Inked

Tattooed Soldiers and the Song Empires Penal-Military Complex

By: Elad Alyagon

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Hardcover | 2 August 2023 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
276 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.35 x 1.58 x 0.22

Hardcover

RRP $86.95

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Inked is a social history of common soldiers of the Song dynasty, most of whom would have been recognized by their tattooed bodies. Overlooked in the historical record, tattoos were an indelible aspect of the Song world, and their ubiquity was tied to the rise of the penal-military complex, a vast system for social control, warfare, and labor.

Although much has been written about the institutional, strategic, and political aspects of the history of the Song and its military, this book is a first-of-its-kind investigation into the lives of the people who fought for the state. Elad Alyagon examines the army as a meeting place between marginalized social groups and elites. In the process, he shows the military to be a space where a new criminalized lower class was molded in a constant struggle between common soldiers and the agents of the Song state. For the millions of people caught in the orbit of this system-the tattooed soldiers, their families, and their neighbors-the Song period was no age of benevolence, but one of servitude, violence, and resistance. Inked is their story.

Industry Reviews

A rare portal for beholding the military as perhaps the most historically maligned-and assuredly so in the subsequent literature of the imperial era-of Song dynastic institutions...As refreshing as it is enlightening. -- Don J. Wyatt * Journal of Chinese History *
A pioneering study of Song social-military history, given the meager literature in Western languages in this field and the extensive attention of Chinese and Japanese scholars to the institutional level. It fills an important historiographical gap and has laid a solid foundation for advancing our understanding of the social-military world of Song and imperial China. -- Siyin Zhao * Journal of Chinese Military History *

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