I heard that the Song Dynasty was on the verge of industrializing before the Mongols fucked everything up. Is there any truth to this or is it a crock of shit?
Also thread about the Song dynasty I guess.
>>382015
China is always on the verge of industrializing
Also the Song fucked its own shit up by being Administrative Geniuses but titanic military/foreign policy idiots.
This is why its not part of the Han-T'ang-Ming Golden ages.
They were already decadent by the time the Mongols came. If they were not decadent, the Mongols would likely not have conquered them.
Chinese history has plenty of those cycles.
>>382015
Given the amount of cheap labour available, I'm not sure mechanization was really that likely of a prospect.
>>382027
Wasn't their foreign policy basically 'we gibe monies and you no hurt us ok?'
>>382054
And "if we ignore it, it might go away" as in the case of Vietnam.
>>382040
Imperial China was always in the grey area of Cheap Labor + Limited Mechanization.
Their efforts were always somewhere between "we have lots of cunts to do this shit" and "we have to build/make a lot of *insert project/thing* for our fuckhuge population/army/empire real fast."
Hence the invention of Blast Furnaces (to heat shitloads of iron ores for stee), and Printing (to disseminate paper money and imperial decrees/bureaucratic notes faster and in multiple times) in China.
>>382027
>China is always on the verge of industrializing
pls explain
>>382015
Basically everything when to shit when the Jurchens attacked
>>382033
>They were already decadent by the time the Mongols came
Sounds very much like chinese-written history.
>W-We conquered the last dynasty cuz they were decadent and ran the country in the ground! We aren't just power hungry usurpers but liberators, clearly the mandate of heaven lies with us!
>>383310
There was that siege where the Song defenders requested help from the Emperor and no help ever came. They lasted for a long time, even turning to cannibalism before they finally surrendered or some shit. By all accounts the Song Imperial Court was p shitty by that time
>>383339
That was the Siege of Suiyang. It was during the T'ang Dynasty. No help came because the T'ang was busy withdrawing from the onslaught of Rebel An-Lushan's armies. The Commanders resolved to make it a last stand since Suiyang is directly on the road to the Imperial Capital. Also the tale of cannibalism is both a horror story and an inspiring story of patriotism and loyalty to the Chinese.
It's also celebrated like a Chinese Alamo or something.
>>383359
Sorry got my dynasties all mixed up.
>>382015
The mongols never really fucked up China as people believe. The Yuan Dynasty (mongol ruled china) was actually very prosperous and made some massive achievements due the Mongol's pragmatic and innovative nature.
China's slide into backwardness, as pointed out by another anon, is attributed to the Jurchens. The Jurchens wrecked the shit out of China during their conquests and were far more backward thinking than previous han-chinese dynasties and mongol rule.
The Mongols did give us hyper-inflation, so they
had that going for them.
>>382157
The Tang, the Song, The Ming, were very prosperous times for China. The only competition during those times, and indeed for the past 1800 out of 2000 years , was India. They were producing roughly equal amounts of culture/industry.
They were always on the verge of industrialization, they just didn't have the need for it.
