1: Revenge for the Jingkang Calamity 靖康之難 (1126-1127)? Reinterpreting the Emotional Responses and Motivations of Refugees During the Early Southern Song

The sudden collapse of the Northern Song was devastating to the literati elite, and the Jingkang Calamity became one of the most iconic events in the Song history. Modern scholarship has adopted a narrative in which irredentism features prominently, suggesting that the majority of Song subjects sought the retaking of lost northern land from the Jurchens, but peacemakers strangled the efforts to achieve this. By re-examining the emotions and primary concerns of the early Southern Song elites through the lens of literary works, this paper challenges the prevailing irredentism narrative to provide a fresh perspective on early Southern Song.

Elites from different regions exhibited a variety of concerns and emotions. Elites from the south, for example, who had not experienced the Jingkang Calamity firsthand, had different priorities more connected to their localities, compared to their northern counterparts, who experienced the Jurchen invasion much earlier. However, overall, explicit mentions of the term “revenge” (復仇/仇) are generally absent in the writings of Jingkang Calamity survivors in the early Southern Song.

This paper argues that“revenge” was rarely, if ever, a prominent emotional stance or response to the Jurchen invasion and that revenge was likely not the primary motivation for the majority of these survivors. By contrast, sorrow, lamentation, and resentment appeared more frequently in the writings of survivors. Rather than the emphasis on irredentism portrayed in modern scholarship, these intertwined emotions more authentically reflect the experiences of refugees during and after the Jingkang Calamity.