itories in the east of their country, especially the province
of Shensi, which they had conquered; but they were still able to hold
their own. Their political importance to China, however, vanished, since
they were now divided from southern China and as partners were no longer
of the same value to it. Not until the Mongols became a power did the
Hsia recover some of their importance; but they were among the first
victims of the Mongols: in 1209 they had to submit to them, and in 1227,
the year of the death of Genghiz Khan, they were annihilated.

(4) The empire of the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279)

1 _Foundation_

In the disaster of 1126, when the Juchen captured the Sung capital and
destroyed the Sung empire, a brother of the captive emperor escaped. He
made himself emperor in Nanking and founded the "Southern Sung" dynasty,
whose capital was soon shifted to the present Hangchow. The foundation
of the new dynasty was a relatively easy matter, and the new state was
much more solid than the southern kingdoms of 800 years earlier, for the
south had already been economically supreme, and the great families that
had ruled the state were virtually all from the south. The loss of the
north, i.e. the area north of the Yellow River and of parts of Kiangsu,
was of no importance to this governing group and meant no loss of
estates to it. Thus the transition from the Northern to the Southern
Sung was not of fundamental importance. Consequently the Juchen had no
chance of success when they arranged for Liu Yue, who came of a northern
Chinese family of small peasants and had become an official, to be
proclaimed emperor in the "Ch'i" dynasty in 1130. They hoped that this
puppet might attract the southern Chinese, but seven years later they
dropped him.

2 _Internal situation_

As the social structure of the Southern Sung empire had not been
changed, the country was not affected by the dynastic development. Only
the policy of diplomacy could not be pursued at once, as the Juchen were
bellicose at first and would not negotiate. There were therefore several
battles at the outset (in 1131 and 1134), in which the Chinese were
actually the more successful, but not decisively. The Sung military
group was faced as early as in 1131 with furious opposition from the
greater gentry, led by Ch'in K'ui, one of the largest landowners of all.
His estates were around Nanking, and so in the deployment region and the
region from which most