Memorial Of Yellow River Harness Research Of Northern Song Dynasty

The phenomenon of Yellow River's overflowed was more and more serious in the end of Tang Dynasty to Song Dynasty. The Yellow River changed four major channels during the 168-year history of Northern Song Dynasty. Bring the Yellow River under control is an important issue of Northern Song court. Emperor and minister had involved in the discussion about how to control the Yellow River after Shanghu breaching of dyke. Northern Song officials actively passed on the river programs. Particularly in the Renzong, Shenzong, Zhezong dynasties, the Yellow River changed the channel and flooded toward north to the sea which made a spectacular discussion phenomenon among the officials, and some insisted on maintaining the flow of old course others did not agree. Harnessing Yellow River Discussion only refers to the Northern Song Dynasty officials'programs about how to harness the Yellow River.This paper is divided into three chapters: the first chapter summarizes the Yellow River's overflow arming for the Transitional period of Northern Song Dynasty. The importance of the second chapter is decision-making process and the implementation of the results based on the two views-north flow and east flow. And then, I analyze the influence on the effects of harnessing river based on the discussion. Finally, the third chapter mainlyr studies the political, economic and military factors in the Harnessing the Yellow River Discussion and try to reveal the racial causes of failure in harnessing the Yellow River of Northern Song Dynasty.The political factor: the officials of Northern Song Dynasty nursed aspirations to sever motherland and proposed many suggestions on how to harness the Yellow River, their suggestions were private and profit-making. And in that time, party struggles were quite sharp. Above-mentioned reasons led the harnessing river program to the wrong side. The economic factor: the Northern Song government consumed manpower and material resources costly, and part of officials regardless of lower Yellow River having a high silt situation, they still insisted on changing the river. The real reason of action is protecting Hebei province- hinterland areas of the Northern Song Dynasty which took on the main agricultural production and Perimeter Imperial River water transport. The military factor: some ministers insisted that north flow is benefit for " Khitan and loss of China. They wanted to defense the Khitan ,so they argued back east of the river flow, resulting in the failure of harnessing the Yellow River.There were objective laws to harness the Yellow River, which should have been regarded as an absolute technical issue. However, so many subjective factors influenced the result of harnessing the Yellow River that resulted in a falling operation at last. The importance for us is to analyses of the failure causes of harnessing the Yellow River. The root cause of failure is opposing an natural system. These outmoded methods left a profound impression on us and our contemporary society.