Nicolas Tackett's book is only the most important of the results drawn from the author's research on the Song Northern frontier and the Song political culture. Just as he did for his book on the demise of the Tang aristocracy,Footnote ¹ Tackett provides us with databases accessible on his Berkeley website. One database contains the inventory of 1700 Tang, Song, and Liao tombs located in the Northeast frontier area, and the other presents the basic information available on more than 800 people involved in the history of the Song borders. Any interested reader can also download fifty pages of the original Chinese texts quoted in the book, a more detailed bibliography, and the whole set of lengthy footnotes. Obviously, Tackett's methodical approach and tools should stimulate researchers and students, who can now easily combine erudition with digital resources.

As the subtitle underscores, the complex and long-lasting new Asian order, based on the relations between the two major powers of East Asia that emerged after the Tang empire's disappearance, resulted in a new perception by the Song of their imperial identity facing the Liao. Indeed, if we include the Xi-Xia kingdom, which was another important actor from the 1030s onwards, and the Jin empire in the twelfth century, the new geopolitical order resulting from the coexistence of Song China with three powerful steppe polities shook the basic political concepts of nei (inside) and wai (outside). Hence, one of the challenges after the Song–Liao peace treaty of Shanyuan of 1005 was the legitimization of a Song empire which could no longer claim to be universal. The multi-state system, as it is usually depicted, required a cultural revolution that gradually prompted the Song government to view as political markers all the differences—languages and daily ways of production and consumption, as well as more generally various ways of life—that had been naturalized into geographic divisions within the Tang Empire. By making ethnicity a political tool, they created a model of new relationships between Hanren and others. These Hanren became not only clearly distinct from Tangren, as North-East or Central Asian people might still perceive themselves, but also the only people who could claim to be “under Heaven.”

In the introduction, Tackett offers an up-to-date and useful inventory of the main arguments regarding Song proto-nationalism or patriotism that have been put forward by sinologists since at least the 1970s. Following their precedents, he connects the emerging model of the Song polity with discussion of the historical phenomenon of nationalism, and he carefully points out two main differences between Song national consciousness and modern ones. First, in medieval China, this consciousness was shared only within a small circle of “intellectuals,” without the support of any mass movements; second, there was no new theory of government based on this consciousness. More important is the new way the author offers to relate the modern Chinese nation to premodern polities. Considering the crucial role of education and commercial printing in the emergence of western nationalism, Tackett mentions the existence of these two factors in Song China. Any reader can agree with the idea that national consciousness might emerge under different historical conditions, but we are prompted here to ask whether these factors are sufficient to explain the Song case; and we are eager to have details of the impact of this national feeling on the “East Asian order,” in order to understand more precisely whether neighboring polities were able to nourish similar feelings. Tackett succeeds in addressing readers’ increasing curiosity by investigating the Song political and cultural spaces.

The six chapters of the book are introduced as various approaches of these two spaces. Political space includes diplomatic relations, military defense of the North, and bilateral relations. Tackett first argues that the diplomatic system put into place after the Shanyuan peace treaty engendered a new “sociability,” which was based on the fixed protocol of every embassy and the necessity to appoint qualified people as regular interpreters, but also and above all on the links between many high-ranking Song and Liao officials who knew each other very well one generation to the next. These scholars-officials, or shidafu, had opportunities to cross borders several times, and their diplomatic experience resulted in a kind of connivance between educated people of the two empires, nurtured by poetry competitions, archery contests, and alcohol-fueled banquets. Several tables convincingly provide the evidence that many Song policymakers were equipped with this “cosmopolitan experience,” and hence ready to find peaceful ways to resolve border tensions or comply with the terms of the 1005 treaty. In brief, Tackett uncovers a kind of trans-border community sharing a set of common values, and he believes that within this community “others” might be viewed as civilized people (73).

The existence of shidafu as a class is a difficult problem, and it is outside the scope of this book, but new questions related to this cosmopolitan community may be asked: if this sociability may indirectly point out the emergence of a national consciousness, was it also a part of the diplomatic ruse useful in the relations between mighty neighbors? Why was the loyalty of these high officials’ never questioned? Or, referring to the case of Qin Hui (1090–1155), what were the conditions under which this connivance or ruse may have become dubious? Those questions are all the more intriguing when we read that the Song frontier strategy was distinct and depended on regional specialization (103), a conclusion with which I absolutely agree. If the Song–Liao border was under the close supervision of frontier specialists, how might these officials in charge of the regional and local defense strategy have reacted to this shidafu sociability? Is it possible to know whether they shared the same empathy with the Liao officials with whom they had to solve the frequent problems raised by the liangshuhu, people who lived in the borderland and were able to cleverly use their double allegiance for the sake of their local interests? To be sure, Tackett considers these questions, and, in spite of the scarcity of sources, he provides as many details as possible about the local strongman Gao Zheng and the prefect Yan Fu (134–37).

The author analyzes the long-term decisions regarding border demarcation in different regions, and responds to our curiosity regarding the medieval model of bilateral relations. In the first chapter he mentions only the ethnic vision of the Khitans, who maintained “a sharp distinction between populations of Khitans and populations of ethnic Han” (46), and hence he sheds light on the external factor of others’ consciousness—that of people who also experienced a new form of “collective consciousness” beyond the border. But I see no reason to believe that elsewhere symmetric feelings shaped the relations between Song and other people, at least during the first century of Song rule. In the third chapter he finally can conclude that the bilateral demarcations also embody the sense of national division. He is very careful in paying attention to historical change: what is true during the first century of the Song rule can be untrue after the reforms launched by Wang Anshi and amplified by Shenzong. He portrays the shift to an authentic and active foreign policy after the 1070s (106–13) when the government marshaled important resources and sent central officials using maps stocked at the capital for more systematic border operations. This shift may have consolidated peace in Hedong (Shanxi), but more and more frequently at this time it was aimed at expanding the Song frontier, according to local conditions. In brief, if the Song national consciousness may have appeared as a specific feeling engendered by Song–Liao relations, it is not easy to find it in Northwest and Southwest territories. There Song officials maneuvered tribes who frequently had no consciousness of their “national” interest, as Von Glahn showed thirty years ago.Footnote ² Therefore, if the multi-state system did exist as a political reality, the emergence of the Song historical experience of nationalism is distinct from modern instances also because of a certain asymmetry with other people in large parts of the empire. To the extent that this conclusion is correct, it would have probably strengthened Tackett's welcomed criticism of Fairbank's “Chinese world order.”

The fourth chapter, devoted to the “Chinese Nation,” is central. Tackett goes over the mixture of elements that made the Han an ethnic people: the reconceptualization of ancient ideas from antiquity about the civilized world and the necessity to maintain this civilization unified, the Song invention of the link between one people defined by cultural markers and a territory, the cosmic legitimation of natural boundaries supported by the development of cartography which made irredentism a visual reality for officials. He also explores in depth the evolutionary meanings of different words expressing this ethnicization: in several tables he summarizes the meanings of Zhongguo, Han, Huaxia, and Zhonghua. Tackett also provides translations of several texts in which this vocabulary expresses various aspects of national consciousness. He stresses the sense of Han solidarity which is supposed to be the feeling of populations across the borders during Northern and Southern Song. In brief, as Tackett convincingly argues, a new community sharing the same passion for the ancestors’ land was imagined and, as soon as the Song had unified the South in the second half of the tenth century, irredentism became a permanent concern of the court. However, by focusing on irredentism, Tackett orients his discussion to the conflict between “hawks” and “doves,” and neglects another intriguing challenge: the possible integration of new populations within the Han community after the military conquest of their territories. As Wang Anshi argued in 1072, when his “proxy” in the present Amdo, Wang Shao, launched his conquest campaign, the goal of the minister was clearly to grasp new lands and achieve “sinicization” which, according to Wang, would make the Tibetans and Han one people (bo-han wei yi 蕃漢為一) thanks to culture (wen 文) and regulations (fa 法). This case is worth studying for at least two reasons: first, apparently the ethnic Han people were not conceived here as a closed community; second, this conquest seems quite different from the wars and skirmishes in the south-western regions “of streams and grottoes” described by von Glahn: there, the Han local officials and soldiers who wanted to take over the wealth of the local tribes did not plan to transform them into Han peasants or militiamen. It would be interesting to explore the meanings of Han ethnicity, since central and local authorities did not share the same conceptions; it is all the more important that “others” had different perceptions of themselves.

The two last chapters return to the northern border area—the Yan region located north to present-day Beijing—which is approached within the frame of cultural history. The pages on the mortuary cultures that are the product of the rich database of 1700 tombs are very informative, with maps, tables, and figures. The author thoroughly explores the similarities and differences in the tombs of Northeast Asia, to track down the cultural division between China and the steppe, and hence to highlight the Liao ethnic pattern influenced by the steppe traditions. Here is the final answer to the reader's curiosity about the Song neighbors’ ethnic consciousness. The national consciousness may have appeared as a specific feeling, first limited to Song–Liao relations before a consolidation in the long-term face-to-face encounter of the two empires. And this feeling may or may not have spread on other borders of the Song Empire, according to local circumstances. The Song–Liao face-to-face engagement of course gave many officials opportunities to travel within another political and cultural space, but Yan was a kind of buffer zone, inhabited by Han people who lived in the plain, while Khitan were in the steppe, beyond the range of mountains. Tackett concludes that this experience engendered new worldviews which emphasize the natural borders of the Chinese ecumene and, he insists, a gap between the Song political state and an imagined Han national territory, which nourished a long-term irredentism. However, if the Liao empire, in spite of ethnic feeling, remained a multinational polity, as the administration of the sixteen Han prefectures attested, it would be important to mention that the Song national consciousness was at least in tension with the real difficulty of integrating other people within the empire. In other words, the Song national consciousness was hampered by its difficulty to integrate other people, as the Amdo case reveals. In brief, it may also be nourished by the failure of Song to impose their rule on some territories, simply because local people viewed their ambition as illegitimate: anger also may nourish national feeling! Tackett's book indeed prompts us to ask more crucial and useful questions about the political concept of nation. Since the Song national feeling was shared by only a limited number of educated people, what was this feeling without a modern citizenship on which patriotism is based? What was a national consciousness without a “civil society” structured by various interests? In other words, what is this consciousness shared by a minority of civil and military officials who figured out the dynastic—or state—interests as the only public interest? In this context, it is indeed difficult to imagine that national objectives could become a part of the collective interest of a “nation.”

In addition to its importance for Song specialists, Tackett's book is valuable for a wider audience because he unveils specific tensions between the two conflicting patterns of empire and nation within the same polity, a large problem of widespread interest today. The author offers a model, like the “model” Jean-Pierre Vernant referred to for Athenian democracy. For Vernant, the Greek model means “a car model,” or “a model used by scholars as a hypothesis”!Footnote ³ But, in contrast with Greek democracy, which remained a cultural ideal for democrats, the Song model did not become a cultural or political reference for later Chinese. Among many Chinese historians, the Song dynasty was and still is looked on as a weak imperial state, and they were or still are ashamed of this period, when Chinese territory shrunk so much. They probably do not want to claim the Song as one of the models of their modern nation. Hence it is perhaps difficult to see the Song dynasty as the origin of the Chinese nation, since Tackett stresses the impact of the imagined community on the national consciousness.