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Book Review

Asia

John W. Chaffee. Branches of Heaven: A History of the Imperial Clan of Sung China. (Harvard East Asian Monographs, number 183.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University East Asia Center; distributed by Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 1999. Pp. xx, 441. $45.00.

In his history of the imperial clan of Sung China (960–1279), John W. Chaffee has made a contribution not only to the study of middle period (tenth through thirteenth century) Chinese history but also to the comparative study of monarchical systems of power. Policies toward the imperial clan are one aspect of the multifaceted institution of emperorship as it evolved in the Sung. By showing how Sung emperors dealt with the complex problem of ever-increasing numbers of imperial kin, Chaffee presents a case study of institutional monarchy while he also relates the particular history of the Sung imperial clan. 1

Chaffee defines the Sung imperial clan as "a patrilineal kinship group unlimited in its generational depth, supported by the throne through allowances and privileges but also governed by state-imposed restrictions" (p. 3) and asserts that the imperial clan "in the Sung sense" was unique in world history. By this he means that state control, regulation, and support of the Sung imperial clan distinguish it from hereditary rulers' kin in other monarchical systems. Chaffee also claims that, over the course of the three centuries of Sung rule, there was a "dramatic change in the roles of imperial clansmen" (p. 2). He documents the evolution of the imperial clan between Northern (960–1126) and Southern Sung (1127–1279) "from a group of cloistered kin to a multitude of privileged officials" (p. 17). The transformation of the imperial clan was spatial as well as social, and Chaffee accordingly demonstrates the shift in residency patterns—"from capital to countryside"—that accompanied the social changes he describes. . . .

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