About the Author

Yingcong Dai is professor of history at William Paterson University. She is the author of The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing.

Reviews

"The White Lotus War: Rebellion and Suppression in Late Imperial China is a seminal work of outstanding scholarship and unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Chinese History collections and supplemental studies lists."
*Midwest Book Review*

"Yingcong Dai provides the definitive history of a key juncture in the trajectory of the Qing dynasty...[D]etails with clarity the complicated interface of moving parts, from emperors and metropolitan officials to impe‐rial kinsmen and Mongols in the banner armies, Green Standard Army fighters, and locally raised troops deployed outside their own region, down to the provincial and county officials charged with provisioning the soldiers."
*H-Net*

"In her impressive new book, Dai Yingcong sets out to entirely change our understanding of the 1796 White Lotus rebellion."
*Journal of Asian Studies*

"Yingcong Dai is an expert on the nexus between military, economy, and soci-ety in the high Qing period...While the large wars of conquest of the Qing Dynasty in Central Asia and Tibet are the subject of numerous studies by now, and the turmoil of the nineteenth century is understood quite well as seen from multiple aspects, the watershed between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries remained hitherto a blank area. Yingcong Dai filled this gap with her book on the White Lotus Rebellion (1796–1804)."
*Journal of Military History*

"[T]he first in-depth, comprehensive study of the White Lotus War...Integrating rigorous research with vivid storytelling, this book is an indispensable addition to the studies of Qing history and the military history of China."
*Choice*

"A strong book, with a coherent argument that is well supported by a wide range of sources. . . A welcome addition to the growing literature on war and finance."
*Journal of Chinese Military History*

"Fascinating and important. . . It should be required reading for anyone interested in rebellion and how the Qing military operated, however dysfunctionally, on the eve of the clashes with the European Imperialist powers."
*T'oung Pao*

"Dai has produced what will probably rank as the definitive account of the White Lotus conflict. This is an extremely detailed study of the war’s many campaigns, a close analysis of its commanders’ political intrigues, and a painstaking accounting of the central government’s allocation of resources to sustain it, all of which are based on primary source research. . . [A] tour de force."
*American Historical Review*