Great Song Land: The Elites and Their Time

Author: Zheng Xiting
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-01
Features: This book narrates the process of Wang Anshi's decisive reforms, aimed at economic recovery and curbing monopolies to achieve national prosperity, military strength, and redress national humiliation. However, this process involved conflicts with imperial relatives, the old faction, the existing bureaucratic class, and vested interests. It also faced obstruction and opposition from elite figures of the time, such as Confucian scholars, historians, and writers. Ultimately, Wang Anshi was forced to resign as prime minister, and all his new policies and reforms were abolished. In the following four decades, the Jingkang Incident occurred, leading to the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty and the decline of the vast riverlands of the Great Song.