| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Nicola Di Cosmo. Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2002. Pp. ix, 369. $70.00.
China's centuries-old historiographical tradition, cultural continuity, and long-term political, economic, and demographic domination of much of eastern Asia have tended to impose a Sinocentric bias on studies of Chinese history. Consciously or not, historians have tended to accept China's claim to be the "Middle Kingdom" ruling "All Under Heaven," an island of civilization surrounded on its far-flung and thinly populated margins by benighted and uncultivated barbarians. Implicit in this view is the idea that China's cultural centrality held sway from the very beginning of historical time.	1
In the past two decades or so, this Sinocentric perspective has increasily been rejected by historians in the West, and latterly by some Chinese historians as well, in favor of a richer and more complex view of ancient history. It is now understood that ancient East Asia was ethnically, linguistically, and culturally very diverse; that the Neolithic revolution took place independently (or interdependently but not unifocally) in many parts of what is now China; that the East Asian Bronze Age, too, was distributed over a number of separate cultures and polities; and, in short, that Chinese civilization came into being over a long period of time and from many different sources. It is also unquestionably true that the peoples of Inner Asia made important contributions to the emerging culture of China throughout the ancient period.	. . .

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