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Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c.400 BCE-50 CE . By Erica Fox Brindley . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2015. 302 pp. $103.00, £67.00 (cloth), $82.00, £53.71 (ebook).
Tracking Early China's process of sinicization and describing the origins of a separate Yue identity along China's southern frontier are two very complex issues, but Erica Brindley, associate professor of Asian Studies and History at Pennsylvania State University, has adroitly addressed these related trends through historical, rhetorical, and literary representations. Brindley has produced a fascinating study. She starts with the hypothesis that "early empires and the imperial logic of centrality--the latter of which began well before the actual establishment of the Qin Empire in 221 BCE--played an important role in the unification of a Hua-Xia center and self, and, hence, the construction of marginal others in the process" (xii). Her method for proving this hypothesis is an exploration of Yue/Viê[COMBINING DOT BELOW]t/[...]identity as described in official chronicles, and the author treats the creation of this regional identity as a process, by which its authors, who associated themselves with Central Plains court culture, strengthen the tenets of their own identity. In a related theme, Brindley finds fault with the wholesale application of "Chinese-ness" in all periods of Chinese history and throughout all regions of China, writing that "by examining the mechanics of Chinese identity as it functioned in history, we will break down the act of identifying oneself or another as Chinese... into component parts" (xi). Brindley also regards sinicization as a matter of historiography, revealing how the court chroniclers regarded their changing relationship with the peoples of the southern frontier, and not as an indicator of comprehensive cultural transformation. The Yue (South) was not transformed by, but rather engaged with, the Hua Xia in shaping the ever-changing boundary between these two regions of East Asia.
The Yue region is large (extending from the Há»"ng River delta to the southern banks of the Yangzi River) and it contains a dispersed population, but Brindley concludes that origins...