Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and Its Indigenes Became Chinese

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James Leibold's Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism is an original and significant contribution to modern Chinese history, and to the body of work on nationalism and the construction of national identity. Of the large land-based empires of the 19th century, only China survived as a modern nation-state with its imperial territory intact. Such empires were, by definition, multi-ethnic, with ethnic minorities often positioned on the peripheries. The break-up of the empire typically meant fragmentation along ethnic lines. Leibold offers a compelling argument that China was able to avoid this fate because both Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders relied upon a "common set of institutional and ideological instruments of rule" (pp....