This book explores what we might gain by looking at Chinese history from the periphery rather than from the core. The project of “de-centering China” is intended to counter the tradition of conceiving of Chinese history in terms of an unbroken sequence of dynasties, an organizational structure that emphasizes long-term historical continuity at the expense of downplaying the significance of ruling houses and dynastic policies. This book questions the dominant theme in modern historiography, which treats Chinese history as a linear narrative centered on the culture of the Central Plain and its original inhabitants, the Han Chinese. I argue that while what others have described as the “history of the nation” serves the interests of the modern nation-state that is the People's Republic of China (hereafter PRC), its emphasis on China as the history of the Han Chinese creates new problems for the state as it tries to create a tighter bond with its ethnic minorities.

De-centering China

The primary task in de-centering Chinese history is to examine it from the perspective of the periphery, and not the core. There is no lack of evidence from ancient times onward of intensive interactions between frontier and indigenous peoples (presently identified as the “Han Chinese”) in the Central Plain (zhongyuan), which is widely considered to be the “cradle” or core region of Chinese civilization. Migrants from its northern and western frontiers moved into the Central Plain, and their descendants eventually established states that ruled north China from the third to the seventh century. Later, conquest regimes from the northeast occupied first parts then all of north China and, in the thirteenth century, the Mongols successfully conquered the south and incorporated it into their empire. Yet we know relatively little about the peoples who headed the “sixteen barbarian states” who ruled north China in the third to fifth centuries, or the Khitan Liao, Jurchen Jin, and even the Mongol Yuan, because they left few written records, leaving most ordinary people to believe that the militarily superior frontier peoples eventually succumbed to the culturally superior Han Chinese; that is, that Central Plain culture triumphed over the culture of the frontier.