Paul Nietupski's long-anticipated interdisciplinary project on Labrang Monastery exceeds expectations in its meticulous research and accessible writing-style. Drawing upon Chinese and Tibetan written sources, oral histories and relevant secondary scholarship, Labrang Monastery: A Tibetan Buddhist Community on the Inner Asian Borderlands, 1709–1958 contributes to Qing and Republican era socio-political history rooted in the local.

The introduction aptly situates this regional history within the larger context of Qing politics by focusing on issues of local authority, questions of sovereignty and promoting the concept of segmented politics within the vast Qing Empire. As Nietupski states, “Even though Qing military power was enormous, specific Qing ideologies and political structures were not implemented in the Labrang Community at large…Central China and the surrounding regions including Amdo were not parts of a cohesive unit, instead they were segmented territories…” (p. xxi). This sets the groundwork for the first chapter, which provides an historical overview of Amdo, the Tibetan-language term for the larger geographical/cultural/political area in which Labrang is situated. The choice of using this common Tibetan-language terminology serves to highlight the development of a Tibetan worldview—promoted by Tibetans, Mongols, Manchu, and some Chinese—supporting the establishment of Labrang Monastery in 1709.

Chapter 2 delves into the institutional composition of Labrang Monastery with a brief overview of its various colleges and a solid introduction to its curriculum. Labrang Monastery is known for its commitment to literary scholarship producing an array of savants, including the Third Gungtang lama, Könchok Tenpé Drönmé (1762–1823), among others.

Moving away from the monastic elite, Chapter 3 provides a wealth of information on the societal mechanisms that allowed for the functioning of the larger Labrang community as well as the monastery itself. This much-neglected area of inquiry is one of the work's major contributions. Labrang is mapped using three different interlinked methods: 1) within the Tibetan cultural/political sphere; 2) geographically on the Tibetan plateau; and 3) on the borderlands of Tibetan, Mongol, Chinese and Manchu empires. This useful heuristic device shows that “in spite of its shortcomings, Labrang served as a governing institution” (p. 96). Emerging from the details on vital topics: e.g., population, social divisions in Amdo, nomadic authority structures, and monastery revenues (among others), is a narrative that nuances western socio-historical scholarship on the region. For example, gift exchange between Labrang and the Qing imperial court has often been viewed as a mechanism demonstrating Qing political control vis-à-vis Labrang; however, Nietupski shows that this exchange was “intermittent, for different motives and goals” (p. 84). Gifts were exchanged between Labrang and other Gelugpa monasteries in Central Tibet, thus “large scale gift-giving to and from the Qing court did not indicate political fealty” (p. 85). Similarly Chapter 4 makes the case that rather than the granting of titles being a device to implement Qing policy, “in Tibetan eyes, the extent of actual power signified by this and other titles was not as far-reaching as the literal title indicates” (p. 118). Indeed the common title for Qianlong emperor, “wheel-turning king,” was shared by a host of other generous donors to Labrang (p. 118). Chapter 4 also contains biographies of the successive leading incarnate lamas at Labrang, the Jamyang Zhepas. Their roles as politico-religious leaders won a broad range of support for the building of key institutions at Labrang. As the Fourth and Fifth Jamyang Zhepas were forced to deal with the new challenges brought by the growing military strength of Muslim groups and internecine warfare at the end of the Qing and into the Republican era, they often responded diplomatically allowing for new innovations with the establishment of modern institutions; e.g. public schools, a Christian mission, Chinese temple, a mosque, foreign diplomatic missions, etc.

The fifth chapter contributes to the growing literature on Republican-era Tibet politics by examining how the institution of Labrang survived despite political turmoil, shifting alliances and different claims to power. The narrative on the complex relationships between key figures at Labrang Monastery, especially the minor Qing official Gönpo Döndrup (father to four of the most prominent leaders of Labrang), the Mongol royalty (the eighth Prince, Peljor Rapten, and his family members), and the ambitious military commander Ma Qi interweaves the stories of these personal relationships with the political establishment of Labrang within Gansu Province today.

This monumental interdisciplinary project leaves only a few points that could be refined. While this book meticulously details a complex multi-cultural history, with a strong emphasis on society and politics, there is a lack of attention paid to the distinct and highly contested interpretations of Amdo vis-à-vis “Tibet,” which is addressed in other seminal works, e.g. Carole McGranahan's Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 48–52). The focus on the historical development of the incarnate lineages at Labrang would have benefited from the theoretical insights on the donor-donee relationships between Tibetan religious hierarchs and Mongolian rulers developed in Hildegard Diemberger's When a Women Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 241–245). These are minor issues in comparison to the major contribution that Labrang Monastery brings to the fields of Sino-Tibetan-Mongol Studies by making a complex regional history accessible to both neophytes and experts on Chinese Inner Asia during the Qing and Republican-era.