William T. Rowe

Rowe has shaped the field of early modern Chinese history. His early work set the standard for writing Chinese urban history, putting to rest old myths of an empire supposedly immobilized by bureaucratic domination. Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China (2002) explained how China's 18th-century elite attempted to order the universe, from family and gender relations to economic life and the investigation of the material world. Other work explored patterns of local violence in a Chinese county across seven centuries. Rowe established Late Imperial China as the China field's premier journal of early modern history. Rowe is a generous and energetic teacher and mentor.