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

Abstract

Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 80.1 (2020): 282–288 processes by which new opportunities were created: the combination of a reliance upon informal institutions and negotiation, as well as new impulses for centralization set against the backdrop of the limits of state power. Both individuals and the Ming state had specific goals in mind, but both were realistic about their ability to achieve their oftencountervailing goals within the framework of the relatively light formal institutional structure of the imperial bureaucratic system. As Szonyi notes, one of the tragedies of modern China is the wholesale denigration of this system as feudal and backward without recognizing its inherent flexibility and adaptability. The move to utterly dismantle the imperial bureaucratic system in the twentieth century led to tremendous bloodshed and social and economic upheaval, as its ills were emphasized and magnified to suit the centralizing goals of a new imperializing state. This book fits squarely within the corpus of recent English-language scholarship, emphasizing both the flexibility and the continuity of the imperial state and its informal institutions, such as kinship groups and merchant networks, to name just a couple. While one would appreciate a bit more attention toward the dynamism of the military system and its place in Ming society, this book fills an important gap in the English-language scholarship on the social significance of the hereditary Ming military system. It will be essential reading for historians of late imperial China and should be of interest to those more generally interested in early modern social and institutional history.