The Cambridge History of China. Volume 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368 (review)

Reviews 403 -----------. 1991. "Dialectics ofAlienation: Individuals and Collectivities in Chinese Religion." Man 26:67-86. Schipper, Kristofer. 1993. Le Corps Taoïste. Paris: Fayard, 1982. Reprint, The Taoist Body. Trans. Karen C. Duval. Foreword by Norman Girardot. Berkeley: University of California Press. Watson, James. 1988. "The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites: Elementary Forms, Ritual Sequence , and the Primacy of Performance." In James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, eds., Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press. The Cambridge History ofChina. Volume 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368. Edited by Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1994. xxix, 864 pp. Hardcover $120.00, isbn 0-521-24331-9. As the only one among the published volumes of The Cambridge History ofChina that especially addresses the role ofnon-Chinese peoples in Chinese history, volume 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368, is a tremendous contribution to the study of Chinese history in general. This volume explores the "second period ofextensive foreign dominance in China" (p. 43), which began during the Khitan conquest of China's northern border at the beginning of the tendi century and reached its climax with the Mongol conquest and control ofall China from 1279 to 1368. It provides a deep, insightful examination ofthe Khitan Liao, the Tangut Hsi Hsia, die Jurchen Chin, and die Mongol Yuan, under the category of "alien regimes and border states," in an effort to present a comprehensive account of their relation to the Chinese court and society. As a valuable addition to the works that reflect "the Western revolution in Chinese studies" (p. vi), this volume offers a resolution to a special problem ofWestern historians of Chinese civilization : its extent and complexity, compounded by die intense involvement of alien powers. The leading specialists who contributed to this first comprehensive history for all ofthe regimes under discussion have ushered in a new and important development in the study of China, in which these alien regimes and states are indispensable to, but often difficult to fix in, a history identified as "Chinese." Occupying the geographical area from Manchuria to today's Kansu and bor-© 1996 by University dering on China proper in the north and the west, the four regimes were all esojHawai ? Presstablished bynon-Chinese ruling groups with military and tribal origins. Among them, the Liao, Chin, and Yuan are defined together as "states ofconquest in China," with the Hsi Hsia identified as an independent state. All of these groups 404 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 retained their distinct cultural identity while their regimes ruled over a multiethnic state that included Han Chinese populations. Whereas the territories controlled by the Liao, Chin, and Yuan had long been ruled by the Chinese, die Hsi Hsia territory had never been effectively ruled by a Chinese dynasty, but its peoples were familiar with Chinese institutions. The opening page of the volume presents the sound claim that the alien regimes were all "remarkably successful," each in its own way. The Khitan Liao, with its political heart located in its home grasslands, lasted for more than two centuries, "longer than had any previous Chinese dynasty, except for the Han and the T'ang" (p. 1). The Tangut Hsi Hsia also survived for two centuries more. The Jurchen Chin became a Chinese dynasty by establishing die central capital inside China proper, far from the tribal home territories in the northeast. By the time of Khubilai Khan, China as a whole had become but one part of a larger Mongol empire. The region around Peking remained in alien hands for well over four centuries, and the western part of Kansu Province, for six centuries. Alien Regimes starts with a forty-two page Introduction, which provides the theoretical oudine of the book, followed by one chapter each on the Liao, the Hsi Hsia, and the Chin. The six remaining chapters, the heavy balance of the book, focus on the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols. The significance of each alien regime in Chinese and East Asian history is conclusively studied. The Khitan controlled "a small and peripheral part of China proper," but "blocked China's direct communication with...