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It would be an understatement to call this volume a mere "addition" to the field of Six Dynasties studies, given that Patronage and Community in Medieval China is the first book-length study in the English language that tackles the socio-political history of early medieval southern China after the demise of the Eastern Jin dynasty. Conceptual frameworks derived from Japanese scholarship had long dominated the field. Yet, ever since it had been shown during the 1980s and 90s that the complexities of the society and politics of the Southern Dynasties cannot satisfactorily be described simply in terms of "aristocratic lineages" and "community" (kydtai), little had been advanced towards a deeper understanding of that society and politics. This dearth stands in stark contrast to the study of the religious and literary aspects of the period that continues healthily in a series of steady publications and extremely stimulating debates. The publication of this volume must therefore be welcomed in the hope that it may re-animate a languishing field of scholarship.
With Patronage and Community in Medieval China, Chittick proposes a new paradigm for the socio-political description of this period based on a pair of concepts, "patronage" and "community" (understood as "imagined communities"). He maintains that the concept of patronage could serve as a "model for the entire social system of the southern dynasties" (p. 7). However, the book is less a thematic exploration of the scope and typology or institutional forms of patronage than a critical retelling of the history of the Southern Dynasties' dynastic changes from the particular and peripheral perspective of the provincial military society of the Xiangyang garrison (situated in what is now the north of modern Hubei province). This book will be valued as the first English-language account of...