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This book is an excellent collection of thought-provoking essays. It successfully presents the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (906-960) as highly significant to Chinese history, and also demonstrates the benefits of a pluralistic perspective in analyzing this period. Moreover, this volume raises methodological questions that are broadly relevant to historians in other fields. Peter Lorge’s introduction concisely explains how the collection was conceived, and lays out the broader historical and historiographical background of the case studies in this volume. Without claiming to do a complete reassessment of the traditional historiography on the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Lorge points out certain of its weaknesses. With its emphasis on periodization and the “legitimate succession” (p. 3) of dynasties, it tends to favor a linear view of history, which is inadequate to explain the diversity in this period of division. Moreover, the focus on periodization tends to create a “cognitive dissonance” (p. 2) in traditional historians. Ouyang Xiu’s 歐陽修 “Historical Records of the Five Dynasties” ( Wudai shiji 五代史記), for example, seems to have been written teleologically to explain the subsequent rise of the Song rather than to analyze the Five Dynasties period on its own terms (p. 1).
T'oung Pao – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 2013
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