dynasty” in 937, indicating the claim to the Chinese throne.  Considerable regions of North China came at once under the direct rule of the Liao.  As a whole, however, the plan failed:  the feudatory Shih Ching-t’ang tried to make himself independent; Chinese fought the Liao; and the Chinese sceptre soon came back into the hands of a Sha-t’o dynasty (947).  This ended the plans of the Liao to conquer the whole of China.

For this there were several reasons.  A nomad people was again ruling the agrarian regions of North China.  This time the representatives of the ruling class remained military commanders, and at the same time retained their herds of horses.  As early as 1100 they had well over 10,000 herds, each of more than a thousand animals.  The army commanders had been awarded large regions which they themselves had conquered.  They collected the taxes in these regions, and passed on to the state only the yield of the wine tax.  On the other hand, in order to feed the armies, in which there were now many Chinese soldiers, the frontier regions were settled, the soldiers working as peasants in times of peace, and peasants being required to contribute to the support of the army.  Both processes increased the interest of the Kitan ruling class in the maintenance of peace.  That class was growing rich, and preferred living on the income from its properties or settlements to going to war, which had become a more and more serious matter after the founding of the great Sung empire, and was bound to be less remunerative.  The herds of horses were a further excellent source of income, for they could be sold to the Sung, who had no horses.  Then, from 1004 onward, came the tribute payments from China, strengthening the interest in the maintenance of peace.  Thus great wealth accumulated in Peking, the capital of the Liao; in this wealth the whole Kitan ruling class participated, but the tribes in the north, owing to their remoteness, had no share in it.  In 988 the Chinese began negotiations, as a move in their diplomacy, with the ruler of the later realm of the Hsia; in 990 the Kitan also negotiated with him, and they soon became a third partner in the diplomatic game.  Delegations were continually going from one to another of the three realms, and they were joined by trade missions.  Agreement was soon reached on frontier questions, on armament, on questions of demobilization, on the demilitarization of particular regions, and so on, for the last thing anyone wanted was to fight.

Then came the rising of the tribes of the north.  They had remained military tribes; of all the wealth nothing reached them, and they were given no military employment, so that they had no hope of improving their position.  The leadership was assumed by the tribe of the Juchen (1114).  In a campaign of unprecedented rapidity they captured Peking, and the Liao dynasty was ended (1125), a year earlier, as we know, than the end of the Sung.

2 The State of the Kara-Kitai