This comprehensive volume integrates the history of late imperial China with the history of education over three centuries, revealing the significance of education in Chinese social, political, and intellectual life. A collaboration between social and intellectual historians, these fifteen essays provide the most wide-ranging study in English on China's education in the centuries before the modern revolution.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Allan Barr
Cynthia J. Brokaw
Wejen Chang
Kai-wing Chow
Pamela Kyle Crossley
Benjamin A. Elman
R. Kent Guy
Catherine Jami
Barry Keenan
Angela Ki Che Leung
Kwang-Ching Liu
Susan Mann
William T. Rowe
Alexander Woodside

Benjamin A. Elman is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Alexander Woodside is Professor of History at the University of British Columbia.

"An informative, stimulating, and quite demanding book on a subject central to understanding China on the eve of its modern transformation."—Choice

"An extremely important work that will be of immense value to scholars in the field."—East/West Education

"A wealth of fascinating new information and ideas [that] will deservedly be regarded as a standard work on the subject."—British Journal of Education Studies

"A solid and perceptive contribution. . . . Will attract considerable interest not only from social, intellectual and educational historians of China, but also . . . from historians of Western education."—Education & Society in Late Imperial China

"Extensive and quite thought-provoking discussions."—Journal of Asian Studies

"A collection of fourteen meticulously researched articles that refine, modify, and extend the discussion far beyond the past findings of Chinese education."—History of Education Quarterly