Region · as at first light, 1 January 1200

South China

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Atlas records 4 realms and principalities in South China, with 103 lords and officers, 212 towns, ports and sites, 51 church lands and religious houses and 242 provinces, peoples and free lands.

The realms

  1. The Southern Song of Zhao Kuo (Ningzong)Zhao Kuo

    On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Southern Song is the richest state of its age and the weakest in force.

  2. Chieftaincies of the south and south-west, on the loose reinHereditary chiefs under the Song loose rein (jimi)

    South and south-west of the Song counties lies a belt of hill country, karst valleys and plateau where people are ruled by their own hereditary headmen and the Song governs only through them.

  3. Self-governing peoples of South ChinaSelf-governing peoples

    These are the peoples of the south who no prince governs and the Song taxes only at the edge: the Li of the Hainan highlands, the Yao (and, later called so, the Miao and Dong) of the hills where Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan and Guizhou meet, the Dan who live on b

  4. Nung and Tay chiefs of the Song-Viet marchHereditary chiefs under the Song loose rein (jimi)

    North of the delta the kingdom is a set of passes, valleys and iron hills held by chief families who answer to both courts.

Primary sources for South China

  • A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date.
  • Notes in Answer to Questions about the Lands beyond the Passes, Zhou Qufei (周去非) (1178, after service in Guangxi). A Guangxi official's notes, written twenty years before 1200, on the south-western frontier of the Song and the countries beyond.
  • History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives.
  • The Unofficial History of Nanzhao, Yang Shen; revised by Hu Wei (16th century, revised 1775, from Dali and Yunnan traditions and lost local histories). The kingdom of Dali has no surviving text of 1200: its own records were destroyed in the Mongol conquest and after, and the Song shi's Dali entry ends in 1175.
  • Dreams of Splendour of the Eastern Capital, Meng Yuanlao (孟元老) (preface dated 1147). A memoir of Kaifeng's streets, markets, festivals, food, theatres and guilds in the 1110s and 1120s, written by a refugee in the south.
  • History of the Jin, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office, with Ouyang Xuan among the chief compilers (1343 to 1344, from the Jin veritable records and the Jin national history). The official history of the Jurchen empire that ruled north China and Manchuria in 1200.
  • Record of the Great Jin State, Attributed to Yuwen Maozhao (宇文懋昭); the attribution is doubtful (preface dated 1234; probably assembled in the Southern Song from Song and Jin material, with later accretions). A Song-side history of the Jin, with annals for each emperor and chapters on institutions, customs, the capitals and the Jurchen way of life.
  • Classified Conversations of Master Zhu, Zhu Xi (朱熹), recorded by his disciples and compiled by Li Jingde (黎靖德) (conversations recorded 1170 to 1200; Li Jingde's compilation printed 1270). The recorded talk of the philosopher who died at Kaoting in Jianyang, Fujian, on 23 April 1200 under a court ban on his 'false learning'.
  • Classified Statutes and Regulations of the Qingyuan Era, Xie Shenfu (謝深甫) and the Song law commission (compiled 1198 to 1202 and promulgated in 1202). The Song law code as it stood in 1200, compiled on the orders of Ningzong's court between 1198 and 1202 and classed by subject: officials and their discipline, the examinations, the army and the frontier garrisons, taxation and corvee, the salt, tea and liquor monopolies, maritime trade and the treatment of foreign merchants, the post roads, criminal procedure and prisons.
  • Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, Bi Yuan (畢沅), completed by Feng Jiwu after his death (late eighteenth century, finished after 1801, from Song and Yuan sources). A Qing scholar's continuous month-by-month chronicle of the Song and Yuan centuries, compiled from the Song shi, the Liao, Jin and Yuan histories, Li Tao, Li Xinchuan and other Song sources.
  • Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200.
  • Draft Compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Song, Various; the Song huiyao were compiled by the Song state, the surviving draft reassembled by Xu Song from the Yongle dadian in the nineteenth century (the original Song compilations date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; the surviving extracts were recovered in 1809 to 1820 and printed in 1936). Dated extracts from the Song government's own statute collections, arranged by office.
  • History of the Song, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345, from the Song veritable records, state histories and the Huiyao). The official history of the Southern Song, which ruled from Lin'an (Hangzhou) in 1200.
  • Miscellaneous Notes on Court and Country since the Jianyan Era, Li Xinchuan (李心傳) (first series 1202, second series 1216). A contemporary handbook of the Southern Song state, written in Sichuan by the historian Li Xinchuan and finished in its first part in 1202, two years after the start of 1200.
  • Outline and Details of Two Reigns (thirteenth century, after 1224). A Song outline-and-detail chronicle of exactly the two reigns around 1200, drawn from the court's daily records.
  • Random Notes from Cloud Foothill, Zhao Yanwei (趙彥衛) (preface dated 1206). A Song official's notebook finished in 1206, with entries on the government, coinage and paper money, the examinations, the roads and post, Lin'an and the provinces, and in juan 5 a list of the foreign countries and ships that came to trade at the southern ports with their goods.
  • Things Heard and Seen under Four Reigns, Ye Shaoweng (葉紹翁) (about 1225 to 1240). A Song literatus's anecdotes about the court, a generation after the events, strongest for the reigns of Guangzong and Ningzong that he knew from older contemporaries.
  • Records of Foreign Peoples: the entries on the African coast and Egypt, Zhao Rugua (1225, at Quanzhou). A Song customs inspector's handbook, written from merchants' reports, that reaches the African coast within a generation of 1200: Bipaluo (Berbera) with its ostriches and giraffes, Zhongli (the Somali coast), Cengba (Zanzibar and the Zanj coast) with its ivory and ambergris and its trade with the Arabs, Kunlun Cengqi (perhaps Madagascar or Pemba), and Wusili (Egypt) with Alexandria's lighthouse.
  • History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars.

The whole sources library

How these entries are made

Every entry describes one morning, 1 January 1200, and keeps later events in a dated "what the year holds" list with the conditions each depended on. Each entry names its sources, rates its confidence and says where the sources disagree. Published 4 November 2026. Corrections are welcome.