The Magistrate's Tæl: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth Century Ch'ing China

Madeleine Zelin shatters the image of China as a backward empire wracked by corruption and economic stagnation thrust into the modern world when the western gunboats arrived in the 1840s by providing an account of the indigenous evolution of the Chinese state. The Magistrates Tael makes it possible to judge the impact of the West on modern Chinas development.