Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c.400 BCE–50 CE by Erica Fox Brindley (review)

This book is very well researched, with copious detail and documentation. Scholars will appreciate it, but the general reader will find it difficult going at times. As someone who has researched archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic aspects of the Yue (越, often transcribed "Yüeh"; also the "Viet" in Vietnam) for decades, I found much in Brindley's book that was useful and informative. Her analysis of textual evidence is impressive, albeit selective, as she contrasts classical Chinese or Huaxia identity with that of the southern peoples collectively labelled "Yue" or "Bai-Yue" (百越, Hundred Yue). Her summaries of the political-military intrigues and clashes involving the Yue kingdoms, fiefdoms, ruling elites and the Central States and Han Empire are well written, though, as with all imperial history, the constantly recurring coups, plots and betrayals eventually become a blur. She skilfully teases out elements of this history that may relate to Yue identity from the narratives, and from the inevitable bias of Chinese writers.

I found it difficult to get started with the book. The introduction will put off all but the most dedicated researcher, with its "Concepts and Frameworks"; frequent lapses into jargon, including a section entitled "Inscribing Difference: Identity as an Ascribed Taxonomic Landscape"; and long-winded discourse on defining various "ethnonyms". The section on Yue historiography is more readable. But Brindley's description of one of my favourite works, Schafer's The Vermilion Bird (1967), proved a slightly daunting indicator of what was to come: "while delightful and of great value, [Schafer's book] does not provide a higher-level interpretive framework for understanding … dynamic transformations of identity and ethnicity" (p. 19). Another irritant to me was the use of politically correct bce/ce, an unnecessary affectation. Finally, there was the incredible statement, "As history tells us, the natives of early Taiwan disembarked during Neolithic times from Taiwan and set about on a series of intensive maritime migrations across the entire Pacific and Indian Oceans" (p. 25). This is not just a whopper; history tells us no such thing. But it was also a bad omen, as the next chapter of the book is devoted to "linguistic prehistory" (pp. 45–61). It promotes the current consensus, approaching unmerited status of dogma, on an Austronesian homeland on Taiwan.

Much space is given to Sagart's wild speculations, contrary to archaeological evidence, about migrations back to the mainland and to the very weak claim that the Tai language family derived from "pre-Austronesian". Brindley does not even mention the opposing view — notably that of Solheim and of this reviewer on the archaeological evidence, Oppenheimer and Richards on DNA — that the Austronesians originated to the south, in the present-day Philippines and Indonesia.

And, one might ask, what does all this have to do with the Yue and ancient China? In my view, nothing! Taiwan was not part of ancient or even medieval China, Taiwan aboriginals were never referred to as Yue, and the languages certain to have been spoken by the Yue are early forms of Tai, Vietnamese and Miao-Yao. It is odd that the author pursued such tangents in space; in time, back to the Neolithic; and in fancy, locating "pre-Austronesian" on the mainland, but then stopped the Yue story abruptly at ad 50. The thousand years thereafter are a rich vein of ethnographic information on the Yue peoples that she could have exploited.

The book handles the archaeological record better, but speculations concerning Austronesian still intrude on occasion. There are good summaries of key archaeological sites and cultures, but several interpretations are questionable, as when Brindley writes that "the peoples associated with these more complex material cultures to the north had yet to migrate down the coast.… Or, it could be the case that both linguistic and material transfers … seeped southward [without migration]" (p. 68). And then...