Abstract
Diplomatic pacification had been the core of Southern Song’s policy towards the Jin dynasty. During the last sixty years of Southern Song, however, it engaged in lasting war against the Jurchens and Mongols. Analyzing the factors which caused the change of Song’s foreign policy serves the main purpose of this article. In 1205, the Song court initiated its irredentist war against the Jurchen. To prepare this campaign, Song political leaders propagandized revanchism and promoted the posthumous status of officials who supported irredentism during Emperor Gaozong’s reign, notably Yue Fei. Although the military action in 1205 quickly resulted in a fiasco, revanchism gradually became popular from that time, and prevented the Song government from returning to its pacification tradition. Two main factors, I argue, caused this result. First, because Neo-Confucians were the main supporters of revanchism, the concept of irredentist war widely spread among the literati class as Neo-Confucianism became popular in the thirteenth century. Second, the decline of the Jin dynasty inspired Song literati to reconsider previous pacification policy, and attributed the misfortune of their country to the officials proposing rapprochement, especially Qin Kuai. Officials who supported pacification thus suffered huge pressure.
Keywords
revanchism, Southern Song dynasty, Neo-Confucians, Emperor Lizong, Qin Kuai
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