Literate Community in Early Imperial China: The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times by Charles Sanft

Abstract

Reviewed by: Literate Community in Early Imperial China: The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times by Charles Sanft Sujane Wu (bio) Charles Sanft. Literate Community in Early Imperial China: The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times. Albany: State University of New York, 2019. xxiii, 252 pp. Hardcover $90.00, isbn 978-1-4384-7513-4-252 pages. As implied in the title of his book, Literate Community in Early Imperial China: The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times, Charles Sanft undertakes his tasks on four aspects—literacy, community, early Han era (time frame), and the northwestern frontier (location)—by using the archaeological discoveries in the area located within modern Gansu Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in recent decades. Through his case study on the excavated written texts in various forms (e.g., edits and private letters) and on a variety of [End Page 105] materials (e.g., silk, paper, wood, and bamboo strips), the author argues that in the northwestern frontier—a border region being "far removed from the centers of culture and politics" (p. xv)—during the Han times, men and women at the lower social level were in fact meaningfully interacting with text. Furthermore, Sanft also argues that all these non-elite people (i.e., local residents and soldiers as well as their families from other regions) worked as a "community," rather than as individuals, when they encountered an opportunity to engage with texts. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, this book consists of eight chapters that can be summarized as follows: The first two chapters elaborate on the major theme—that is, the not-elite people's interaction with the texts that occurred not in the central power-holder location. While chapter 1 expounds on the meanings of "literacy and community," chapter 2 explains the significance of given time period and location studied. For the remaining six chapters that follow, the author provides his close examination and interpretation to a variety of excavated texts—namely, posted texts; statements of individuals and groups; composite texts; practical texts; cultural texts; and private letters—and in each chapter, he focuses on one kind of text and offers his interpretation and analyses. In chapter 1 titled "Interacting with Text in Early Imperial China and Beyond," the author sets up a framework for his case study on the border region and elaborates on the reasons behind his approach. In this chapter, he also notes that he wants to reconsider and redefine the word "literacy" when it is used in a distant past in China. He says, "This chapter makes the case for considering reading, including reading aloud; listening to others read aloud; writing; and dictation as different ways of doing one thing: interacting with text" (p. 1). That said, he redefines and broadens the meaning of "literacy" in this book. He remarks, by referring to Nicholas Orme's statement, that our common (and narrow) understanding of literacy as an individual's ability to both read and write is "because we live in a society that places an emphasis on people as individuals" (p. 21). He argues that when the concept of "literacy" is applied to the distant past, we need to think from a more collective perspective. He further emphasizes that "thinking in terms of community rather than individuals also provides a way to work around the intractable questions connected with determining rates of literacy" (p. 22). A "literate community" thus denotes how a group of people, being in "physical closeness," interacts with texts (p. 23). In chapter 2, the author offers the intellectual and historical "contexts and sources" for his case study in which he focuses on the excavated documents from the four commandaries—Zhangye 张掖, Dunhuang 敦煌, Wuwei 武威, and Jiuquan 酒泉—four newly established Han commandaries郡 in the northwestern border region. The function of this chapter, as he notes, is to give the reader a background in Han military presence in this area and an overview [End Page 106] of how the documents produced and transmitted among people (and how people interacted with them)—all the information necessary to understand his approach to the main chapters (3-8) in the book, which will be briefly discussed later. The author begins his close examination...