Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

The past decade has been a very good one for historians of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907−79), as a growing body of research, both in Chinese and in English, has emerged to expand and enrich our understanding of the often neglected period of disunion between the Tang and Song dynasties. This volume, edited by Peter Lorge, represents a collective effort of scholars at the forefront of the field to explore further this turbulent era, with the intention of “advancing the overall understanding of the period as a whole” (p. 4). Challenging the traditional view shaped by Song historians such as Ouyang Xiu (1007–72), who condemned the Five Dynasties as an interregnum characterized by cultural darkness and moral degeneration, this book proposes that the period was “fully continuous with the Tang and Song” (p. 1). Many trends in the Tang dynasty, the contributors argue, continued through the Five Dynasties...