Frontiers and Boundaries ― Encounters on China's Margins

Rajkai (Ritsumeikan U. College of International Relations, Japan) and Beller-Hann (cross-cultural and regional studies, U. of Copenhagen, Denmark) bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds--e.g., historians, archaeologists, folklorists, anthropologists, art historians, and region specialists--to explore China from the perspective of political borders, borderlands, and frontiers. Presented in roughly chronological context, ten papers examine such topics as the architectural relationship between Tang and eastern Uighur imperial cities; Buddhist and pseudo-Buddhist expressions in the Chinese Manichaean Hymnscroll; non-Chinese influences in medieval Chinese manuscript culture, early 15th-century Sino-Central Asian relations; border defense, border inspection, and foreign embassies in the Ming period; the functioning of the pass system in Sino-Japanese Trade in early modern times; Muslim historiography across boundaries in Central Eurasia; Islamic legal order in the northwestern frontier; state-society relations and differentiating Uighur marginality in China's northwest; and a Buriad (a subgroup of the Mongols) community within a Russian-Chinese frontier space. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)