«Common Ground is a significant addition to the study of late imperial China and Inner Asia. Reconfiguring the terms of the imperial encounter between Qing rulers and Tibetan lamas, it provides a critical contribution to discussions and interpretations of Buddhism as a rhetorical, intellectual, and political space.»

Nicola Di Cosmo, Institute for Advanced Study

«Common Ground delivers fresh perspectives on the formation of the Qing Empire from the vantage of its swelling Inner Asian frontier. Admirably, Lan Wu decenters court narratives in favor of “negotiated platforms” through which Tibetans, Mongols, Manchus, and Chinese actors made (and unmade) visions of sovereignty, territoriality, and belonging.»

Matthew King, author of <i>Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing

«Lan Wu’s engaging and erudite study tours the key nodes of Buddhist Inner Asia, from Lhasa to Beijing. Each stop offers vivid insight into the social, intellectual, and institutional networks built by the Qing state and Buddhist clergy as they competed and cooperated – shaping in the process the trajectories of China, Mongolia, and Tibet.»

Matthew Mosca, author of <i>From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Tr

«This study by Lan Wu breaks important new ground, conceptually as well as historically. It focuses on the various ways in which the Gelukpa school of Tibetan Buddhism's Ganden Podrang government in Lhasa negotiated a political and a religious status quo with the Qing court in Beijing and vice versa. The book makes good on the promise that it seeks to capture "the changing dynamics in the space between the two epicenters of Beijing and Lhasa," the space being occupied by Tibetan Buddhist Inner Asia. The two principals were hardly equals, and Lan Wu deftly analyses the mise en scène of this "common ground" in which there was an obvious give and take by both parties, even if this was not always readily acknowledged by either one. This is a riveting book and a welcome addition to the growing number of studies
that deal with the relationships that were forged between different Tibetan Buddhist and Manchu actors during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which of necessity the Mongols played an important if not a central role.»

Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, Harvard University

«Provides a unique perspective for understanding the flexible geopolitics strategy of the Qing dynasty.»

Religious Studies Review

«Common Ground brilliantly explores the entangled history of the Qing imperial enterprise and the Gelukpa expansion in East Asia, which produced a shared communal Buddhist identity. Lan Wu examines the transregional knowledge network woven by Buddhist intellectuals through monasteries, texts, and images, shedding light on the peripheral regions of Amdo and Inner Mongolia as well as cosmopolitan Beijing.»

Isabelle Charleux, author of <i>Nomads on Pilgrimage: Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800–1940</i>