1069

1061 1062 1063 1064 1065 1066 1067 1068 1069 1070

political events

England's William I puts down a great rising in the north of Saxons who have won Danish support (see 1068). The Normans confiscate Saxon lands and establish their feudal superiority in the "harrying of the north" that devastates and depopulates a strip of territory from York to Durham.

Godrey, duke of Upper Lorraine, dies. His hunchbacked son, also named Godfrey, marries Matilda of Canossa, now 23, who has been living with her mother, Beatrice, in the ducal household in Lorraine. Her child will die in infancy, and Matilda will return to her native Tuscany, where she will rule with her mother until the latter's death in 1076 (see 1077).

Seville's second Abbadid sultan al-Mutaid dies after a 27-year reign in which he has greatly enlarged the realm; he is succeeded by his learned and capable 42-year-old son, who will reign until 1091 as Muhammad Ii al-Mutamid, making the city a center of Spanish-Muslim culture (see 1071). The Abbasids take the city of Córdoba, whose citizens gladly hand over their sovereign Abd al-Malik and his father ar-Rashid, ending the Jahwarid dynasty that has ruled since the abolition of the Umayyad caliphate in 1031.

commerce

Japan's new emperor Gosanjō establishes a records office (korokujo) and orders it to scrutinize the legal titles of great landed estates, some of the largest of which are owned by members of the Fujiwara family. Gosanjō's objective is to reform the Fujiwara-controlled government (but see 1072).

China's prime minister Wang An-shi, 48, reforms the government of the new Song (Sung) dynasty emperor Shen Zong (Shen Tsung) by cutting the imperial budget 40 percent and raising salaries to make it possible for ordinary government officials to afford to be honest. He and the emperor expand the country's military by ordering that local militia groups be trained in the villages, procuring horses and assigning them to peasant families in North China on condition that each family select one of its young men to serve in the cavalry in times of national emergency.

China's prime minister Wang An-shi and the emperor Shen Zong (Shen Tsung) commission land studies in an effort to correct tax inequities, make low-interest loans available to peasants; institute a program of purchasing manufactured goods in one region and selling them in another in order to increase government revenues; and empower the nation's chief transport officer to accept taxes in cash or in kind in order to avoid excessive transport costs and control prices.

agriculture

Prime Minister Wang An-shi begins a radical program to reform Chinese agriculture after finding the nation's granaries stocked with emergency stocks of relief grain valued at 15 million strings of cash. He offers poor farmers loans at 2 percent interest per month in cash or grain to free them from usurers and monopolists, who charge higher rates, and he gives his chief transport officer power to sell from state granaries when prices are high and to buy when prices are low. Wang is a protégé of the poet-historian-statesman Ouyang Xiu (Ou-yang Hsiu), who opposes Wang's reforms and refuses to carry them out in his districts.

Japan's new emperor Gosanjō prohibits cultivation of wastelands without imperial permission and orders the confiscation of lands illegally tilled by aristocrats such as the Fujiwaras.

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