Village Governance in North China: Power, Discourse, and Institutional Change (1875-1936)

This book is an academic monograph on the rural socio-economic history of the late Qing and Republican periods. The author focuses on rural governance in North China from the late Qing to the Republican era, making full use of the complete and rich historical archives of Luquan County, Hebei Province. Through meticulous observation and analysis of local village-level taxation, school administration, local autonomy, and the selection and daily performance of grassroots administrative personnel, the book reconstructs the most fundamental rural details. The author connects and studies the late Qing, Beiyang, and KMT periods, thereby clarifying the impact of the state power's transition from imperial rule to a modern nation-state on rural society. At the same time, the book goes beyond Luquan, from Luquan to North China, and from North China to the whole of China, to glimpse the social changes in modern Chinese rural areas from fragments of local archives. Based on the cooperation and game theory between local people and elites, the book emphasizes the grassroots governance practices of ordinary villages, reconstructing the rural narrative of modern China.