"The Foreword provides an explanation of the rationale for New Perspectives on China's Late Imperial Period: Why China Slept and gives an overview of the book's structure and a brief summary of each chapter. The book finds inspiration from George Orwell's astute observation: 'Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.' Since the West is the victor in the past two centuries, it controls the dominant and mainstream narrative of past history, including the history of China's Ming and Qing era. Why China Slept attempts to perceive China's past from a different perspective, in part by drawing upon the viewpoints of a number of non-conventional scholars from both the West and East, and considers its implications for the future. The book endeavors to re-examine all the conventional reasons given for China's stagnation and decline in the late imperial period in order to come up with a new framework for understanding China's rapid recovery in recent decades"-- Provided by publisher.