Fire and Ice is Richard L. Davis’ second book on the Later Tang dynasty, and deals with Li Cunxu, the founder and early years of that dynasty. It is based on the work he had published together with Ma Jia 馬佳 in Chinese, Lingren, wushi, lieshou: Hou Tang Zhuangzong Li Cunxu zhuan 伶人，武士，獵手：後唐莊宗李存勖傳 (Beijing, 2009). His first book, From Warhorses to Ploughshares (Hong Kong, 2014), had focused on Li Siyuan 李嗣源 (r. 926–933), the second ruler of the Later Tang (926–936).
Davis had entered the field of Five Dynasties history with his translation of Ouyang Xiu's history of the period, Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (New York, 2004) that was instrumental in establishing Five Dynasties history as an independent field of study.
In Fire and Ice Davis presents a biography of Li Cunxu and over five chapters describes the rise and decline of this fascinating Shatuo ruler in meticulous detail. Li Cunxu is of specific importance as the founder of the first of three successive Shatuo 沙陀 dynasties that ruled over northern China, the two later dynasties being the Later Jin (937–947) and Later Han (947–951). While the most readily available depiction of Li Cunxu in a Western language, in the Cambridge History of China Vol. 5, Part 1, covers a mere 17 pages (pp. 58–74), in the present book the reader is given insight into the early periods of Shatuo history and the eventual acceptance of Shatuo chiefs into the orbit of the Tang imperial family during the late ninth century. With the absorption of Chinese norms and customs, Shatuo as a classifier of a specific amalgam of ethnic groups vanished over the course of about 100 years. Li Cunxu, born to a Shatuo father and a Chinese mother, set out as a very capable leader, but Davis says, finally fell victim to “poor choices in their personal lives” (p. xi) that ended the first reign of the dynasty that had begun as a restoration of the Tang (618–907).
The book appears to underline the old adage that “one can conquer an empire by horseback, but cannot succeed in ruling it from horseback”, except that Li Cunxu throughout his career was waging war. Davis illustrates influences on Li Cunxu's life, such as his family and closest advisers, and the allies he made during his campaigns, but he also points out weaknesses of the otherwise talented man such as his fondness for alcohol, gambling and excessive hunting.
The main sources Davis employs are the “Old History of the Five Dynasties” (Jiu Wudai shi, 974), and the “New History of the Five Dynasties” (Xin Wudai shi, 1077), the Cefu yuangui (1013), as well as the Zizhi tongjian (1084). It is difficult to escape the bias of particularly the “Old History of the Five Dynasties” which by imperial intervention constructed the northern regimes as legitimate predecessors of the Song and relegating the other regimes to illegitimate status as the “Ten States” labelled as such by the “New History of the Five Dynasties”. These works employed a political terminology and a view on the southern states prevalent in the Song which echo in in Davis’ writing on the “legitimate” northern dynasty. Autonomous regimes in the south are throughout addressed as “kingdoms” even though the term guo 國 comprises a variety of state forms. Even Ouyang Xiu used the term very generally and categorized the states according to their relationship with the northern dynasties. Hence “kingdoms”, like for instance Wuyue in Zhejiang, which always played vassal to any of the northern dynasties in order to keep their neighbours such as the state of Wu in check, receive better treatment than e.g. the empire of the Southern Han in Guangdong. In one case Davis indeed confuses Wuyue with Wu (pp. 92–3) explaining that the “Prince of Wu” assumed the title of king in 923 when that was the king of Wuyue. Similarly he refers to the ruler of the Wu “kingdom” in 921 as an emperor (p. 85), when that ruler, Yang Pu, only in 926 adopted the imperial title. These two examples go to show that there is ample room for further research, not least because Davis with his present book opened the door to it in a significant way.
Annoyingly, the editing process must have been somewhat haphazard. This is obvious in the dates that mostly appear according to the Chinese calendar without their equivalent in the Western calendar.
Similarly, some texts referred to by title in the footnotes are hard to find in the bibliography, where they are listed under their author (e.g. on p. 43 Wudai shihua is listed under Bian Xiaoxuan and Zheng Xuemeng). In addition some titles cannot be traced at all (e.g. p. 75 “Luvaas, Napoleon”; p. 150 Tang huiyao).
The above issues notwithstanding, Fire and Ice is a must-read for all students interested in Shatuo and Later Tang history. It adds a most welcome narrative to the field of Five Dynasties political history that was missing from such older works as Wolfram Eberhard, Conquerors and Rulers (Leiden, 1952), and Wang Gungwu, The Structure of Power in North China during the Five Dynasties (Kuala Lumpur, 1963).
