The Origins of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian World Order by Nicolas Tackett (review)

Tackett ingeniously explores the political and cultural space of the Northern Song period (960–1127 c.e.) to demonstrate the rise of a new Chinese identity remarkably similar to the early nationalisms of the Atlantic world. He succeeds in demonstrating the emergence of a national consciousness in the late eleventh century through careful use of textual and archaeological sources.

Tackett's basic argument is that the interstate diplomacy governed by the Chanyuan Oath (1005), which, in the case of eleventh-century China, created a once-only ongoing exchange of embassies between Song China and the Khitan people's Liao dynasty for close to 100 years (1005–1110s). Embassy exchanges exposed Chinese officials to the landscapes, ecologies, and culture of the Khitan (29–73, 246–275, 293–294).¹ Not only were ambassadorial exchanges required by the treaty regime, but bilaterally agreed-upon borders were also created, both of which generated a national consciousness among the political, cultural, and social elite of China, who came to refer to themselves as shidafu ("literati"). Although largely a cultural identity that potentially connected them to all men of China, as well as Chinese officials serving the Liao, it also developed an ethnic component, whereby Chinese came to think of themselves as the Han people and as belonging to the monoethnic country of Zhongguo.

Tackett's analysis converges from two directions: (1) the literature and thinking on nationalism and (2) his own research.² Conceptually, he divides the book into two parts—political space and cultural (sinic) space—to explore the wider implications of the East Asian world order created by the Chanyuan Peace Accords of 1005. Uniquely for Chinese imperial history, the Song and the Liao agreed to diplomatic visits with each other two or three times a year for slightly more than 100 years (51–53, 250, 251). Those who served as ambassadors or associates formed a high proportion of the four senior-most ministers of state in the Northern Song. Through their influence as the pinnacle of political status (often also of cultural status), their new vision of the world spread throughout the elite class, which referred to itself as shidafu and came to see themselves as Han people of the Chinese state and bearers of Chinese "civilized" hua culture (14–15, 159–166).

Policy statements, memorials, embassy reports, travel writings, poetry, and other literary sources collectively reveal the emergence of this national consciousness among the elite. Furthermore, defending themselves against two northern steppe-based states (Khitan Liao and Tangut Xia), as well as fulfilling border demarcation provisions of the Chanyuan Oath with the Khitan Liao, sharpened the Song Chinese sense of themselves as Chinese.

On the cultural side, Tackett shows that by the late eleventh century, the Chinese shidafu elite generally believed that the "lost" territory of Yan was Chinese and should be within the boundaries of the state. As a consequence of the diplomatic exchanges, Song officials passed through the Yan mountains to and from their visits to the steppe capital of the Liao rulers where ecology, ethnicity, culture, and economy all changed from Han style to nomad style north of Yan. Hence, Song officials easily came to understand the geographical boundedness of Chinese culture and the Song state, as well as the ethnic nation and its identification with farming and farming villages (246–275).

The penultimate chapter presents the evidence of 947 tomb reports describing more than 1,000 individual tombs in the area centered on the North China plain during the long eleventh-century. The distribution, contents, and arrangements of these tombs show a strikingly clear dividing line between two different cultures—Chinese and Khitan (211–245, esp. 235). Tackett observes that some of this sharp demarcation between cultures was the result of the Liao policy of separating ethnic groups from each other...