Exploring the significance of education to Chinese social, political and intellectual life in late imperial China, this volume contains 15 essays providing a wide-ranging study of China's early education policies.

This comprehensive volume integrates the history of late imperial China with the history of education over three centuries, revealing the significance of education in Chinese social, political, and intellectual life. A collaboration between social and intellectual historians, these fifteen essays provide the most wide-ranging study in English on China's education in the centuries before the modern revolution.