Tolerance and Stubbornness: the Reformer Sima Guang and the Politics of the Northern Song Dynasty

About This Novel

This book takes the growth trajectory, life experience, and social activities of Sima Guang, a historian, politician, and great Confucian of the Northern Song Dynasty, as the core. It tells the historical changes of the five dynasties that his life spanned from Zhenzong, Renzong, Yingzong, Shenzong, and Zhezong, as well as the interactions, grievances, and entanglements of famous officials in the political arena of the Northern Song Dynasty such as Wang Anshi, Fan Zhongyan, Ouyang Xiu, Bao Zheng, and the Su Shi brothers. Professor Zhao Dongmei, an expert on the history of the Song Dynasty at Peking University, relied on years of research on the history of the Song Dynasty. He traced Sima Guang's family origins and narrated in detail his life experiences from his first official career to his rise to prominence, to becoming a high-ranking minister, and even to the high position of prime minister, thus influencing the historical direction of the Song Dynasty. Focusing on key figures, the author pays attention to the large-scale historical context and the spirit of scholar-bureaucrats in small-scale historical writing. He picks up a crucial period of history in the Song Dynasty, and reveals the subtle official ecology, complicated political entanglements, intricate factional disputes, prominent social problems, and even the dilemmas and directions faced by the era and individuals during this period. In the era, the elites tried to find a way out of the strange circle of "dynasty change" , in the process of exploring solutions, resolving conflicts and disputes, and finding a way out for the long-term peace and stability of this dynasty, it unearths the complex human nature and more complicated struggles of interests behind the seemingly pure and moderate beauty. It leads us to see clearly in the changing situation, when individuals make judgments and choices in aspects such as self-cultivation and officialdom, reform and conservatism, governance and prosperity, etc., While also understanding the prosperity and worries, solutions and dilemmas of the Song Dynasty 80 years after the founding of the Song Dynasty.

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