The author's significant findings in Chinese institutional history will now be generally available to scholars. The nine essays first collected here deal with problems in the history of Chinese political, social, and economic institutions, including land and tax systems, money and credit, economic justification for spending, schedules of work and rest, and hostages. There is an important discussion of the problem of dynastic configurations, a concept parallel to that of configurations of cultural growth and essential to study of the “dynastic cycles.”