Survival in the Frontier Zone: Comparative Perspectives on Identity and Political Allegiance in China’s Inner Asian Borderlands during the Sui-Tang Dynastic Transition (617-630)

The second part of this paper adopts a comparative framework that attempts to place the Sui-Tang borderlands in the broader context of premodern frontier history in order to contribute to the theoretical literature on frontiers. It will endeavor to move beyond generalizations about the fluidity of borderlands by analyzing the different factors that affected bonds of political solidarity between people in frontier areas and core polities. Although borderlands and the people who lived on them often have been considered peripheral or marginal to the study of history, this paper will demonstrate that they can illuminate our understanding of premodern identities and loyalties. It will argue that on the premodern frontier political allegiances to the center generally were weak and not defined according to identity, except under certain restricted conditions.