Stephanie Balkwill’s The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century is an ambitious and thought-provoking volume that packs a lot of material into its slim sub-300-page package.

Balkwill sets out three inter-related objectives for her book. First, she seeks to tell “the story of the emergence of public and political roles for women brought about through the arrival of Buddhism to East Asia, the advent of multi-ethnic states and multi-cultural cities, and the reinvention of cultural and political traditions that came about as a result” (4). Second, Balkwill attempts to “excavate the details … insofar as it is historically possible” (4) of the life of Northern Wei Empress Dowager Ling, who reigned from 515 until her death in 528. Third, she “suggest[s] a method of historical scholarship” that she calls “Buddhist feminist historiography.” The method relies primarily on “historically contextualized Buddhist sources as a means of asking critical questions about women’s lives in history” (8).

The Women Who Ruled China sits at the intersection of political, women’s, and religious history, so it uses a wide range of primary sources throughout. Adding the perspectives of Buddhist sources such as sūtras, donor inscriptions, entombed biographies, images, statuary, and Yang Xuanzhi’s Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Luoyang (Luoyang qielan ji) to the Ruist/Confucian views found in the “normative sources” (like the standard dynastic histories) allows Balkwill to “bring to life a political history” (9), presenting views that were either inaccessible to Ruist historians, or at odds with their political and/or historiographical objectives. Balkwill outlines her three-part method of reading the Buddhist sources. First, she recognizes that they are not “unproblematic,” and must be placed in their historical context by cross-reading them against other sources. Yet second, while much of their information differs substantially from the normative sources, there is no reason to suspect that the information is incorrect. Third, Balkwill attends to the ways that the Buddhist texts shape notions of virtue, rank, and prestige (90). Likewise, she reads critically the normative sources.

In addition to a wealth of primary sources, Balkwill utilizes and engages with a very large corpus of relevant modern scholarship in Western languages, Chinese, and Japanese. Not merely relegated to the bibliography, endnotes, or a “historiography section,” scholarship on China’s early medieval history, women’s studies, art history, Buddhist studies, religious studies, etc. by many of the leading scholars in the field informs the body of the text. Most often, Balkwill uses this scholarship to support and enhance her narrative and claims, but occasionally she respectfully offers alternate conclusions. In her treatment of secondary scholarship, Balkwill sets a wonderful example of academic discourse as a “conversation among scholars,” one that I plan to highlight to my students when using her book in my classes.

Balkwill expands her focus beyond the primary subject of the book, Empress Dowager Ling, by comparing her to other women who ruled, some of them beyond the chronological scope of the book’s subtitle. In fact, the book’s main argument is comparative: Empress Dowager Ling was “an unrecognized predecessor to Wu Zetian/Emperor Wu Zhao” (2). The Introduction begins with a description of a Chinese female ruler, her capital city, and her relationship with Buddhism, before noting that the book is not about the most famous female ruler in Chinese history, Wu Zhao, but rather a much less familiar empress dowager from the earlier Northern Wei period, although the paragraph in question accurately describes both female rulers. Wu Zhao appears frequently throughout the book, as Balkwill shows that much of what she is famous for had been done previously by Empress Dowager Ling. A number of other women illustrate subsidiary arguments. They include Empress Jia Nanfeng (d. 300) of the Western Jin; Empress Dowager Wenming (442–90) of the Northern Wei; the famous “woman warrior” Mulan; an unnamed granddaughter placed on the throne by Empress Dowager Ling in 528; the empress dowager’s aunt-nun Sengzhi (d. 516); and later East Asian Buddhist woman rulers such as Queen Seondeok of Silla (r. 632–47), and Empress Suiki (r. 592–628) and Empress Kōken (r. 749–58)/Shōtoku (r. 764–70) of Japan. In particular, the lives and activities of Empress Dowager Wenming and the nun Sengzhi set both the stage and context for Empress Dowager Ling’s rise to power, and this story then further sets the stage and context for Wu Zhao’s rule during the Tang period. The historical comparisons do not end with women, however, as Balkwill discusses important similarities between Empress Dowager Ling and her contemporary southern counterpart the noted patron of Buddhism Emperor Wu of Liang (r. 502–50) (oddly omitted from the book’s index), and compares the Empress Dowager Ling to Emperor Ling (r. 167–89) of the Eastern Han dynasty.

The book is well-organized, well-written, and deeply engaging. The Introduction lays out a roadmap of the book, including clear statements of the main arguments of each chapter. The introduction, alone, suffices to make the book accessible to student or general readers.

Chapter 1, “Luoyang Reborn” draws heavily from Yang Xuanzhi’s commemorative Record of the Monasteries of Luoyang to situate the empress dowager within her capital city and the history of the Northern Wei dynasty. Here, Balkwill provides a concise historical overview of the Taghbach rise and rule, paying attention to Sinification and Buddhist patronage as legitimization activities by the Northern Wei rulers. Steering the discussion toward the empress dowager, Balkwill argues that “the roles of women in public life were rearticulated through the merging of Taghbach, Han, and Buddhist cultural forms in the latter half of the dynasty” (40).

Chapter 2, “A Woman of Power, Remembered Poorly,” focuses on the life of Empress Dowager Ling as depicted in normative histories, primarily Wei Shou’s Book of the Wei (Wei shu). Here, Balkwill translates the empress dowager’s biography in segments, offering detailed commentary following each translated passage. Her discussion of how and why Wei Shou scapegoated Empress Dowager Ling by reducing her life story to a series of historiographic tropes is interesting and important, and leads to the chapter’s most significant argument:

Balkwill will return to this historiographic argument again in her Conclusion, but more immediately, it leads to Chapter 3, which critically reinterprets her life and reign as informed by Buddhist sources. “Brought to Court by a Nun” focuses primarily on the empress dowager’s aunt, Sengzhi, who crafted spaces of power and influence at the Northern Wei court, and was directly responsible for Empress Dowager Ling’s placement among the ranks of palace women. The account of Sengzhi’s life is based on her entombed biography, translated and analyzed. Balkwill contextualizes Sengzhi’s activities at court and in the monastery, and discusses in detail the female social networks that Sengzhi helped to create and utilize. Balkwill argues that “all-female networks function[ed] to increase the social opportunities afforded to women of the court and doing so through refuge in the institution of the Buddhist monastery” (105).

Chapter 4, “A Girl on the Throne” does much of the heavy lifting of the book. It attempts to explain why Empress Dowager Ling placed her granddaughter on the throne as emperor in 528. Balkwill addresses this question from many perspectives. First, she discusses several Buddhist texts in circulation at the time that justified female rule (namely, the Sūtra of the Woman, “Silver Countenance,” Sūtra of Vimalī, and Sūtra on the Prophecy of Kṣemavati). A discussion of the divergent views about gender among the Han and Taghbach follows, with Balkwill examining women with “male-evoking” names and the story of Mulan to wonder, “Did they [the Taghbach] know a form of gender that was tied less to physical sex than to social and family location?” (117). She argues that the Taghbach had a “concept of social or honorary maleness to categorize women who, in the lack of male kin, behave as men in society and take on male names and male work” (118). From here, Balkwill moves to a discussion of the readiness of women for Buddhahood, and includes accounts of female-to-male transformation as part of the path (124–127). She considers bodhisattvas as women, women as bodhisattvas, and the bodhisattva/Buddha of the future Maitreya. For those familiar with the story of Wu Zhao, all of these texts and concepts will seem familiar. Balkwill argues clearly and convincingly that “All the same pieces that allowed Emperor Wu Zhao to identify herself as a female monarch—including the Great Cloud Sūtra—were also in play at the time Empress Dowager Ling placed her granddaughter on the throne” (137). While it is not a “smoking gun” answer to the chapter’s overarching question, the combined weight of the evidence presented makes for a plausible argument.

Chapter 5, “No Salvation in Buddhism,” addresses the death and legacy of Empress Dowager Ling comparatively by posing another big question: Why was Wu Zhao’s reign “successful” and Empress Dowager Ling’s not? The short and easy answer is “long-brewing political instability” (138), but Balkwill argues that there is more. This “more” is found in the contrast between “common Buddhism” as practiced among the Northern Wei populous (and likely by the empress dowager herself), and “court Buddhism” utilized as a legitimization tool by court elites. Common Buddhism had been linked to ten popular uprisings during the Northern Wei, and court elites were rightly suspicious, so their patronage of Buddhism came with “strings” as they also sought to regulate it. Balkwill argues:

From here, the chapter shifts into a discussion of the empress dowager’s legacy, beginning with the manner in which Wei Shou and later Tang era Buddhist writers treated her patronage and practice of Buddhism. The chapter concludes with an examination of her posthumous designation “Ling” (靈). Noting the many meanings of the character in Confucian and Buddhist contexts, Balkwill shows how the empress dowager herself embraced the term and its positive Buddhist connotations (“divine inspiration and efficacy”) during her own lifetime, and how immediately after her death, the term became her posthumous designation, echoing the negative Confucian connotations drawn from the failed reign of Emperor Ling of Han (“under the influence of dishonorable court servants, thereby ignoring his duties in favor of wine, women, and song”) and a contemporary Northern Wei male courtier who also was designated as “Ling” (“Insubordinate”) (160–164).

The Women Who Ruled China closes with a brief Conclusion that ties together a number of threads that run throughout the book. The work ends on two additional historiographical notes. First, Balkwill calls for a new feminist periodization, arguing that “historians of East Asia would be well served by engaging with new, feminist, modalities of periodization that characterize points of cultural change in the lives of historical persons who traditionally have not controlled the writing of historical and historiographical documents—in this case, women” (174). Second, she criticizes the traditional Ruist modes of history writing that made it difficult to find the full story of the exceptional life of Empress Dowager Ling, arguing, “That we do not find her story in normative historical and historiographical sources is not her failure; rather, it is the failure of the men who wrote about her and who employed a strategy of ‘great men’ in history in their own writing” (177).

Stephanie Balkwill has written an engaging book on a generally unknown and understudied figure, linking her life and its traditional representation to broader questions about politics, women, gender, Han and Taghbach cultures, and Buddhist patronage and practice during the early medieval period, all the while bringing well-known figures such as Wu Zhao and Mulan into the discussion. Balkwill casts a broad net in terms of primary sources, and in so doing brings the evidentiary worlds of historians, art historians, and Buddhist studies scholars together in a way that exemplifies the interdisciplinary approach necessary for the study of China’s early medieval age. Her readings of the texts are careful and critical, and her conclusions are thought-provoking and convincing. Likewise, as noted above, Balkwill utilizes and engages with the works of many of the experts in the early medieval China fields in a way that is also exemplary. The bibliography reflects the current state of the field. The writing is clear, the organization effective, and the overall effect of the book is exciting. I look forward to assigning this book to my students, and the fact that there is an open access version available is another plus. I do wish that the translation of the Book of the Wei biography of Empress Dowager Ling were presented in one piece, perhaps as an appendix, to facilitate its stand-alone use in the classroom.

Balkwill meets and exceeds her goals for the book. The fields of early medieval Chinese studies, Tang studies, Buddhist studies, and women’s studies, just to name the most relevant, are the richer for having this fine piece of scholarship available. It should be required reading for graduate students, and undergraduates and non-specialist readers alike will also understand and enjoy it.