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Morris Rossabi, Naomi Standen. Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2007. Pp. xiii, 279. $53.00, The American Historical Review, Volume 113, Issue 1, February 2008, Pages 154–155, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.113.1.154
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Karl Wittfogel and Fêng Chia-shêng's monumental book, History of Chinese Society: Liao (907–1125) (1949) was, for many years, the most important, if not daunting, work on the Liao dynasty. A massive study, which consisted principally of translations from the Liao dynastic history (Liaoshi), with commentaries, appeared to be the last word on the Khitans, who founded the dynasty. However, the past two decades' resurgence of interest in China's foreign rulers, including the Mongols and the Jurchens, has spilled over into significant studies of the Khitans. Recent discoveries of Liao tombs have further stimulated research and monographs on this previously neglected group. The Khitans' extensive contributions to art alone as patrons, consumers, and producers of sculptures, gold objects, and textiles merit additional studies that go beyond the traditional paradigms about foreigners and foreign dynasties in China.
Like several other scholars over the past few years, Naomi Standen effectively challenges both the sinicization and ethnicity models as means of understanding the foreign dynasties, particularly the Liao, in China. The survival of the Mongols and of Mongol culture, for example, belies the traditional premise that foreign rulers had to assimilate to Chinese culture in order to rule China. Moreover, as Standen shows, other factors often superseded ethnicity in determining the choices of leading Chinese officials or commanders concerning their allegiance to native Chinese dynasties or foreign rulers. These civilian and military officials, on occasion, collaborated with foreign states rather than choosing to ally with fellow Chinese, decisions that undermine the concept of ethnic allegiance as the most important value in the traditional history of the so-called Middle Kingdom.
