Naomi Standen

In Chinese history, the first half of the 10th century was a period of fragmentation and rapid change of regimes: it's known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. The strongest power around was not any of these fifteen regimes, but the Liao, the Manchurian empire of the Khitan people, which repeatedly intervened in the Chinese states - bringing about the ends of the 2nd and 3rd of the Five Dynasties - and permanently occupied the area around modern Beijing. From 960 China proper was unified by the Song dynasty, which however failed to evict the Liao from the northeast: a lasting peace was concluded in 1005 confirming Song and Liao as equals.

During the century, many Chinese took service with the Liao - subsequent history has mostly condemned them as traitors, or at least seen their (not always voluntary) choices as problematical. Standen argues that this is anachronistic: at the time, the "foreignness" of the Liao was of minor importance, and changing allegiance between various regimes commonplace among officials and officers. Crossing to the Liao only became special when a unified China reemerged under the Song, and the Five Dynasties - the ruling houses of three of which were of Turkish origin - retroactively defined as part of "us" while the Liao were relegated to the Barbarian "them". The issue is explored through the careers of five prominent crossers, and their literary afterlife as subsequent generations of historians told their stories through the glasses of successive later times.

While I think Standen is broadly right, I suspect she goes too far in minimizing the 10th century political importance of ethnic/cultural identity. The Liao emperors were only too happy to have the services of Chinese bureaucrats, soldiers, and farmers, but for much of the century the official name of their state wasn't Liao but Khitan (pinyin Qidan), and their official registers spoke of "Chinese", "Bohai", and "regular" (implicitly Khitan) households. Surely this implies the empire's non-Chinese character was significant to the Liao themselves.… (más)