Wenkai He is Associate Professor in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

• Introduction; Part I: 1. Legitimacy and resilience of the early modern state; 2. State-society collaboration against subsistence crisis; 3. Financing public infrastructure; 4. The negotiation of state and society over redress of grievances; Part II. Prologue: Limits to Early Modern State Resilience: 5. A political 'great divergence': England (1640–1780), Japan (1853–1895) and China (1840–1911); Conclusion: toward a contextualized comparative historical analysis.

'In this deeply researched work, Wenkai He makes a major contribution to our understanding of state formation. Breaking new ground with a sweeping comparison of early modern England, Japan, and China, he shows how central the provision of public goods was to the process whereby states secured legitimacy, as well as to pre-democratic forms of political participation. This book will be of interest to scholars of contemporary state-society relations, as well as everyone interested in state formation.' Peter A. Hall, Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies, Harvard University