Imaginaries of Empire and Memories of Collapse

Abstract

Producing parallel narratives of the fall of Kaifeng in 1127 and the sack of Constantinople in 1204, Ye Mengde 葉夢得 (1077–1148) and Niketas Choniates (c.1155–1217) chronicled the collapse of these imperial centres in an effort to reconstruct post-conquest political communities in exile. While Ye and Niketas were deploying different conceptual frameworks of political authority and literary blueprints for memoirs, their writings documented personal displacement as well as cultural and political trauma writ large. By recording and commemorating the chain of events that culminated in the collapse of the Northern Song and Byzantine Empires, both authors were converting oral anecdotes into cultural memory. Ye and Niketas devised ex post facto explanations for the fall of Kaifeng and Constantinople as the consequence of the actions of failed monarchs and corrupt courtiers — and, to a lesser extent — the forces of divine punishment.