The title of this book suggests several possibilities. Is this a study of Chinese perceptions and writings about pastoral nomadic peoples? A conventional survey of frontier policies and foreign relations, chronicling wars, treaties, and embassies? Or another examination of steppe and Silk Road influences on the culture of Tang China? In fact, it is something almost entirely different, a systematic investigation of the structures and loci of contact, mostly at the elite level, between Chinese and the mainly pastoral peoples of the adjacent steppe lands: Türks, Uighurs, Khitan, Qay, Tuyuhun, and others. The specific topics covered include patron-client ties, political investiture, diplomatic ritual, marriage alliances, fictive kinship, and frontier markets. Raiding is mentioned, too, but receives relatively little emphasis. In contrast to most other authors who have written about relations between imperial China and its pastoral neighbors, Skaff stresses engagement rather than confrontation. And he presents a powerful and generally persuasive argument that constructive collaboration across the frontier was grounded in shared “Eastern Eurasian” values and practices. Readers accustomed to thinking of the opposition between farmer and cowman in historical East Asia as fundamental and irreconcilable, deeply rooted in both culture and environment, will find this book an eye-opener.
Skaff assigns more importance to political ties than to economic relationships in the shaping of what he calls the “entanglements” between Sui-Tang China and the steppe, and he is critical of scholars (notably Sechin Jagchid and Thomas Barfield) who have emphasized either trade or extortion as the drivers of nomad behavior. One of Skaff's key tools is Max Weber's concept of patrimonialism, and he points to a loose, familial style of rule as an important similarity between medieval Chinese and Turko-Mongol patterns of governance. In both societies, patron-client ties were essential for political effectiveness, and individuals on either side of the frontier had few qualms about forging such bonds with their counterparts on the other. The investiture of nomad chieftains by Chinese emperors (and of Chinese warlords by Turkic qaghans) was also facilitated by shared ideas about the hierarchical nature of political relationships. Skaff does a fine job of explaining how both parties stood to gain. Chieftains invested as the governors of Tang “bridle prefectures” (jimi zhou) gained access to not only pastures and markets in the frontier zone, but also a “[s]tability of inheritance” that “might have been a welcome change compared to the fratricidal succession conflicts of Turko-Mongol politics” (p. 191). In return, Tang rulers acquired excellent and largely self-supporting auxiliary cavalry at minimal cost (p. 257). When collaboration turned to conflict, it had less to do with cultural differences than with actuarial realities: since political ties were primarily based on personal bonds rather than alliances between groups, the death of an emperor, qaghan, or trusted frontier official could put everything up for grabs.
In an effort to transcend the court-centered Chinese literati perspective, Skaff draws on an impressive range of sources including archaeologically recovered documents from Turfan, funerary inscriptions, and Buddhist texts. Inevitably, he ends up citing standard sources, such as the Tang histories and the Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive mirror for aid in government) more often than other materials, but he is fully aware of the biases of literati historiography and capable of putting the standard histories to vivid and effective use. One example of this is a falling out between the Tang frontier commander Fumeng Lingcha and his client Gao Xianzhi, recorded in the Tang histories. Fumeng excoriated the general, who was of Korean descent, as a “dog shit eating Koguryan slave”—from which Skaff sensibly concludes that ethnic difference was recognized in Tang times but did not bar the formation of patron-client ties (pp. 89–90).
The author locates the Eastern Eurasian practices shared by Turko-Mongols and Sui-Tang Chinese within a larger Eurasian interaction zone, and provides examples of commonalities in diplomacy and rulership from as far afield as Byzantium, Sasanid Persia, and early medieval Europe. These zones, however, are not very clearly demarcated, nor is there much consideration of how the similarities originated. Skaff refers to a long history of “entanglements” and politico-cultural one-upmanship, and he not unreasonably points out that the problem of origins is beyond the chronological scope of his book. Nevertheless, this remains the least satisfying aspect of his otherwise excellent study. Readers may be left wondering whether some of the practices he discusses, such as status-based seating arrangements at banquets, are indeed so chronologically and geographically widespread as to be a characteristic of all human societies that have moved beyond hunting and gathering. The author shows some awareness of this problem (p. 294), but never really addresses it.
Although this book does not exhaust all the issues it raises, it nevertheless offers a compelling reconceptualization of Sui-Tang China's interaction with the steppe peoples. As such, it is the most important work on Tang foreign relations to appear in a very long time.
