James Leibold's Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism is an original and significant contribution to modern Chinese history, and to the body of work on nationalism and the construction of national identity. Of the large land-based empires of the 19th century, only China survived as a modern nation-state with its imperial territory intact. Such empires were, by definition, multi-ethnic, with ethnic minorities often positioned on the peripheries. The break-up of the empire typically meant fragmentation along ethnic lines. Leibold offers a compelling argument that China was able to avoid this fate because both Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders relied upon a “common set of institutional and ideological instruments of rule” (pp. 178–79) inherited from the old empire to incorporate China's ethnic minorities into the emerging nation's “geo-body,” and effectively utilized the new tools of modernity such as the railroad, modern weapons and communications technologies to assimilate the minorities into the newly imagined, multiethnic yet singular national identity.

Leibold notes that his study is not about agency or resistance of ethnic minorities on the frontiers of the new nation-state. Rather, his intention is to show the reader how China's political elites thought about and related to the frontier peoples of the new nation-state. Given this goal, then, with a few exceptions Leibold draws on well-known sources – texts by notable figures such as Liang Qichao, Sun Yatsen, Chiang Kai-Shek, Dai Jitao, Chen Duxiu, Mao Zedong and Chen Boda.

Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism opens with two introductory chapters that establish Leibold's theoretical framework, set the historical stage, and survey the relevant scholarly literature on late Qing and early Republican nationalism. The main body of the monograph is divided into two parts. Part one examines KMT and CCP strategies and practices of political intervention in the frontier regions. Leibold begins with an examination of Nationalist policy and practice in response to the challenges raised by ethnic minorities along the frontiers, particularly in Mongolia and Tibet. Here Leibold makes two key arguments, that while the KMT frontier policy was “every bit as sophisticated” (p. 52) as that of the CCP in its aim to forge alliances with the peoples of the frontiers, it was nevertheless too weak – not too inept – to override the warlords who controlled access to the peripheries. He also argues convincingly that neither parties were locked into inflexible ideological positions concerning frontier policy, but instead were realistic in adapting to changing circumstances. Leibold then examines CCP political responses to frontier indigenes. He demonstrates that many CCP leaders were uneasy with Lenin's principle of national self-determination. Instead, like the KMT, the CCP was committed to maintaining territorial boundaries established by the Qing Dynasty. To this end, the CCP focused on Lenin's united front strategy when considering questions of ethnic diversity.

Part two shifts focus from the state building and politics of part one to the place of frontier minorities in both parties' efforts at nation building. Leibold examines cultural narratives employed by the KMT and the CCP to imagine the place of frontier peoples – who by the 1930s are coded as ethnic minorities (shaoshu minzu) – in a Han-dominated but necessarily multiethnic modern China. Leibold finds in KMT rhetoric two visions of common descent: a racial view of both Han and minorities sharing a common bloodline with the Yellow Emperor as progenitor, and a narrative of a shared cultural origin that had evolved along separate paths. The CCP developed a somewhat different vision, one of multiple lines of descent but with a long history of close association and composite culture, always with the ethnic Han at the heart of this multiethnic culture.

Leibold convincingly presents his thesis that the realpolitik frontier policies of the KMT and CCP were effective in developing the new nation-state and preserving the territorial integrity of the old empire, although his discussion of the specific tools of empire appropriated by the KMT and CCP could have been more fully fleshed out. In addition, the book would have benefited by a bit more editing to eliminate typos and occasional awkward phrasing. These minor quibbles aside, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism is an informative, well-researched monograph, and is recommended reading for scholars and advanced students of modern Chinese history.