Changes

The development of paper money resulted from a larger historical process whereby the leaders of the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279) had to devise new ways to compensate for the demand for metal currency that resulted from their expanding economy. In the end, although the Song Dynasty collapsed for a variety of reasons, their use of paper currency was adopted by later Chinese dynasties, eventually spreading to other Asian peoples. Despite having a profound impact on Asian economic history, the paper currency would be one of many inventions/discoveries that never left East Asia and was only discovered in Europe independently several centuries later.

[[File: SongMap.png|300px|thumbnail|left|Map of the Song Dynasty at Its Height with Some of Its Major Cities and Neighbors Shown]]

The Song Dynasty is generally divided by scholars into the Northern Song (960-1279) and the Southern Song (1127-1227), although the Chinese would have seen no such division. The division resulted from pressures from militarily powerful enemies from the north who pushed the Song Dynasty further south. Still, for the most part, there was cultural and political continuity between the Northern and Southern Song. After the Tang Dynasty, the Song came about, which had ruled over a unified China, collapsed in AD 907, ushering in a more than fifty-year period of anarchy and political decentralization in China.