Cocreating a Frontier Region in the Northern Song:

The State and Local Strongmen in Hewai

This presentation discusses the potential of writing a social history of Song territorial administration in the northern border region called Hewai河外 by focusing on powerful clans such as the Shes 折—often denoted by the term “local strongmen” (tuhao 土豪) in historical sources. It moves away from the assumption that any meaningful study of powerful clans like the Shes must begin with acknowledging that their historical experiences were predominantly, if not exclusively, shaped by their relationship with the Song state. Song frontier policies indeed profoundly impacted the choices the local people made, but it is also important to recognize that the Song state was only one of the players in a region where the movement of communities and shifting alliances were common. In essence, this presentation challenges the prevailing practice of adopting a purely statist, court-centered perspective and argues for a more nuanced approach for delineating the development of Song management of the frontier regions that takes into account the roles that the local inhabitants played in the process.

时间：2025年10月20日（周一）上午9:50-12:00

地点：清华三教3208

ONG Chang Woei is professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. Trained as an intellectual historian, he is the author of Men of Letters within the Passes: Guanzhong Literati in Chinese History, 907-1911 (2008) and Li Mengyang, the North-South Divide and Literati Learning in Ming China (2016), both published by Harvard University Asia Center. He is currently working on a project that examines the roles the geopolitical crisis of the early twelfth century played in shaping the formation and development of Daoxue (Learning of the Way) Neo-Confucianism.