This is a pathbreaking achievement. It presents insights that will be important to scholars interested in a wide variety of problems: rural society, the nature of elite power, modern state-formation, and collective action. This very important book will fundamentally influence our thinking on these problems for a long time.'Joseph W. Esherick, University of California, San Diego

• Introduction 1. Landlords, tenants, and the state in the early and mid-quig 2. Popular resistance in the 1840's and 1850's 3. The Taiping occupation of Jiangnan, 1860-1864 4. Reconstruction and post-Taiping rural society, 1864-1911 5. Landlords, tenants, and the state in the republican period, 1912-1937 6. Popular resistance in the republican period, 1912-1937 Conclusion.