The book Southwest China in Regional and Global Perspectives (c. 1600-1911) is dedicated to important issues in society, trade, and local policy in the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan during the late phase of the Qing period. It combines the methods of various disciplines to bring more light into the neglected history of a region that witnessed a faster population growth than any other region in China during that age. The contributions to the volume analyse conflicts and arrangements in immigrant societies, problems of environmental change, the economic significance of copper as the most important “export” product, topographical and legal obstacles in trade and transport, specific problems in inter-regional trade, and the roots of modern transnational enterprise.

CAO Jin, (Ph.D. 2012) is a post-doctoral researcher in the field of Chinese studies at Tübingen University, Germany, and Peking University. Her scholarship focuses on questions of social and economic history as well as on the history of science and technology in late Imperial China.

Ulrich Theobald, (Ph.D. 2009) is Senior Lecturer for Chinese Studies at Tübingen University. He has published on military labour, war finance and logistics, monetary history, and border peoples. He currently works on changes in the appointment of local officials in 19th-century China.