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In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she had transformed herself into Empress Dowager Ling, one of the most powerful politicians of her age and one of the first of many Buddhist women to wield incredible influence in dynastic East Asia. In this book, Stephanie Balkwill documents the Empress Dowager’s rise to power and life on the throne against the broader world of imperial China under the rule of the Northern Wei dynasty, a foreign people from Inner Asia who built their capital deep in the Chinese heartland.
Building on largely untapped Buddhist materials, Balkwill shows that the life and rule of the Empress Dowager is a larger story of the reinvention of religious, ethnic, and gender norms in a rapidly changing multicultural society. The Women Who Ruled China recovers the voices of those left out of the mainstream historical record, painting a compelling portrait of medieval Chinese society reinventing itself under the Empress Dowager’s leadership.
“An ambitious and thought-provoking volume. . . . Balkwill meets and exceeds her goals for the book. The fields of early medieval Chinese studies, Tang studies, Buddhist studies, and women’s studies, just to name the most relevant, are the richer for having this fine piece of scholarship available.”
“The Women Who Ruled China would be as at home in a Sinologist’s bookshelf as it might be on the reading list of an undergraduate survey of global monarchy.”
“This is impressive work. One looks forward to more such stimulating scholarship in future, not only from the author, but from those whom she succeeds in inspiring to write in a similar vein.”
“Through analysis of Buddhist texts, tomb inscriptions, and dynastic histories, Balkwill reclaims Empress Dowager Líng’s story from the margins and situates her at the intersection of religion, gender, and politics in early medieval China.”
“The Women Who Ruled China, makes a significant intervention in Chinese history, in Buddhist Studies, and, of course, in the field of global monarchy. At its core, this is a detailed biography of an understudied female monarch from the Northern Wei dynasty."