Reviewed by: Forming the Early Chinese Court: Rituals, Spaces, Roles by Luke Habberstad Charles Sanft Forming the Early Chinese Court: Rituals, Spaces, Roles by Luke Habberstad. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 240. $90.00 cloth, $30.00 paper, $30.00 e-book. Luke Habberstad's Forming the Early Chinese Court is an original, lucid, and insightful consideration of developments in Western Han governance. Habberstad examines the development of bureaucratic offices in the period, portraying a process of increasing differentiation among roles. The center of politics at the time was the imperial court, and Habberstad examines changes that the emperors, their associates, and their competitors made in the interests of power and improved administration. Although Habberstad incorporates some archaeologically excavated texts, most sources for his study are texts from the received tradition. [End Page 228] Many generations of scholars, premodern and modern, have studied those materials, and it can be difficult to say something new about them. Habberstad does it, though. One of the things that set Habberstad's work apart from most studies in this vein is his approach to his sources. He treats his sources as subjects for close reading and not mere collections of information. The result is a multifaceted and agile book that will be of interest to scholars who study the Han dynasty and to those who study bureaucracy as a broader phenomenon. Much of Habberstad's analysis emerges from comparisons between Shiji 史記 and Hanshu 漢書, which is itself not new. According to Hou Hanshu 後漢書, Ban Biao 班彪 (3–54) took inspiration for his historiography from Sima Qian 司馬遷 (d. ca. 80 BCE), creator of Shiji, and his work became the kernel that his son built upon when writing Hanshu.1 Medieval metahistorical works such as Shitong 史通, by Liu Zhiji 劉知幾 (661–721), contrast Shiji and Hanshu, and Ni Si's 倪思 (1147–1220) Ban Ma yitong 班馬異同 is an extended consideration of their differences and similarities. Many modern scholars, such as Wang Liqi 王利器, have also made comparisons that at first glance might seem to be similar to Habberstad's.2 Habberstad distinguishes his approach from those of preceding scholars by giving his source materials the kind of close examination most often reserved for the study of literature. Doing so leads him in a different direction than most treatments of early bureaucracy, which often fall under the rubric of institutional history. Habberstad both acknowledges the value of institutional studies, which is immense, and differentiates his own work (pp. 11–13). This is not to say that historiographical aspects are absent from Forming the Early Chinese Court; just the opposite. Habberstad's comparisons put his subjects into historical contexts, which combine with his detailed examinations to depict shifting practices and shifting conceptions of bureaucracy. The result is a work that does not fit into the usual categories of early China studies, which makes its approach all the more penetrating. [End Page 229] The ways that Forming the Early Chinese Court goes beyond common divisions of sources are perhaps most evident in chapter 5, "The Literary Invention of Bureaucracy" (pp. 139–67). While the title might seem to promise a consideration of literature, and literature is indeed a large part of the discussion, Habberstad gives equal prominence to charts in which Shiji and Hanshu depict institutional change over time. Under Habberstad's analysis, the tables, no less than literary considerations of what an official should be like, demonstrate developments toward an understanding of bureaucracy in which distinctions among official positions become more important and indeed clearer. The means for making those distinctions and their implications are important throughout the book. Habberstad devotes a chapter (pp. 33–60), for instance, to considering salaries and sumptuary privileges that Western Han practice gave persons of particular status and how they related to those of other statuses. He addresses one of the most interesting questions about those rules, which is the frequency of their violation. Habberstad presents these systems "not as clearly defined tools for asserting power but as a collection of processes" (p. 58). Such privileges were not only part of Han officials' lives. Habberstad centers a chapter (pp. 61–84) on discussions about how the leader of Xiongnu 匈奴 would participate in an imperial...
Read full abstract
Mar 5, 2023
Anna K Korobitsyna 
Open Access
