Modern scholarship has labeled the Tang, to distinguish it from other periods of Chinese history, as a “cosmopolitan” age when foreign goods, fashions, and people were especially welcome. Turkic generals took their places at the Tang court, Sogdian traders filled the markets of the capital, and studious Japanese and Korean sojourners could rise to the highest echelons of the imperial civil service. The Tang's cosmopolitan image is so colorful and attractive that scholars have rarely subjected it to critical scrutiny. Hence the great value of Marc S. Abramson's Ethnic Identity in Tang China, which explores “the discursive construction of ethnic identity and ethnic difference in the Tang” (p. xii). How did Tang people (or, more precisely, the literate elites) understand human variation, and how did this change over time?

Abramson takes particular aim at the widespread belief that cultural practices were the sole criterion for distinguishing the Chinese Self from the barbarian Other, and that the Tang empire, though pluralistic, tended toward cultural assimilation of its non-Han subjects and residents. He presents convincing evidence that genealogy, physical appearance, and political loyalties, as well as culture, all played important parts when boundaries were drawn and individuals classified into groups, and he argues persuasively that assimilation was resisted or opposed by many sorts of people for many different reasons. For example, military officers found non-Han identity, with its connotations of martial vigor, to be a professional asset, while Chinese elites sought to establish cultural boundaries in order to “preserve the exclusivity of the gentry in the face of upward mobility” (p. 177). Abramson also observes a tension between two different visions of empire, one demanding assimilation and the other recognizing a sort of “separate but equal” pluralism; assimilation predominated in imperial rhetoric, but actual policy tended to be more inclusive and pluralistic. Over time, due to a variety of influences, including the shift toward more meritocratic civil service recruitment and the impact of the An Lushan Rebellion, culture and political loyalty became the main touchstones of identity. These features eventually combined in a new “model of ethnic and cultural exclusivity that was the hallmark of the protonationalist sentiment that infused the literati of the Song dynasty and laid the groundwork for the emergence of the modern Chinese nation” (pp. 190–91).

The scope of the book is impressive, with chapters addressing a range of subjects, including Tang ethnic stereotyping, assimilation, the discursive construction of the “barbarian body,” the state's treatment of ethnic difference, and the ways in which pro- and anti-Buddhist polemics dealt with the religion's foreign origin. The contents are rich enough that any one of these chapters might be expanded into an entire book, and the author has drawn upon a tremendous variety of sources, ranging from material remains (such as tomb figurines) to Tang poetry, fiction, and essays, to the standard dynastic histories, Buddhist literature, and the inscriptions placed near the Orkhon River by Eastern Türk rulers in the early eighth century.

Yet the book also has its weaknesses. Although Abramson is well aware of the need to subject all of his evidence to close critical scrutiny, with particular attention to the distortions introduced by genre and the need to distinguish between Tang and Song voices in some of his sources, he does not always follow through in practice. Apparently unaware of the many doubts that have been raised about the Dialogues of Tang Taizong and Li, Duke of Wei (Tang Taizong Li Weigong wendui) since it first surfaced in the late eleventh century, he treats it as an authentic early Tang source rather than the Northern Song pastiche that it almost certainly is. Another slip is his reading (following James Legge) of Analects II.7 as “even dogs and horses have some ability to support their parents” (p. 32). Given that this passage is more often understood in a passive sense (dogs and horses are provided with food), Abramson ought to give some justification for his reading to dispel the impression that it was chosen simply because it happens to support a point he was trying to make.

Fortunately, such lapses are not frequent enough to vitiate the book's major conclusions about ethnicity and identity. Abramson has not only made an important contribution to the scholarly literature on Tang China but also produced a work that will be of great value to anyone interested in the problem of ethnicity in Chinese history or the deep roots of Chinese nationalism.