Robert Bickers is Professor of History at the University of Bristol, UK. Jonathan J. Howlett is a Lecturer in Modern Asian History at the University of York, UK.

"This volume provides a sophisticated understanding of the British presence in China and the actors and agencies involved within the broader contours of the British Empire. Its chapters help to trace the construction of the British presence in China as a transnational agent through migration, labour, foreign capital and wars. This transnational character of the British presence in China presents us with difficulties in distinguishing clearly between what was ‘Chinese’ and what was ‘foreign’, a theme that seems central to several chapters in this volume (especially those byHirata, Howlett, Jackson and Chen)."Shilpa Sharma,China Report

• Introduction 1. 'The Usual Intercourse of Nations': The British in Pre-Opium War Canton 2. British Intervention in the Taiping Rebellion 3. Britain and China, and India, 1830s-1947 4. The Interest of Our Colonies Seems to Have Been Largely Overlooked: Colonial Australia and Anglo-Chinese Relations 5. ‘Coolies’ or ‘Huagong’? Conflicting British and Chinese attitudes towards Chinese contract workers in World War One France 6. Sino-British Relations in Railway Construction: State, Imperialism and Local Elites, 1905-1911 7. Foreign investment in modern China: an analysis with a focus on British interests 8. Curative Finance: Francis Aglen, Bond Markets, and the Early Republic, 1911-1928 9. Expansion and Defence in the International Settlement at Shanghai 10. Nationalistic Enthusiasm versus Imperialist Sophistication: Britain from Chiang Kai-shek’s Perspective 11. ‘Decolonisation' in China, 1949-1959