68 China in World History
were deeply committed to the Confucian classics. Perhaps in reaction
against the perceived excesses of the Tang empress Wu, Song emper-
ors prevented threats to their power from their wives and in-laws. And
unlike their Han and Tang predecessors, they suffered no threats to
their power from the eunuchs who served the imperial household.
Yet the Song—because Taizu and his brother, who succeeded him,
elevated their Confucian scholar-offi cials over their military command-
ers—were never as militarily powerful or assertive toward their neigh-
bors as the Han and Tang had been. A powerful nomadic group, the
Khitans, occupied the entire northeast, including much of Mongolia
and Manchuria, and began to adopt Chinese methods of ruling under
a strong leader, Abaoji, who rose to power just as the Tang collapsed.
When Abaoji died in 926, his Chinese Confucian advisors suggested
that his wife should follow him to the grave. She responded that with
only young children in line to succeed him, she would have to remain
alive to carry on his work. But to the astonishment of all, she cut off
one of her hands to be buried with the deceased emperor, proving her
loyalty to him even as she refused to join him in death. She then led
the Khitans on a successful campaign to capture sixteen prefectures
in the area of today’s Beijing, and she proclaimed a new Khitan dynasty,
the Liao.
For the fi rst few decades of the Song dynasty, the Khitan Liao
administered Chinese communities in Chinese style and Khitan nomadic
communities in their traditional tribal ways. They also continuously
threatened Chinese settlements in the north and even managed to wound
the Song emperor in 979. In 1004, after the Liao had successfully occu-
pied much of the Yellow River valley, the Song and Liao courts signed a
treaty meant as an agreement between coequal states. The Liao agreed
to withdraw from their recently occupied territory, and the Song state
agreed to pay the Liao court 200,000 rolls of silk and 100,000 ounces
of silver annually. This was virtual extortion of the weak Song state
by the powerful Liao, but the payments were cheaper than war, and a
small fraction of the Song military budget (which came to absorb over
80 percent of all state spending).
The Khitan Liao was not the only threat to the Song dynasty. To
the northwest the Tanguts, another nomadic group who came from
Tibetan stock, ruled over their own state, the Xi Xia. Like the Khitans,
the Tanguts ruled with a combination of Chinese and nomadic tribal
methods. And like the Khitans, they occupied northern territory once
held by the Tang dynasty and were a continual military threat to the
new Song dynasty. In 1040 the Song court agreed to pay the Tangut Xi