Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism : How the Qing Frontier and its Indigenes Became Chinese

The first full length treatment of ethnic and national identity in early Twentieth-century China, Leibold traces the political and cultural strategies employed by Han Chinese elites in the process of incorporating, both discursively and physically, the diverse inhabitants of the last Qing dynasty into a new, homogenous national community.

Few would question the role that foreign imperialism has played in shaping modern Chinese nationalism. Yet, this nationalism was also formed in dialogue with a more familiar, internal Other--the so-called barbarians of imperial China. By de-centering the nation-state, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism explores the role of the frontier and its indigenes in fashioning the contours, boundaries, and meaning of modern Chinese identity. Leibold argues that the rugged and sparsely populated frontier regions of the Qing empire proved central rather than peripheral to the process of revolution in modern China. He explores some of the key political and discursive strategies adopted by the Republican state in constructing a more inclusive myth of national belonging, providing important new insights into how China was able to successfully navigate the transition from empire to nation without following other Old World empires into a destructive implosion of competing ethnic sovereignties.