Randolph Ford
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Publication date:
June 2020
Abstract:
This book addresses a largely untouched historical problem: the fourth to fifth centuries AD witnessed remarkably similar patterns of foreign invasion, conquest, and political fragmentation in Rome and China. Yet while the western Roman empire was never re-established, China was reunified at the end of the sixth century. Taking a comparative approach to the study of the broader historiographical and ethnographic traditions in the classical Greco-Roman and Chinese worlds, the book turns to the late antique/early medieval period, when the western Roman Empire 'fell' and China was re-constituted as a united empire after centuries of foreign conquest and political division. Analyzing the discourse of ethnic identity in the original texts, with translations by Dr Ford, it explores the extent to which notions of Self and Other, of 'barbarian' and 'civilized', help us understand both the transformation of the Roman world as well as the restoration of a unified imperial China.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. Ethnography in the Classical Age
2. The Barbarian and Barbarian Antitheses
3. Ethnography in a Post-Classical Age: The Ethnographic Tradition in the Wars of Procopius and in the Jin shu 晉書
4. New Emperors and Ethnographic Clothes: The Representation of Barbarian Rulers
The Confluence of Ethnographic Discourse and Political Legitimacy: Rhetorical Arguments on the Legitimacy of Barbarian Kingdoms
Conclusion
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