Reign of Emperor Zhezong
Grand Empress Dowager Gao was a firm opponent of the New Policies, the reforms introduced under Shenzong by the chancellor Wang Anshi. As regent she brought conservative statesmen such as Sima Guang back to court, and together they reversed most of the reforms. Sima Guang died in 1086, but the conservatives dominated government for the rest of the regency, the period known by its era name, Yuanyou.
Zhezong had little say while his grandmother lived. After her death in 1093 he took power himself and, from 1094, revived his father's reforms under the chancellor Zhang Dun. The new era name, Shaosheng, meaning roughly “continuing the sage”, announced the change. Leading conservatives were demoted and sent into exile; the poet and statesman Su Shi was banished first to Huizhou and later to Hainan.
Zhezong also took a harder line with the Western Xia. Instead of the accommodating approach of the regency years, the Song resumed campaigns on the north-western frontier and built forts deep into disputed territory, and in 1099 the Western Xia sought peace.
A Divided Court
The quarrel between reformers and conservatives outlasted every attempt to settle it. Each change of government brought purges of the other side, and by Zhezong's reign the argument was as much about faction as about policy.
Many historians see this bitterness as one of the weaknesses that left the Northern Song unable to meet the crisis of the 1120s, when the Jurchen Jin invaded and Kaifeng fell in 1127. Later conservative writers blamed the reforms themselves for the dynasty's collapse, but the division of the court was probably as damaging as any single policy.
For collectors, these decades belong to the great age of Northern Song ceramics. Ding white wares, Yaozhou celadons and Jun wares were all in production, and the Ru kilns that made celadons for the court are generally dated to the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Our collection of Song dynasty porcelain includes Song celadons.
