Overview

Emerging from collapse of the Han empire, the founders of Northern Wei had come south from the grasslands of Inner Asia to conquer the rich farmlands of the Yellow River plains. Northern Wei was, in fact, the first of the so-called ""conquest dynasties"" complex states seen repeatedly in East Asian history in which Inner Asian peoples ruled parts of the Chinese world. An innovative contribution to East Asian and Chinese history of the medieval period, Northern Wei (386-534) combines received historical text and archaeological findings to examine the complex interactions between these originally distinct populations, and the way those interactions changed over time. Scott Pearce analyses traditions borrowed and adapted from the long-gone Han dynasty including government and taxation as well as the new cultural elements such as the use of armor for man and horse in the cavalry and the newly-invented stirrup. Further, this book discusses the fundamental change in the dynastic family, as empresses began to play an increasingly important role in the business of government. Though Northern Wei fell in the early sixth century, the nature of the state was thus fundamentally changed, in the Chinese world and East Asia as a whole; it had laid down a foundation from which a century later would emerge the world empire of Tang.

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9780197600399

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Reviews

Scott Pearce is one of the foremost English-language scholars of the Northern Wei Empire. This wonderfully evocative book draws upon a lifetime of research, including wide-ranging and thought-provoking interpretations of comparative sources from other places and periods of world history. Pearce is especially gifted in his appreciation of the origins of the Taghbach steppe confederation, the creation of their own myth-history, and their slow transformation into a Sinitic-styled empire, which he frames as an attempt 'to describe, really repackage, a very different people, who had created a very different state.' * Andrew Chittick, Eckerd College * Northern Wei is the first English-language monograph available on this very important subject, and its straightforward, chronological narrative structure, makes it accessible to a wide readership. Scott Pearce's command of the sources in Chinese, Japanese, and English is this book's paramount strength. * J. Michael Farmer, University of Texas at Dallas * Pearce's book is a major treatment of the Tuoba history in a Western language and an important contribution to the study of early medieval China. His vivid descriptions bring this part of the history closer to general educated readers and scholars. The volume offers more than the intended aim and is an indispensable reference book about this understudied period. * Shing Müller, JAOS 144.3 *

Scott Pearce is one of the foremost English-language scholars of the Northern Wei Empire. This wonderfully evocative book draws upon a lifetime of research, including wide-ranging and thought-provoking interpretations of comparative sources from other places and periods of world history. Pearce is especially gifted in his appreciation of the origins of the Taghbach steppe confederation, the creation of their own myth-history, and their slow transformation into a Sinitic-styled empire, which he frames as an attempt 'to describe, really repackage, a very different people, who had created a very different state.' * Andrew Chittick, Eckerd College * Northern Wei is the first English-language monograph available on this very important subject, and its straightforward, chronological narrative structure, makes it accessible to a wide readership. Scott Pearce's command of the sources in Chinese, Japanese, and English is this book's paramount strength. * J. Michael Farmer, University of Texas at Dallas *

Author Information

Scott Pearce is Professor at Western Washington University.

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