Inner Asian Frontiers of China

by Owen Lattimore, Alastair Lamb (Introduction)

This book, first published in 1940 by the American Geographical Society in its International Research Series, has remained the classic study of the Central Asian region of China from ancient times to the period immediately prior to World War II. In particular, Lattimore examines the effect of
the region's frontier status on its history and development. The book is based on extensive travel and research throughout the region as well as on exhaustive reading in Chinese, Russian, Mongolian and English sources.

Genres: China, History, Politics, Nonfiction

586 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Owen Lattimore was an American author, educator, and influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. From 1963 to 1970, Lattimore was the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds in England, where he taught Chinese History, richly flavoured with personal reminiscences.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

I hunted this book down in a university library. True this was not a difficult feat once I had got the shelf location out of the catalogue, but it would have been the reading journey that lead me to look for it in the first place that would have been the dangerous part - struggling along the slippery paths between the towering footnotes.

Lattimore's book is a treasure trove about the societies on the edge of China. He spent years in the region during the first half of the twentieth century, at times travelling by camel in the remoter parts. In his text he sweeps round from Mongolia taking in Tibet on the way and it is his treatment of Tibet that sticks in my mind.

First a description of the high and arid Tibetan plateau. Then how the coming of Buddhism stabilised Tibet. This was partly achieved by drawing off excess population into monastic life and thereby reducing the potential for population growth but also how the existence of the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama balanced out political rivalries between the north and the south helping to manage intra-regional tensions as the one tended to be old when the other was young and visa versa.

I have no idea how accurate Lattimore's insights were, but they were certainly thought-provoking.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

He’s a large thinker. Thinking doesn’t go out of date, although the archaeology may. The summations of his arguments I’ve read a dozen times in other books didn’t remotely convey to me what’s in here to be found. For years I thought, I don’t have to go to the original... besides you have to hunt up an old copy. Perhaps they are treasured because there weren’t hundreds of them. Turns out, I’ve rarely learnt so much from a single work.

As for how it ages, it’s still cited with respect by Nicola Di Cosmo in Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History, even while he tells us of disproven hypotheses. At least Owen Lattimore can stretch your mind. And he has sentences you want to inscribe on your wall for their graceful cogency.

But I suspect that Owen Lattimore, scholar, traveller, was equipped like no-one else has been – or can be, now – to look at the interworkings of geography and history along the frontier.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

You don't get more old-school expert than Lattimore and this study of China's historical frontiers is good though it feels a little dated to the layperson. His central idea, that the frontiers were fuzzy places where identities and machinations were ambiguous, is nice but might be obvious to China scholars by this point. Inverting ideas of barbarian invasions affecting China's historical evolution as well as views that China adapted to these invasions for its own historical glory, Lattimore believes it was much more complicated than that. He introduces the idea of marginal societies and fuzzy great wall frontier zones where steppe barbarians and Chinese outward-pushers met in a kind of reluctant back-and-forth, dependent on local environments and imperial infrastructure.
I'm probably not doing the idea justice since he spends hundreds of pages elucidating it, with a depth of historical detail that makes the head spin, but it's worth the slog. I'd give it a higher review if it were a little more streamlined. Plus, Latty's distasteful intrusions regarding then-current government policy throw off the reader, too, making it read as if its' some sort of proposal paper.

[Carlos Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

原來不是只有我覺得翻譯有問題。雖然拉鐵摩爾對於上古史一些觀念可能要修正，但他對邊疆跟邊界的定義，還有游牧民族的起源，中國史在游牧與農耕之間的循環與互動，還有中國的地理環境對於這個文明發展的影響與重要性的論述，都給了我非常大的啟發，還是要用力去蕪存菁做筆記！

[Zeitgeist · Rating 5 out of 5]

跳脱出传统中原王朝视角，从环境、社会、经济、政治再看汉、满、蒙、疆、藏，确实很富有启发性。