'Wenkai He draws on his wide reading in Chinese, Japanese, and English historical literatures to engage with social science debates about early modern state formation, as both a common and a pluriform process. Redirecting attention from war and coercion to infrastructural and welfare provision, he looks set to ignite exciting interdisciplinary conversations.' Joanna Innes, Emeritus Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, and Senior Research Fellow, Somerville College
Introduction; Part I: 1. Legitimacy and resilience of the early modern state; 2. State-society collaboration against subsistence crisis; 3. Financing public infrastructure; 4. The negotiation of state and society over redress of grievances; Part II. Prologue: Limits to Early Modern State Resilience: 5. A political 'great divergence': England (1640–1780), Japan (1853–1895) and China (1840–1911); Conclusion: toward a contextualized comparative historical analysis.