Jin Dynasty Challenges Song China

In 1115, the Jurchen leader Aguda proclaimed himself emperor of a new Jin dynasty in the forested lands of Manchuria. The declaration was a direct challenge to the Khitan-led Liao dynasty, which had long dominated the region, and it set in motion events that would topple the Northern Song within roughly a decade. The rise of the Jin reshaped East Asia, ending the unified Song state in the north and pushing Chinese rule south of the Huai River and the Yangtze.

The Jurchens were a Tungusic-speaking people of the northeast, living by hunting, farming, and horse herding. For generations many of them had been vassals of the Liao, whose empire spanned Mongolia, Manchuria, and part of northern China. Jurchen resentment grew over Liao demands for tribute and the harsh behavior of Liao officials. Aguda, who had inherited leadership of the powerful Wanyan clan, united the Jurchen tribes and began open revolt around 1114, winning early victories against larger Liao forces. The name Jin, usually translated as "gold," was adopted as the name of the new state.

The Song court saw an opportunity. For years it had wanted to recover the Sixteen Prefectures, a strategic region around modern Beijing that the Liao had held since the tenth century. In the early 1120s the Song negotiated an alliance with the Jin, often called the Alliance Conducted at Sea because envoys traveled by ship, in which the Jin would attack the Liao from the north while the Song attacked from the south. The Jin advanced quickly, while Song armies performed poorly. The Liao collapsed by about 1125, and the Jin took most of the territory, which revealed Song military weakness.

Relations soon broke down over disputed territory and payments. Jin armies invaded the Song heartland, and in 1127 they captured the capital, Kaifeng, taking the emperor Qinzong and his retired father Huizong into captivity. This event is known as the Jingkang Incident. A surviving Song prince reestablished the dynasty in the south, beginning the era known as the Southern Song, with its capital eventually at Hangzhou.

The Jin ruled northern China for about a century, adopting many Chinese institutions while trying to preserve Jurchen identity. The two states fought intermittently and later settled into a tense peace, with the Song paying tribute. The Jin were eventually weakened by internal strains and by the rising Mongols, who destroyed the dynasty in 1234. The Jurchen legacy endured in Manchuria, and their descendants, later called Manchus, would found the Qing dynasty in the seventeenth century.