Unit Test Study Guide: Song China, Japan, Mongols

AP WORLD

CHINA

Tang decline (618–907)

• Emperor Xuanzong (713–756): the Tang reached its peak under him, but he was a poor ruler

• 751: Tang defeated by Abbasid armies at the Battle of Talas

• 755: An Lushan Rebellion. A general mutinied and declared himself emperor in the north, and Xuanzong fled to Sichuan. The Tang survived but was badly weakened.

• 907: the last Tang emperor resigned

• 907–960: Five Dynasties (north) and Ten Kingdoms (south), a time of political division

Song rise: Zhao Kuangyin / Emperor Taizu

• General of the Later Zhou. He reunified China in 960 and claimed the Mandate of Heaven.

• Policies:

  • Expanded the bureaucracy chosen by the civil service exam

  • Personally gave the final palace exam

  • Shifted power from hereditary aristocrats to scholar-officials, the new elite by 1100. This was a meritocracy, so poor men could rise.

• Downside: the military was weak, because scholar-officials were not skilled in strategy

Song and the Liao

• The Liao were Khitan nomads in Manchuria and the only rival Taizu could not beat

• The Song paid tribute to the Liao to stop their raids. This drained the economy and encouraged other groups to attack.

• The Tanguts (from Tibet) formed the Xi Xia kingdom, and the Song paid them tribute too

Northern Song (960–1127) to Southern Song (1127–1279)

• 1115: the Jin kingdom (Jurchen) formed and defeated the Liao

• 1127: the Jin invaded and the weak Song fled south

• New capital: Hangzhou, which was wealthy, sophisticated and full of innovation

Government and politics

• Centralized bureaucracy run by scholar-officials who passed the civil service exam

• Neo-Confucians:

  • Revived "pure" Confucianism, opened libraries and recovered old texts

  • Stressed personal morality and philosophy in daily life

  • Hostile to Buddhism and Daoism, which they saw as foreign superstition

  • Reinforced gender, class and age hierarchies to keep social harmony

  • Became the dominant form of Confucianism

• Wang Anshi (1070s–1080s), chief minister and Confucian scholar:

  • Reforms to save the dynasty's finances

  • Supported agricultural expansion and taxed landlords and the scholar-gentry

  • Wanted the exam to test analytical thinking instead of memorizing classics

  • 1085: his supporter Emperor Shenzong died, and Neo-Confucians and the new emperor reversed the reforms

Economy: agriculture

• Fast-ripening (Champa) rice from Vietnam allowed 2 crops a year instead of 1, which led to a population boom

• Iron plows, new seeds, better water control and the wheelbarrow

• Canals moved produce quickly

• Aristocratic estates were broken up and divided more equally among peasants

Economy: commercialism

• The world's first manufacturing revolution: porcelain, gunpowder, goods sold far and wide

• Credit, deposit shops (early banks)

• Flying cash: the first paper money, credit vouchers that meant merchants did not have to carry heavy strings of coins. Later the government printed notes to pay its bills, which caused runaway inflation.

• Cities grew. The Tang capital Chang'an (2 million people) was the largest city in the world, and Hangzhou was a thriving capital too.

Commercial hubs and ports (entrepôts)

Trade networks

• Tang looked west along the Silk Road. Song looked east to the sea.

• Silk Road goods:

  • China: silk, porcelain, paper, tea

  • Persia: dates, saffron, rugs

  • Africa: frankincense, gold, salt

  • India: sandalwood, jasmine, cloth

• Religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam) and art also spread along the Silk Road

• Indian Ocean: Chinese junks were the best ships in the world, refined in the late Tang and Song. They rivaled Arab control of the Indian Ocean, used the compass and set up market networks along the coast.

Technology

• Gunpowder (9th to early 10th century), fireworks

• Movable type: Bi Sheng, 1041

• Abacus, refined paper-making, the compass

• Algebra and the concept of zero

• Porcelain that was lighter, stronger and more beautiful

Gender roles

• Tang women were relatively free, mostly elite urban women:

  • Could become Daoist priestesses or respected courtesans

  • Played polo, and a full figure was fashionable

  • China had a female emperor, Wu Zetian

• Song women still had real power:

  • Gained property rights through marriage

  • Ran small businesses

  • Educated their young sons, and some were notable poets

• Late Song under Neo-Confucian influence:

  • Women were confined to the home and valued as homemakers and mothers

  • Expected virtues: virginity for girls, fidelity for wives, chastity for widows

  • Men were favored in inheritance and divorce, and only boys were educated

• Footbinding:

  • Began in the Five Dynasties period, possibly among court dancers, and spread under the Song

  • Done to girls aged 2–5, aiming for a 3-inch foot

  • Shows how women were controlled and physically confined

  • Ended in the early 1900s

Culture

• Scholars, not Buddhists, became the main artists and writers

• Secular scenes and nature became common themes

• Poets Li Bo and Du Fu (Tang), Tang three-color pottery

• Print culture (medical texts, calendars, private publishing) strengthened a "Han" identity, with outsiders increasingly seen as "barbarians"

How neighbors responded to the Song

• Nomads tried to conquer and copy China and also copied its weapons

• Paying off border peoples caused inflation and cut the Song off from steppe horses

• Neighbors built their own power and identity distinct from China:

  • Japan: Kyoto, samurai

  • Southeast Asia: a crossroads of cultures. The Khmer Empire (889–1431) at Angkor followed Indian Buddhism and Vedic gods.

Fall of the Song

• Mongols under Kublai Khan attacked from 1235, held most of China by 1271 and ended the Song in 1279, founding the Yuan Dynasty

Tang vs Song (Venn diagram)

• Tang only: large empire, female ruler, adopted Buddhism

• Both: trade, better farming, great art

• Song only: smaller empire, sea power, paper money, movable type

JAPAN

Lead-up and the Imperial Age

• Japan, Korea and Vietnam all borrowed from China but adapted it to local conditions

• Buddhism spread into Japan and linked Japan with Korea. Peasants blended it with worship of kami (nature spirits).

• Chinese influence peaked in the 7th–8th centuries

Taika reforms (646, Emperor Kotoku)

• Goal: a Chinese-style government with an absolute emperor, a bureaucracy and a drafted peasant army

• Chinese court etiquette and Confucianism became mandatory at court

• Opposed by aristocratic families and Buddhist monks

Impact of Buddhism

• Monks became so powerful they plotted to take the throne in the 760s

• The capital moved from Nara to Heian (Kyoto), and monasteries were banned inside the city, so they were built on the hills around it

• To counter the Buddhists, emperors restored the aristocrats' power

• The drafted army was dropped, and the rural aristocracy took charge of military matters

Three power groups: Buddhists, the imperial court and emperor, and the aristocrats and landowners (later the daimyo)

Fujiwara family

• Dominated the court by the mid-9th century

• Aristocrats and monasteries competed for land and both worked to limit the emperor

• Later the court and monasteries cooperated against rising regional lords

Feudalism, bushi and samurai

• Elite families built private estates with their own "house governments" and small forts

• Bushi were warrior lords with private jurisdiction. Samurai were their mounted private troops. Peasants supplied food.

• The weak court hired these local lords to keep order, even near the capital

• Samurai code: honor in war, ritual suicide for disgrace, combat between champions

• Blocked a free peasantry, since peasants were treated as warrior property (similar to European serfdom)

• By the 12th century the bushi were competing for imperial power

Japanese scholar-gentry and decline of Chinese influence

• Official missions to China stopped in the late 9th century, though monks and traders still traveled

• Aristocrats blocked a Japanese scholar-gentry from forming because they wanted to keep power

• The Tang collapse made Chinese models seem less useful

Gempei Wars (1180–1185)

• Taira vs Minamoto. The Minamoto won and set up the bakufu (military government) at Kamakura.

• The emperor stayed as a figurehead, and real power went to the bakufu

Shoguns and shogunates

• Shogun: a hereditary military dictator

• Kamakura Shogunate: first shogun Yoritomo Minamoto. He killed off rivals, even family members, so he left no able heir. The Hojo family then dominated, while the Minamoto kept the shogun title.

• Ashikaga Shogunate (early 14th century):

  • Ashikaga Takauji (from a Minamoto branch) led a bushi revolt and overthrew Kamakura

  • When the emperor refused to recognize him, he drove the emperor out of Kyoto and installed puppet emperors

Civil war and the split into provinces

• 1467–1477 civil war between rival Ashikaga heirs allied with bushi

• The shogunate lost power to regional lords

• Japan split into about 300 states ruled by daimyo (feudal lords of provinces)

MONGOLS

Origins and tribal life

• Central Asian steppe (grasslands near the Gobi Desert and Siberia)

• Nomadic herders of sheep and goats who ate meat and milk and traded hides and dairy for weapons, cloth and jewelry

• Divided into tribes that united only for war or when threatened

Military traits

• Expert horsemen and archers who moved fast over long distances

• Yam system: relay stations and messengers for urgent messages

• Spies made maps before invasions, and their warrior code valued bravery

• Later adopted Chinese weapons: catapults, battering rams, gunpowder, flaming arrows

Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, born Temujin

• Broke tribal loyalties and demanded loyalty to himself

• Rewarded merit over status

• 1206: elected Khagan (Great Khan)

• Campaigns:

  • Xi Xia (1207)

  • Jin (hard to take, so he used captured Chinese to build Chinese weapons)

  • Kara Khitai (1218)

  • Khwarazm (1221)

• Spared artisans and scholars, killed or enslaved others, and was known for wiping out towns that resisted

Empire under Chinggis

• Capital at Karakorum

• Religious tolerance, and a script created for Mongolian

• Brought peace to conquered regions

• Secured and taxed trade routes

• More interested in tribute than in running the empire

Death and aftermath

• 1227: died of battle wounds during the final Xi Xia campaign

• Land split 4 ways, among 3 sons and a grandson, and Ogedei became Great Khan

• Ogedei's death and the fight over succession stopped the planned conquest of Europe

The Four Khanates

Golden Horde (heavily tested)

• 1237–1238: invaded Russia, which was split into small kingdoms. Took Kiev and destroyed cities that resisted.

• The only successful winter invasion of Russia in history

• Aimed to conquer all of Europe but never did

• Tolerated the Orthodox Church

• Acted as a trade link between Europe, the Middle East and Asia

• High taxes made peasants give land to aristocrats for protection, which led to serfdom

• A tribute empire that did not run the Russian government

• Moscow collected the tribute, took over lands that could not pay and grew strong

• Russia was cut off from the Renaissance and Western Europe

• 1380 Battle of Kulikova: Russians defeated the Golden Horde

• Berke, khan of the Golden Horde, converted to Islam

Ilkhanate

• 1258: Hulegu took Baghdad and killed the Abbasid caliph

• 1260: defeated by the Mamluks of Egypt, which stopped expansion into North Africa

Yuan Dynasty (heavily tested)

• Kublai Khan, grandson of Chinggis, attacked the Song from 1235

• 1271: took the dynasty name Yuan. 1279: completed the conquest of the Song.

• Capital at Tatu (Beijing), built in Chinese style

• Keeping Mongols separate:

  • Chinese were banned from learning the Mongol script

  • Intermarriage was banned

  • Mongol customs and ceremonies were kept

• Social order:

  • Mongols

  • Muslims and Central Asian nomad allies

  • Northern Chinese

  • Southern Chinese

• No civil service exam, so top posts went to Mongols and foreigners like Marco Polo. Chinese held only local and regional jobs.

• Religious tolerance: Buddhists, Christians, Daoists and Muslims all at court

• Kublai adopted Chinese art, clothing and court style

• Merchants and artisans gained status. Paper money and transportation expanded, Silk Road trade increased and cities thrived.

• Popular entertainment: musical drama flourished, and actors gained status

• Peasants:

  • Their land was protected from being turned into pasture

  • Famine relief, lower taxes and less forced labor

  • Village schools were planned but never set up

• Mongol women:

  • Refused footbinding

  • Kept property rights and moved freely in public

  • Some hunted and went to war, and Kublai's wife Chabi was influential

  • Their freedoms faded under Kublai's successors

• The scholar-gentry saw the Mongols as barbarians and especially resented the loss of the exams

• Fall:

  • Song loyalist revolts in the south

  • Failed invasions of Japan (1274, 1281) and losses in Vietnam and Java

  • Weak, corrupt successors

  • Famine, high taxes and forced labor

  • Secret societies like the White Lotus Society

  • 1368: peasant leader Zhu Yuanzhang (Red Turbans) drove out the Mongols and founded the Ming

  • Many Mongols returned to Central Asia

Timur (Tamerlane, Timur-i Lang)

• A cultured Turk from a noble landowning clan who wanted to restore the Mongol Empire

• Capital at Samarkand, famous for its architecture

• Conquered Persia, the Fertile Crescent, NW India (beat the Delhi Sultanate) and southern Russia

• More brutal than the Mongols

• Brought no growth in trade, cultural exchange or internal peace

• Died in 1405, and his empire fell apart. This was the last great nomadic challenge to settled civilizations.

Significance of the Mongol Empire

• Largest land empire in history

• Pax Mongolica (13th–14th centuries): peace, easy communication and trade

• Revived Silk Road trade between Asia and Europe

• Spread the bubonic plague: fleas on rats that fed on Mongol horse feed carried it along the Silk Roads, and it reached the Middle East, North Africa and Europe in the 1300s

Key dates: 755 An Lushan · 907 Tang ends · 960 Song founded · 1041 movable type · 1085 Wang Anshi reforms reversed · 1127 Southern Song · 1180–85 Gempei Wars · 1206 Chinggis becomes Khagan · 1227 Chinggis dies · 1237–38 Russia invaded · 1258 Baghdad falls · 1260 Mamluks stop Mongols · 1271/1279 Yuan · 1274/1281 failed invasions of Japan · 1368 Ming founded · 1380 Kulikova · 1405 Timur dies · 1467–77 Japanese civil war

One note on dates: your slides give 1280 for the second Mongol invasion of Japan. It actually happened in 1281, so on the test go with whatever your teacher used. I can also turn this into flashcards if you want.