The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History by Andrew Chittick

The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History by Andrew Chittick

This work offers a sweeping re-assessment of the Jiankang Empire (3rd-6th centuries CE), known as the Chinese "Southern Dynasties." It shows how, although one of the medieval world's largest empires, Jiankang has been rendered politically invisible by the standard narrative of Chinese nationalist history, and proposes a new framework and terminology for writing about medieval East Asia. The book pays particular attention to the problem of ethnic identification, rejecting the idea of "ethnic Chinese," and delineating several other, more useful ethnographic categories, using case studies in agriculture/foodways and vernacular languages. The most important, the Wuren of the lower Yangzi region, were believed to be inherently different from the peoples of the Central Plains, and the rest of the book addresses the extent of their ethnogenesis in the medieval era. It assesses the political culture of the Jiankang Empire, emphasizing military strategy, institutional cultures, and political economy, showing how it differed from Central Plains-based empires, while having significant similarities to Southeast Asian regimes. It then explores how the Jiankang monarchs deployed three distinct repertoires of political legitimation (vernacular, Sinitic universalist, and Buddhist), arguing that the Sinitic repertoire was largely eclipsed in the sixth century, rendering the regime yet more similar to neighboring South Seas states. The conclusion points out how the research re-orients our understanding of acculturation and ethnic identification in medieval East Asia, generates new insights into the Tang-Song transition period, and offers new avenues of comparison with Southeast Asian and medieval European history.

The book is bound to stimulate debate and inspire exciting research across these fields* Andreas Janousch, Autonomous University of Madrid, Journal of the American Oriental Society *
An ambitious book * TIAN Xiaofei, Journal of Chinese Studies *

Andrew Chittick is the E. Leslie Peter Professor of East Asian Humanities and History at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL. A native of California, he received his PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 1997. He is the author of Patronage and Community in Medieval China: The Xiangyang Garrison, 400-600 CE (SUNY Press, 2010). He is currently working on maritime interchanges between Sino-Southeast Asia and the Malay world in the first millennium CE.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780190937546
ISBN 10	0190937548
Title	The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History
Author	Andrew Chittick
Series	Oxford Studies In Early Empires
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press Inc
Year published	2020-04-09
Number of pages	424
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.