The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao examines the rebellion of the eleventh-century Tai chieftain Nung Tri Cao (ca. 1025-1055), whose struggle for independence along Vietnam's mountainous northern frontier was a pivotal event in Sino-Vietnamese relations. Tri Cao's revolt occurred during Vietnam's earliest years of independence from China and would prove to be a vital test of the Vietnamese court's ability to confront local political challenges and maintain harmony with its powerful northern neighbor. Tri Cao established his first kingdom in 1042, at the age of seventeen, but was captured by Vietnamese troops. After his release in 1048, he announced the founding of a second kingdom, but an attack by Vietnamese forces drove him to flee into Chinese territory. Tri Cao made his final attempt in 1052, proclaiming a new kingdom and leading thousands of his subjects in a revolt that swept across the South China coast. But within a year, Chinese imperial troops had forced him to flee to the nearest independent kingdom. Official Chinese and Vietnamese accounts of the rebel leader's end vary: according to the Chinese, the ruler of the independent kingdom had Tri Cao executed, but in popular accounts, Tri Cao was granted safe passage into northern Thailand, where his descendants are said to flourish today. Scholar James Anderson places Tri Cao in context by exploring the Sino-Vietnamese tributary relationship and the conflicts that engaged both the Song and Vietnamese courts. The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao reconstructs the series of negotiations that took place between border communities and representatives of the imperial courts, examining the ways in which Tai and other ethnic groups deftly navigated the unstable political situation that followed the demise of China's cosmopolitan Tang dynasty. Though his rebellion was ill-fated, Tri Cao is, almost a thousand years later, still worshipped in temples along the Sino-Vietnamese border, and his memory provides a point of unity for people who have become separated by modern political boundaries.

A groundbreaking, comprehensive history of Vietnam from the earliest times to the present day.

The career of communist revolutionary Wei Baqun, one of China’s “three great peasant leaders” and man of the southern frontier. Robin Hood–style revolutionary Wei Baqun is often described as one of China’s “three great peasant leaders,” alongside Mao Zedong and Peng Pai. In his home county of Donglan, where he started organizing peasants in the early 1920s, Wei Baqun came to be considered a demigod after his death—a communist revolutionary with supernatural powers. So much legend has grown up around this fascinating figure that it is difficult to know the truth from the tale. Presenting Wei Baqun’s life in light of interactions between his local community and the Chinese nation, Red God is organized around the journeys he made from his multiethnic frontier county to major cities where he picked up ideas, methods, and contacts, and around the three revolts he launched back home. Xiaorong Han explores the congruencies and conflicts of local, regional, and national forces at play during Wei Baqun’s lifetime while examining his role as a link between his Zhuang people and the Han majority, between the village and the city, and between the periphery and the center.

Tracing journeys of Cantonese migrants along the West River and its tributaries, this book describes the circulation of people through one of the world’s great river systems between the late sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Steven B. Miles examines the relationship between diaspora and empire in an upriver frontier, and the role of migration in sustaining families and lineages in the homeland of what would become a global diaspora. Based on archival research and multisite fieldwork, this innovative history of mobility explores a set of diasporic practices ranging from the manipulation of household registration requirements to the maintenance of split families. Many of the institutions and practices that facilitated overseas migration were not adaptations of tradition to transnational modernity; rather, they emerged in the early modern era within the context of riverine migration. Likewise, the extension and consolidation of empire required not only unidirectional frontier settlement and sedentarization of indigenous populations. It was also responsible for the regular circulation between homeland and frontier of people who drove imperial expansion—even while turning imperial aims toward their own purposes of socioeconomic advancement.

While official Chinese history has always been written from a centrist viewpoint, Chieftains into Ancestors describes the intersection of imperial administration and chieftain-dominated local culture in the culturally diverse southwestern region of China. Contemplating the rhetorical question of how one can begin to rewrite the story of a conquered people whose past was never transcribed in the first place, the authors combine anthropological fieldwork with historical textual analysis to build a new regional history – one that recognizes the ethnic, religious, and gendered transformations that took place in China’s nation-building process.

This is the second of two volumes on the Sung Dynasty, which together provide a comprehensive history of China from the fall of the T'ang Dynasty in 907 to the Mongol conquest of the Southern Sung in 1279. With contributions from leading historians in the field, Volume 5, Part Two paints a complex portrait of a dynasty beset by problems and contradictions, but one which, despite its military and geopolitical weakness, was nevertheless economically powerful, culturally brilliant, socially fluid and the most populous of any empire in global history to that point. In this much anticipated addition to the series, the authors survey key themes across ten chapters, including government, economy, society, religion, and thought to provide an authoritative and topical treatment of a profound and significant period in Chinese history.

In 1904, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama fled from the British invasion of Tibet to Mongolia in search of support from Russia. Although the mission failed, his extended sojourn in Mongolia marked the beginning of political modernity in both Mongolia and Tibet. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama on the Run (1904-1906) is a facsimile collection comprising hitherto unpublished archival documents from Mongolia about this historical episode. Written in Mongolian, Manchu and Chinese, the documents concern the operation of the Mongol princes in hosting the Dalai Lama in Mongolia and the attempts made by the Qing frontier officials to remove him from Mongolia back to Tibet. Details of his extensive travels within the country, the associated elaborate ritual activities and the great financial costs incurred which were borne by the Mongols, come to light for the first time in this publication. The documents which are supported by detailed captions are discussed in an in-depth introduction.

This succinct, readable introduction to Chinese migration traces the huge population movements both within China and beyond its borders over thousands of years. Distinguished historian Diana Lary explores these migrations and the key roles they have played in Chinese history. She sees migration as a broad spectrum of movement, from short-term and short-range to permanent and long-range, and as a powerful vehicle for the transfer of commodities, culture, religion, and political influence. Her book will be compelling for all readers who want to understand the context for the present internal and international migrations that have changed the face of China itself and its international relations.