In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, booming demand for natural resources transformed China and its frontiers. Historians of China have described this process in stark terms: pristine borderlands became breadbaskets. Yet Manchu and Mongolian archives reveal a different story. Well before homesteaders arrived, wild objects from the far north became part of elite fashion, and unprecedented consumption had exhausted the region's most precious resources.
In A World Trimmed with Fur, Jonathan Schlesinger uses these diverse archives to reveal how Qing rule witnessed not the destruction of unspoiled environments, but their invention. Qing frontiers were never pristine in the nineteenth century—pearlers had stripped riverbeds of mussels, mushroom pickers had uprooted the steppe, and fur-bearing animals had disappeared from the forest. In response, the court turned to "purification;" it registered and arrested poachers, reformed territorial rule, and redefined the boundary between the pristine and the corrupted. Schlesinger's resulting analysis provides a framework for rethinking the global invention of nature.

《民国时期西部边疆的政权建设与族群关系》另辟蹊径，以民国历史为考察的入手点，重点关注宏观历史下的社会变迁与其中微观层面的群体或个人行动间的相互关系，进而探索历史事件与历史趋势的社会学意义。因此可以说，本文集是有关民国时期西部民族地区社会史研究的汇编，其中蕴含着社会学研究者以史为鉴的现实关怀。

书从新的民族社会学理论入手，对靺鞨族群的来龙去脉进行了系统的、创新性的梳理，同时对靺鞨族群的两大支系——粟末靺鞨、黑水靺鞨的兴起、发展进行了详细的分析，较前人更为深入地阐明前者建立渤海国的历程，渤海国内的族群问题及演化；后者的两次勃兴及其与女真族群的关系。

From about 1600 to 1800, the Qing empire of China expanded to unprecedented size. Through astute diplomacy, economic investment, and a series of ambitious military campaigns into the heart of Central Eurasia, the Manchu rulers defeated the Zunghar Mongols, and brought all of modern Xinjiang and Mongolia under their control, while gaining dominant influence in Tibet. The China we know is a product of these vast conquests.<br /><br /><br /><br />Peter C. Perdue chronicles this little-known story of China's expansion into the northwestern frontier. Unlike previous Chinese dynasties, the Qing achieved lasting domination over the eastern half of the Eurasian continent. Rulers used forcible repression when faced with resistance, but also aimed to win over subject peoples by peaceful means. They invested heavily in the economic and administrative development of the frontier, promoted trade networks, and adapted ceremonies to the distinct regional cultures.<br /><br /><br /><br />Perdue thus illuminates how China came to rule Central Eurasia and how it justifies that control, what holds the Chinese nation together, and how its relations with the Islamic world and Mongolia developed. He offers valuable comparisons to other colonial empires and discusses the legacy left by China's frontier expansion. The Beijing government today faces unrest on its frontiers from peoples who reject its autocratic rule. At the same time, China has launched an ambitious development program in its interior that in many ways echoes the old Qing policies.<br /><br /><br /><br />China Marches West is a tour de force that will fundamentally alter the way we understand Central Eurasia.