Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power, and Connections, 580-800

by Jonathan Karam Skaff

Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors challenges readers to reconsider China's relations with the rest of Eurasia. Investigating interstate competition and cooperation between the successive Sui and Tang dynasties and Turkic states of Mongolia from 580 to 800, Jonathan Skaff upends the notion that inhabitants of China and Mongolia were irreconcilably different and hostile to each other. Rulers on both sides deployed strikingly similar diplomacy, warfare, ideologies of rulership, and patrimonial political networking to seek hegemony over each other and the peoples living in the pastoral borderlands between them. The book particularly disputes the supposed uniqueness of imperial China's tributary diplomacy by demonstrating that similar customary norms of interstate relations existed in a wide sphere in Eurasia as far west as Byzantium, India, and Iran. These previously unrecognized cultural connections, therefore, were arguably as much the work of Turko-Mongol pastoral
nomads traversing the Eurasian steppe as the more commonly recognized Silk Road monks and merchants. This interdisciplinary and multi-perspective study will appeal to readers of comparative and world history, especially those interested in medieval warfare, diplomacy, and cultural studies.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction

432 pages, Hardcover

First published June 22, 2012

Reviews

[Dimitrios Souvan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. The topic is one which really fascinates me. There is a lot of information in here regarding the relationships between the Tang dynasty (who themselves are partially Xianbei) and how the politics works in the various border areas. The information here is really something that is hard to come across. It is a good book to start bridging your knowledge to the next step up. I have a greater understanding of the border society and deep cultural differences amongst the various groups as well as the complexity of the entire geographical and political situation

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

...review to follow...

The argument: "that these China-based and Mongolia-based states had 'entangled histories' resulting from centuries of diplomacy, competition and incorporation of pastoral nomads in North China."
The method: "close readings of millennium-old texts and artifacts... with an eye to finding evidence, particularly anecdotes, that reveals the actual thought and behavior of people living in China and Inner Asia." He goes on to liken his method to the 'thick description' of ethnography.