Between the Tang and Song Dynasties: a History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

"Between the Tang and Song Dynasties: A History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms" is a serious work on the chronological history of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. It is not satisfied with telling stories about troubled times, but faces a more challenging question: Is this more than half a century sandwiched between the two dynasties of the Tang and Song dynasties just a transition, or does it have its own independent logic? The core judgment of this book is that the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms were not an accidental split, but an inevitable reorganization after the collapse of the order in the late Tang Dynasty. From the Huangchao Rebellion to the establishment of the Zhao Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, Chinese society experienced a profound renewal of the political ecosystem in the past seventy or eighty years. The old chain of power between the emperor, the imperial court, and prefectures and counties was broken, and new rules were brutally formed in the game between feudal lords, fan soldiers, refugee armed forces, and local powerful people. Behind the saying "Those who have strong troops and horses will do it" is a comprehensive reconstruction of finance, military, personnel and ideology. The book takes the collapse of the late Tang Dynasty as the entrance, the change of the Five Dynasties as the skeleton, and the coexistence of the ten kingdoms as the mirror. It systematically analyzes how the central authority was lost, how the logic of vassal towns dominated the political situation, how the imperial system repeatedly reshaped imperial power, and how the southern countries accumulated economic and cultural power during division. In terms of writing, we pay attention to the combination of institutional analysis and event narrative, strive to have historical data support for every judgment, and avoid replacing historical reality with literary imagination. This work attempts to answer a fundamental question: how the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms became a key link in the transformation of the Tang and Song Dynasties. It not only tells the reader what happened, but also asks why it happened. This is a book for all serious readers.