China's Encounters on the South and Southwest

John K. Whitmore, Ph.D. (1968), Cornell University, has taught at Yale University, the University of Michigan, and UCLA and has published articles on the histories of Vietnam and Southeast Asia. His most recent project has been Sources of Vietnamese Tradition (2012).James A. Anderson, Ph.D. (1999), University of Washington, is an Associate Professor in the History Department at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His most recent book is the co-edited volume The Tongking Gulf Through History (2011).

"This collection is the product of the expertise of the authors, who offer an up-to-date overview of the theories and sources in their respective fields of research. In this regard, the volume provides a valuable new contribution to scholarly debate. An important merit is presenting a great variety of primary sources, Chinese and non-Chinese, many of which offer original material for the study of hese issues. The combined usage of primary documents together with non-textual materials adds value to certain papers in the book, and is a direction that should be pursued in future studies on thetopic. The papers are very well interconnected, theories and ideas flow and recur across sections of the book, and the contributors often refer to each other's work. This gives the positive impression of a lively and ongoing discussion among the authors." – Francesca Fiaschetti, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Asian Highlands Perspectives 40. "As with any compendium of research, this volume is multi-layered since its contributors address particular aspects or case studies to elucidate cultural specifics of China’s borderland history, but they also place them into a larger context of political history. Without a doubt, the value of this collection is in the details of events that highlight nuances while avoiding generalizations and oversimplifications. Nevertheless, details of the political activity of the Dong world remained marginal in the chronicles produced by lowland states like China and Vietnam. The subject of the borderland only came to light during revolts, skirmishes or violations. The contributors of this volume successfully extracted and analyzed records concerning highland peoples, who have no written history of their own. Though fragmentary, their history is preserved in the words of state officials." – Ekaterina Zavidovskaya, National Tsinghua University, Taiwan, in NewBooks [published online, 7 June 2016]