-
Chapter 3. Crossing Boundaries and Shifting Borders: The First-Generation Liao Southerners
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
64 CHAPTER 3 Crossing Boundaries and Shifting Borders The First-generation Liao Southerners . . . a fragile structure of intersecting relationships whose balance had to be constantly adjusted and renegotiated. —Simon Maclean, Kingship and politics t is hard to overestimate the difference between the eleventhcentury judgments and prescriptions of Ouyang Xiu and Sima Guang and the overwhelming uncertainties of the late Tang and early Five Dynasties. In 1005 the treaty of Shanyuan laid down a well-de¤ned borderline between Liao and Song, marking the beginning of 120 years of diplomatically maintained peace between two states that accepted a relationship of equality. The demarcated line was carefully mapped and was expected to determine allegiances. It was possible for individuals to feel themselves to be on the “wrong” side of the border, not just politically and geographically but also emotionally. In the late ninth and early tenth centuries , however, the frontier region discussed in this book was not a transitional zone between two established states but rather comprised a multitude of small, inconstant powers, whose relationships, and thus their borders, shifted continually as each strove for survival and advantage. These regimes were led by ruling groups variously of Bohai, Chinese, Kitan, Shatuo, Tangut , Xi, or other origin, but what mattered in this period was not cultural identity but the placing of allegiances. If cultural groupings were not determinants of where borders lay, neither was territorial demarcation. Rather, borders were ¤rst of all a matter of individual relationships, from which the division of territory followed as a consequence.1 Political borders in the ¤rst half of the tenth century were, therefore, de¤ned to a signi¤cant extent by the actions of those who crossed them, sometimes willingly, sometimes not. Individuals could contribute to shifts of the borders by changing their allegiance and taking the people and territory Crossing Boundaries and Shifting Borders 65 they controlled with them. Leaders down to the county level (or occasionally lower still) could make choices over which master to follow that had immediate and sometimes grave consequences, not only for themselves but for those under their authority. These commoners, the vast majority, are rarely mentioned in our sources and even more rarely appear as individuals.2 Only occasionally did they actively change their own allegiance; instead they usually found that the district in which they lived had been shifted to the other side of the political borderline by the action of a local of¤cial. In other words, while leaders had the power to move the border, commoners generally found that it moved over their heads. This chapter traces the changing role of individuals in de¤ning where borderlines lay by analyzing changes in the pattern of southerners who came under Liao authority against the background of Liao relations with the Southern regimes.3 In retrospect we know that a bilateral relationship eventually emerged, but I shall argue that early tenth-century people, working without the bene¤t of hindsight, would not have recognized the signi¤cance of choosing the Liao over the many other available masters. This, then, is not least an exercise in how the Liao came to be so signi¤cant, taking the relationship between borders and loyalties as the chief object of scrutiny. Over two hundred cases of crossing are recorded in the annalistic sources, where an incident may involve anything from one individual up to over a million households. Information on each case is set out in the Appendix (including full citations). While we cannot assume consistency, it is not unreasonable to take the data thus created as a general indication of trends. Accordingly, this material has been analyzed chronologically, and in various categories, to establish how the pattern of crossings changed as state power grew in both North and South (Table 2). Since our concern here is with the act of crossing itself, certain data have been omitted. We know of many people who entered Liao service or are found in the sources as prisoners of the Liao, but in most cases we have no record of how they got there. Hence the family of Geng Yanyi is not found here, and records of prisoners presented at court are not used.4 Cases of deliberate deception are also omitted, as is the quite different situation in the northwest, where the Tanguts were beginning to build themselves a state.5 Types of crossing Crossings can be categorized by the degree of free choice involved. Clearly there are problems with de¤ning something so...