Massive numbers of people migrate from the…
1132 CE
Massive numbers of people migrate from the north with the removal of the Song capital far south to Hangzhou.
Southern China’s mountainous terrain, riddled with lakes and rivers, is largely a hindrance and inhospitable to widespread agriculture, in contrast to the flat plains of the north.
The Southern Song therefore begin to assume a unique maritime presence that had been largely unseen in earlier dynasties, grown of the need to secure importation of foreign resources.
Commercial cities (located along the coast and by internal rivers), backed by patronage of the state, dramatically increase shipbuilding activity (funding harbor improvements, warehouse construction, and navigation beacons).
Navigation at sea has been made easier by the invention of the compass and Shen Kuo's treatise of the eleventh century on the concept of true north (with magnetic declination towards the North Pole).
China has a long naval history (e.g., the Battle of Red Cliffs in 208), and even during the Northern Song era there had been concerns with naval matters, as seen in examples such as the Chinese official Huang Huaixin of the Xining Reign (1068–1077) outlining a plan of employing a drydock for repair of 'imperial dragon boats'.
Already during the Northern Song Dynasty, the Chinese had established fortified trade bases in the Philippines, a noted interest of the court to expand China's military power and economic influence abroad.
Provincial armies in the Northern Song era also maintained naval river units.
However, it is the Southern Song court that is the first to create a large, permanent standing naval institution for China in 1132.
The new headquarters of the Southern Song Chinese admiralty is based at Dinghai, the office labeled as the Yanhai Zhizhi Shisi (Imperial Commissariat for the Control and Organization of Coastal Areas).
Even in 1129, officials had proposed ambitious plans to conquer Korea with a new navy and use Korea as a base for launching invasions into Jin territory, but this scheme will never be achieved and is of secondary importance to maintaining defense along the fluctuating border with Jin.
The writer Zhang Yi wrote in 1131 that China must regard the Sea and the River as her Great Wall, and substitute warships for watchtowers.
Indeed, the court administration at Hangzhou lives up to this ideal, and will be successful for a time in employing their navy to defend their interests against an often hostile neighbor to the north.