Journal of Song-Yuan Studies

In 1120, decision makers of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) made a bold political gamble. They decided to ally with the Jurchen—who had established the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) under their leader Aguda (r.1115–1123)—to launch a joint assault on their common enemy: the Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125). Through this alliance, the Northern Song hoped to reconquer a large swathe of territory known as "the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun" 燕雲十六州, which included today's Beijing and the northern parts of Hebei and Shanxi provinces. This territory had been ceded to the Liao in 938 by the Later Jin 後晉 (936–947) founder Shi Jingtang 石敬瑭 (r. 936–942).¹ What the Song decision makers did not anticipate was that the Jurchens turned out to be a more dangerous enemy than the Khitans. After finishing with the Khitans, the Jurchens continued southward and captured the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng within only two years. The Northern Song's gamble resulted in the rapid fall of the dynasty itself. [End Page 73]

The failure of the Northern Song court's political gamble was caused in part by its judgement of, and policies toward, the Sixteen Prefectures, particularly regarding the local Han populations, who were commonly referred to as Yan-Yun "Han'er" 漢兒 or "Hanren" 漢人 in historical sources from the Liao-Song-Jin periods.² For the sake of convenience, I follow the Liao-Song-Jin practices of using both "Hanren" and "Han'er" to refer to the Han populations of the Sixteen Prefectures.³ The court anticipated that the local Han'er would remain politically loyal to the Northern Song because of their shared Han identity. This judgement also accounted for a series of rancorous disputes between the Song and the Jin over how to divide the land and people of the Sixteen Prefectures between the two states. In this article, I interrogate the Song elite's rhetoric concerning the Sixteen Prefectures and their resident Han populations while also engaging with recent scholarship on the Han'er.

The Song court's rhetoric regarding the Han'er has driven historians to write about the Han'er from a perspective that focuses on ethnic identity. Liu Pujiang pioneered the study of "Han'er" or "Hanren," addressing the use of these terms in historical sources as well as the Han'er's ethnic consciousness and political attitudes in the Liao-Song-Jin dynasties. He views the Han'er's ethnic identity as a historical fact and discusses it within the distinctive historiographical discourse of "Sinicization" (hanhua 漢化) and "Barbarianization" (huhua 胡化) that emphasized acculturation among different peoples.⁴ In [End Page 74] contrast, recent scholarship in English has emphasized ethnic categories and identities—both Han and non-Han—as something constructed and fluid. Scholars employing this line of thought often treat the Han'er as objects of perception by others and focus their analysis on the conceptualization of ethnicity.⁵

In spite of their differences, both approaches heavily rely on transmitted historical records, including court documents and private writings by the Song elite. These records reveal much about the intellectual world of Han and non-Han elites—particularly that of the Song elite—but offer little information on the experiences of the Han'er as historical actors living through the Liao-Song-Jin transition.

Diverging from existing scholarship, I approach the issue of the Yan-Yun Han'er and the Song elite's rhetoric concerning them in two ways. First, while recognizing that the Yan-Yun Han'er appeared as objects of perception in writings of the Northern Song elite, I problematize their rhetoric by analyzing conflicting views among the Song elite themselves. Their conflicting views on the Han'er were deeply entangled with the Song court's often contradictory long-term agenda toward the Sixteen Prefectures as well as its short-term policy of defending the reconquered lands during the three-state wars in the 1120s. My approach thus departs from the existing scholarship by contextualizing the Song elite's rhetoric on the Han'er within their broader discourse on land-people relations. I...