War Finance and Logistics in Late Imperial China

Ulrich Theobald, Ph.D. (2009) in Chinese Studies, Tübingen, is a Lecturer for Chinese History and Classical Chinese at Tübingen University. He has published on military labour, border peoples, and Chinese empresses, and owns the online encyclopedia www.chinaknowledge.de.

"With these three absorbing chapters, well supported by an impressive range of both primary and secondary sources, this book contributes to studies of Qing history in many different ways. Theobald convincingly demonstrates not only the centrality of finance and war logistics in Qing military campaigns during the Qianlong reign, but also their essential role in shaping the political and military culture of the Qing state. This book also presents an excellent case study for global comparisons of economies and state capabilities in the early modern and modern periods. (...)Theobald reservedly muses in the acknowledgements that war finance and logistics are a “somewhat dry subject matter” (p. xii). But they are anything but a dry subject matter. What this study shows is the richness of the topic, the depth of the source material, and great potential to inspire new questions."- HASEGAWA MASATO, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Monumenta Serica 68:1, 272-275, DOI: 10.1080/02549948.2020.1748313