Pamela Kyle Crossley is Professor Emerita of History at Dartmouth College and author of A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (2000) and The Wobbling Pivot: China since 1800 (2010).

• List of figures; List of maps; Acknowledgments; Reign periods; Readings notes, names and terms; 1. Introduction; 2. Order on the frontier, 1400–1643; 3. Qing unification, 1644–1685; 4. State of war, 1616–1795; 5. State of peace, 1685–1799; 6. Enlightenment China, 1661–1805; 7. The wealth of nations, 1684–1820; 8. Wars at the inner peripheries, 1740–1850; 9. Heartland counter-state and its aftermath, 1850–1875; 10. Unreconstruction, 1876–1896; 11. Aristocratic chaos and the end of state reform, 1896–1902; 12. Late nation, 1902–1912; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.

'This book offers an amazing and brilliant review of the Qing dynasty. Both historically well informed and historiographically alert, Pamela Crossley lays out all the assumptions that prevail today and now cloud the international perception of China. More importantly, she leaves it to the reader to decide how to understand the Manchu occupation of China.' Timothy Brook, author of Great State: China and the World