Andrew Chittick

This paper explored the limits of state formation in the Sinitic south through a case study of the Cham state (known in Sinitic texts as Linyi/Lâm Ấp), based in the Thu Bon valley of modern Vietnam. I will first revisit my study of the Jiankang Empire and various models of Sinitic and Buddhist exemplar states in the Sinitic periphery. I will then explore the history of the Cham state, which is unique for its almost wholesale rejection of Sinitic models of statecraft, despite sharing a land border with the major Sinitic empires and maintaining close and continual diplomatic and commercial relations with them. The example of the Cham state can help us to understand the limits of, and the alternatives to, Sinicized political identities on the southern frontier.

This presentation asserted that the most rapid expansion of growth in Sino-Southeast Asian exchange prior to the ninth century was in the fifth and sixth centuries, not the early Tang, which is widely given credit. The Jiankang imperial capital (modern Nanjing) was not only the world’s largest city, but also the first time a Sinitic imperial city was also a major seaport, making it an ideal destination for Southeast Asian merchants and diplomats alike. The Jiankang ruling class was eager for commercial trade and culturally accommodating to Southeast Asians in a manner that northern Sinitic empires were not. The growth of maritime exchange during this period is readily demonstrated by the extent of diplomatic exchange; the increased trade in Southeast Asian commodities, especially aromatics and medicines; and the general influx of information about Southeast Asian states and peoples.

This talk re-assesses the nature and the extent of commercial and diplomatic relations between the states of the South Seas (i.e. maritime Southeast Asia) and the Tang Empire in the 7^th-8^th centuries CE. This period is commonly understood to be the height of Tang “cosmopolitanism,” but the evidence instead suggests a significant decline in the level of diplomatic and commercial exchange, with a concomitant decline in cultural influence, in both directions. The period thus represents a rather stagnant lull between two periods of more vigorous exchange: the Jiankang era (especially the 5^th-6^th centuries), and the late Tang commercial revolution (late 8^th century forwards). The paper explores Tang relations with the Cham state (in modern central Vietnam) and Srivijaya (in southeastern Sumatra), and with the Kunlun, a term used to describe people from maritime Southeast Asia.

Though he does not immediately proffer an explanation for this, the overall argument of the book is that, in the intervening four centuries, the unquestioned dominance of "imperial metageography" - familiar to all Sinologists as the conception of a single empire, divided into provinces and counties, and rimmed by less submissive foreign borderlands - gave way to other metageographies which often challenged and subverted the imperial view. Felt also links the three new subgenres to three historical "transformations" in the early medieval era: the fragmentation of the imperial order (resulting in more local works); the development of the Yangzi basin (leading to works on natural spaces); and the impact of Buddhism and knowledge of the wider world beyond the Sinitic ecumene (works on foreign lands). [...]I would be interested in how these two chapters might have played out if Felt had abandoned chronology and instead considered as two distinct metageographies the relatively de-politicized "ecumenical regionalism" of much local writing, and the more politicized "competitive empires" model (a term Felt doesn't apply generally but does use as a section subheading on p. 122) of both the Three Kingdoms and late Northern and Southern periods. [...]the Shuijiiig zhu's hydrocultural scheme does not "entirely decenter the state" (as Felt claims on p. 208), but instead leaves state agents playing an outsized role in shaping the world.

Abstract This essay uses the history of the Wu region in the first millennium ce to explore the relationship between locality and empire. Many major East Asian empires are considered to be “Chinese” and to have essentially similar characteristics which are largely independent of their local base. Recent work on the Jiankang Empire (third to sixth centuries ce , also known as the “southern dynasties”) has shown that it had an imperial culture which was quite different from Central Plains-based empires, and which is in part attributable to the distinctive culture of the local Wu region. The relationship can be further illustrated by linking those developments to evidence from the tenth century, when the Wu region again served as the core of a political regime with imperial pretentions.

"This book compares the ways in which new powers arose in the shadows of the Roman Empire and its Byzantine and Carolingian successors, of Iran, the Caliphate and China in the first millennium CE. These new powers were often established by external military elites who had served the empire. They remained in an uneasy balance with the remaining empire, could eventually replace it, or be drawn into the imperial sphere again. Some relied on dynastic legitimacy, others on ethnic identification, while most of them sought imperial legitimation. Across Eurasia, their dynamic was similar in many respects; why were the outcomes so different?"--

Most LIASE-sponsored programs incorporate some type of fieldwork in Asia as a primary element. Sustaining these field sites over the long term is vulnerable to varying levels of faculty commitment, personal relationships with overseas partner institutions, and the vicissitudes of student interest, especially given the small student pools at liberal arts colleges. Eckerd College has met this challenge by using a joint on-campus program to feed into multiple field research locations, which broadens the opportunities for faculty and student engagement. It has also allowed us to let some field sites lapse when they were not working out, without undermining the integrity and continuity of the overall program.