Please note: the version of my thesis available here is an outdated version that I handed in as part of my doctoral examination in November 2013. Please refer to the updated and revised edition published on the Munich University Library's (Universitätsbibliothek der LMU München) theses server in March 2017. It is available under the following link: <https://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20635/>.
The Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Guide for Aid in Government) is the largest comprehensive annals of the history of the empire prior to 1000 A.D.. Conceived as a historical-political guide for aid in governance, the comprehensive annals aimed at describing in detail the complexity of historical processes. The chronological framework established by its author, Sima Guang (1019-86), provides relevance to the representation of the events of the Five Dynasties period (907-960), presenting them as the closure of a story of the rise and decline of the dynasties before the Song. This thesis investigates the process of constructing this last historical segment with a focus on the work of selection of the sources and the construction of the narrative discourses concerning two of the five northern dynasties of the early tenth century, the Later Tang (923-936) and Later Jin (936-946), and their strategies in dealing with the rising power of the Qidan-led Liao dynasty (907-1125).
