At the dawn of the twentieth century, China's sovereignty was fragile at best. In the face of international pressure and domestic upheaval, young urban radicals

In this book, Susan Glosser examines how the link between family order and national salvation affected state-building and explores its lasting consequences.".

At the outset of the Nanjing decade (1928-1937), a small group of Chinese legal elites worked to codify the terms that would bring the institutions of marriage