These essays on modern Chinese history were contributed exclusively by former students of Columbia University’s Professor C. Martin Wilbur, one of the great names in the China field over the past forty years.

An Appreciation -- Introduction -- Prospect -- Two Visions of the Future: Russia and China as Pictured in Two Nineteenth-century Russian Tales -- Chinese Institutions and Institutional Change -- Frontier Politics in the Southwestern Sino-Tibetan Borderlands During the Ch’ing Dynasty -- The Political Kin Unit and the Family Origin of Ch’ing Local Officials -- Urban Control in Late Imperial China: The Pao-chia System in Hankow -- Mausers and the Opium Trade: The Hupeh Arsenal, 1895-1911 -- Mao Tse-tung and Writing Reform -- Education and Political Change -- Military Academies in China, 1885-1915 -- Warlordism and Educational Finances, 1916-1927 -- Revolution, Nation-building, and Chinese Communist Leadership Education During the Sino-Japanese War -- Retrospect: Chinese History as Written -- On the “Rediscovery” of the Chinese Past: Ts’ui Shu and Related Cases -- The Vicissitudes of Chinese Communist Historiography: Ch’ü Ch’iu-pai from Martyr to Traitor