introduction

The years between the collapse of T’ang dynastic authority that began in the mid-ninth century and the establishment of Sung authority in the later part of the tenth century were a period of great turmoil and change. The preceding chapter discussed the political history in north China through these decades. The present chapter focuses on the regions straddling and south of the Yangtze River. Historians have referred to the states that controlled this southern territory as the Ten Kingdoms, but this terminology is misleading. In fact, one of the so-called Ten Kingdoms is the Northern Han, located in northern Shansi. The Northern Han was a successor state to the Later Han dynasty of the north and belongs in a discussion of the northern dynasties. Of the nine kingdoms of the south that are covered in the following discussion, never more than seven existed at any one time (see figure 4 and table 3).

Four of these southern kingdoms governed their territories for almost the entire interregnum period: Wu-Yüeh (902–78), located in the Liang-che region of the Yangtze River delta, was the richest and most stable. Ch’u (907–64), centered in the region of modern Hunan, controlled the central Yangtze River valley. Ching-nan (907–63) was a tiny principality at the confluence of the Han and Yangtze rivers that survived among much larger kingdoms through diplomatic skill. Southern Han (909–71) occupied territory covered by the modern provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. The Min kingdom (909–45) controlled the Fu-chien region (modern Fukien province) before it was assimilated by neighboring states after an internal fratricidal orgy of murder and mayhem.