During the eighteenth century, China’s new Manchu rulers consolidated their control of the largest empire China had ever known. In this book Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski draw on the most recent research to provide a unique overview and reevaluation of the social history of China during this period--one of the most dynamic periods in China’s early modern era."A lucid, original, and scholarly summary of the social, economic, and demographic history of China’s last great period of glory. This will be an important book for students of Chinese history."—Jonathan Spence, Yale University"Engaging, complex, and elegantly written. . . . Absorbing and valuable: a thorough, unique, and richly detailed account of the social forms and cultural and religious life of the people."—Choice"[An] interesting and well-informed survey of China between about 1680 and 1820."—W.J.F. Jenner, Asian Affairs"I would be a very odd scholar or general reader who could not derive profit from reading this elegant
