The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and world history / by Andrew Chittick.

9780190937577 (electronic book)

New York : Oxford University Press, 2020.

English

1 online resource (456 pages).

DS748.17 .C4985 2020

931.04

This work offers a sweeping reassessment of the Jiankang Empire (third to sixth 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.

This work offers a sweeping reassessment of the Jiankang Empire (third to sixth 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.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on March 30, 2020).

Oxford studies in early empires.
Oxford scholarship online.

Print version: 9780190937546

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