ABSTRACT
In traditional Chinese and modern Western historiography, the period has been framed as a North-South rivalry between two dynasties that each sought to reunify "China," meaning the empire originally founded by the Qin and Han. The two empires are seen as culturally complementary; for example, the North is characterized as "martial" but lacking in cultural sophistication, while the South is described as more "literary" but lacking in military strength and assertiveness. The empire based at Jiankang had persisted since the founding of the Three Kingdoms state of Wu in the early third century, with only a brief 37-year interregnum of rule by the North under the Western Jin dynasty. Southern urban development was especially spectacular. The southern regimes also emphasized the internal colonization of new lands. The greatest output of non-religious prose writing during the northern and southern period was unquestionably in the genre loosely understood as "history."
