thirteenth
century, in the case of the Baltic crusades from the pontificate of Honorius III.
- Alongside crusades there existed other forms of penitential warfare. The popes had at their
disposal a series of measures which could be employed to motivate the faithful to take up warfare
in defense of the Church. These included the indulgence, partial or plenary, and temporal
privileges such as papal protection of the participants. Eugenius’s successors appear to have
regarded these as something that could be mixed and matched in whatever way would be
expedient and appropriate for the cause in question, reflecting the importance and priority they
ascribed to it.
- The picture drawn here underlines a weakness in the pluralist definition of the crusades.
Pluralists define crusading so strictly that their model is relevant only for the thirteenth century.
Only then was the concept to be found being consistently applied in a number of theaters of war,
in the case of the Baltic from the pontificate of Honorius III. Before him, the penitential wars
authorized by the papacy in the Baltic region were not on a par with those launched towards the
Holy Land. They show that in some instances some of the instruments associated with crusades
could be used to promote a campaign while others were not employed. (Fonnesberg-Schmidt

2007)

Changing motivation for joining crusades (Riley-Smith 1977)

It is probable that crusading, an activity extended over hundreds of years, had different
attractions for different generations.
- Many of the earliest crusaders, exposed for several decades to the intense
evangelization of the eleventh-century Church and in an age in which the laity
 was obsessed by its sinfulness, seem to have been responding to the penitential
aspect of crusading.
- By the fourteenth century, crusading had become one of the obligations of a
chivalric culture.
Across region
To the papal Curia many of the expeditions in Spain, along the shores of the Baltic,
against heretics and schismatics and even against lay powers in Western Europe, were
likely to have been regarded as belonging to the same enterprise/same species of
crusades to the East. But 1. differences certainly existed 2. variation from pope to pope
Spain - Reconquest
Like crusades to the east, it was similarly portrayed as being defensive - Spain had once
been Christian land but great parts were subjected to the infidels. HOWEVER it was
occasionally maintained that the Reconquest would be the key to the opening of a route
to Jerusalem by way of North Africa. (Therefore still of lesser importance than the east)
Baltic region
- The expansion of Latin Christendom into north-east Europe entered a new phase
when in 1147 Pope Eugenius III proclaimed a crusade against the pagan Slavs
living in the lands along the western part of the Baltic Sea. In the following
decades the peoples living further east, in Livonia, Estonia, Finland and Prussia,
were targeted in a series of new missions and campaigns undertaken by the
archbishops, bishops and princes of the neighboring lands which were
themselves often only recently converted to Christianity. Although the conquest
and conversion of the Baltic lands often met with considerable local resistance,
these ventures eventually succeeded in incorporating the eastern Baltic region
into the Latin Christian Church and western European society.
*The Baltic crusades could not be justified as a defensive war in the sense of recovering
Christian land, since it was neither a traditionally defined holy land, nor did it ever
belong to Christians. Thus their fundamental principles could not quite be compared to
the crusades in the east.
 - Livonian Crusade authorized by Pope Innocent III in 1199: to Innocent there had
been persecution of Christian converts in Livonia by their pagan neighbors. [So
still a defensive war]
- Innocent III was careful to emphasize that the purpose of military action in the
Baltic region was to defend the new Livonian mission against pagan attacks,
while his predecessors, certainly Eugenius III and Alexander III, had worded
their authorizations in a way that left open the possibility of conversions by
force, in breach of canon law. The purpose of penitential warfare in the Baltic
now changed from the enlargement of Christendom to the defense of those
working for the expansion of the faith.
- Innocent rewarded participants in the Baltic campaigns with an unspecified and
partial indulgence, which was usually granted only to the fighters themselves, not
to those who otherwise supported these ventures. He clearly regarded the
expeditions in the Baltic as being less important and of less merit than the
crusades in aid of the Holy Land. (see: hierarchy of importance)
*Benjamin Kedar had shown that in the Holy Land, mission and crusades were
contemporary and complementary, rather than competitive approaches, but in the Baltic
region missionary projects among the pagans had preceded crusades, and it was often
the missionaries’ pleas for assistance that caused the pope to rouse crusaders to go to
that region.
*Many of the participants in the Baltic crusades did not enjoy the same plenary
(absolute/complete) Indulgences as those embarking upon an expedition to the east; the
Baltic indulgences only reached a fully developed form in the early thirteenth century
after the twelfth century had seen many variations of it.
- A hierarchy of importance: in their letters on the Baltic campaigns the popes did
not merely copy the indulgence formulae of their predecessors. The indulgence
granted reflected the importance ascribed to the deed by the pope, and hence the
significance of an act was indicated by the indulgence granted to it. The
indulgence is therefore a central parameter in the analysis of the papal policy on
 the Baltic crusades and can be used to determine the importance given to these
crusades by the papacy. (Fonnesberg-Schmidt 2007)
- Alexander III did not follow the precedent set by Eugenius III, who had granted
the crusades in the Baltic the same status as that of crusades to the Holy Land
and had rewarded participants with a full crusade indulgence. He gave the
participants only a partial indulgence and made no attempt to secure success by
setting up formal measures for recruitment and financing, creating a hierarchy of
penitential warfare in which campaigns in the Baltic were given less priority and
hence less backing in the form of privileges than crusades in the Holy Land.
(Then given this hierarchy, why did anyone crusade in the Baltic if Jerusalem was
a more prestigious destination?)
- Pope Celestine III, however, appears to have granted crusaders in the Baltic a
plenary indulgence. It was only after the pontificate of Honorius III (r. 1216-27)
that the expeditions in the Baltic were now put explicitly on par with the
crusades to the East, and from then on the papal policy was consistent. -
variation from pope to pope; lack of unity
Muslim point of view
- Initially saw the “crusades” as simply extensions of Christian-Muslim conflict
that had already existed in Al-andalus and Sicily?
*Initial Muslim response to the coming of the crusaders was one of outrage and horror
for those who experienced its repercussions first-hand, while the rest of the Muslim
world, which was in great disunity in the early decades of the twelfth century, was
preoccupied with its internal problems. (Hillenbrand 1999)
*Decentralize prominence: As the crusades went on the crusaders never possessed the
key cities of Aleppo and Damascus and never controlled Syria; in the Ayyubid period,
the Franks reached their greatest territorial expansion of the thirteenth century, yet it
was also at this point that the Franks had become quite fully integrated in the political
map of the Near East, apparently treated by Muslims as just another quasi-indigenous,
warring faction in Middle Eastern politics. It is thus possible that medieval Muslim
historians, at least by the mid-thirteenth century, did not identify the crusades as a
single, separate phenomenon, and had limited interest in Europe and the government of
the Frankish states in the Near East. (Hillenbrand 1999)
Unified resistance did exist?
Saladin, in the later 12th century, established his own authority in direct response to
Christian crusading - using the language of jihad against crusaders as a means of
unifying support for his rule.
- In the years 1174 and 1187 many of Saladin’s efforts were directed as subjugating
his Muslim rivals and creating a united front in Egypt and Syria against the
Crusaders. In 1187 he fought the Crusaders under the command of King Guy of
Lusignan in the key battle of Hattin and inflicted a famous victory. The
reconquest of important Crusader possessions, such as Acre, followed. Jerusalem
was retaken in 1187.
- Historians, e.g. Ibn Jubayr; documentary

*****
Major themes
Empire (Mongol & Song)
- Autocracy
- Patrimony
- Military
The disruption of traditional, semi-egalitarian political relations was characterized by ‘a
replacement of the clan nobility with a much more powerful, hieratic, and autocratic
form of authority where collegial decisions were restricted to a small group of people.
Political authority was in turn supported by the increased militarization of society into
permanent fighting units placed under the direct control of the khan. But this
conjoining of permanent militarization and political centralization within an
aristocratic class required far greater economic resources than pastoral society could
provide, stimulating the demand for invasions of wealthier sedentary regions to secure
1
predictable supplies of external resources.
Education

Heresy

1
P. J. Smith, ‘Eurasian Transformations of the Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: The View from Song China,
960-1279’, Medieval Encounters 10:1-3 (2004), p.289.