Workshop

A Study of the Scale of Military Mobilization and Major Battles in the Song, Jin, and Yuan Periods

Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, Sun Yat-sen University
Centre for Environmental History and Development, Lingnan University

Historical sociologist Tilly once proposed that "war made the state, and the state made war", which has been widely echoed in the study of European history. In recent years, scholars of Chinese history have also gradually paid attention to this proposal, and while wars were more frequent in the Tang, Song, Jin and Yuan periods,and profound changes occurred in the state and society, previous scholars tended to focus on the changes in the relationship between the state and the society, but neglected how war, as an important and independent factor, affected the state system and major changes at that time.

In order to further explore the relationship between military mobilisation and state finance, especially how military (war) demands deeply shaped state institutions, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Sun Yat-sen University will hold the sixth session of the " Yat-sen Advanced Studies Workshop" from 2th December to 3rd, 2023, with the theme on" Research on the Scale of Military Mobilization and Major Battles in the Song, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties". The workshop will place primary focus on the wars and battles of the Southern Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties and their organisation, with particular emphasis on the analysis of institution and data. It will also attempt to systematically compare the different features of the Southern Song defense system with those of the nomadic war mobilisation of the Mongols and Yuan Dynasty, including but not limited to the allocation of financial resources, the personnel and their organisation during wartime, and the tactics of war, in an attempt to promote the attention of domestic historians to this topic and to initiate a dialog with international academic research.