Prof. Wenkai He’s Book Reviewed in The New York Review of Books
Prof. Wenkai He’s groundbreaking book, Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), has been featured in the New York Review of Books in a review by renowned historian Prof. Kenneth Pomeranz of the University of Chicago. The review highlights the originality and importance of this book to rethinking early modern governance, comparing Qing China with early modern England and Japan.
Pomeranz’s review situates Prof. He’s work alongside other cutting-edge scholarship, emphasizing its challenge to extant paradigms about state formation. The book explores how states—including China’s Qing Dynasty—legitimized their rule through collaboration with local elites over public goods provision, offering fresh insights into comparative political and economic history.
