Hunan province has long interested students of modern China. A citadel of orthodoxy in the nineteenth century and a mainspring of revolution in the twentieth, it is an ideal focus for a study of the great transformation that occurred during the last two decades of the Ch'ing dynasty.

Hunan's experience illuminates key questions. How did foreign imperialism affect Chinese society? What ties bound the provinces to the central government, and how were these ties loosened to permit the secession movement of 1911? Why did nationalism emerge so abruptly and strongly after 1895? How did it differ from the antiforeignism that preceded it, and what did it contribute to the movement against the dynasty? As nationalism became strong, why did social revolution remain weak?

Since Hunanese leadership, moving from orthodoxy through revolution, constitutes one of the great continuities in China's modern history, the answers that a study of Hunan gives to these questions are relevant to larger patterns of change in China as a whole. Charlton Lewis has written a valuable handbook of national as well as provincial events during the turbulent period around the turn of the century.