This is a bold but well-grounded inquiry into the impact of cross-cultural contact on Western and particularly Chinese experiences of grief and commemoration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Clearly written and exceptionally well researched, its findings are significant in their own right and as a model for other work in the field.

Peter Stearns, George Mason University, USA

Death and Emotions in Anglo-China illuminates an area of historical research otherwise shrouded in the obscurity reserved for the Underworld. In scrutinising the mutual learning process concerning death and funerary ritual of the Western and Chinese communities inhabiting Treaty Port China, we gain valuable insight not only into the collective emotional responses to the passing of human life but also into the interaction between China's urban society and the arrival of people from the West with new customs and beliefs surrounding death.

Lars Peter Laamann, SOAS University of London, UK