Western scholars of world history, Wong reminds us early in this thought-provoking volume, often feel little compunction in basing their knowledge of China on a few items of secondary literature (ix). The observation will most likely elicit a knowing nod from many of us who labor in nonwestern fields. The reason for such misplaced confidence is, simply put, that historical writing, including that on the non-European sphere, has long been shaped by themes and trajectories drawn from the European experience. As a student of Chinese history and as someone committed to both the intellectual and pedagogical value of comparative history, Wong sets himself an ambitious agenda: “to dislodge European statemaking and capitalism from their privileged positions as universalizing themes in world history” (1). He seeks to do so by comparing the European case to “the dynamics of economic and political change in a major non-Western civilization,” that is, China, and to create “strategies of comparison that avoid privileging European categories of analysis and dynamics of historical change” (2). His objective is thus to delineate a new history that takes into account the multiple trajectories of change across time and space. “These comparisons,” Wong suggests, “can then be used to extend and revise social theory” (6). How successful is he in this important endeavor?