This book explores rural political change in China from 1850 to 1949 to help us to understand China's transformation from a weak, decaying agrarian empire to a unified, strong nation-state during this period. Based on local gazetteers, contemporary field studies, government archives, personal memoirs and other primary sources, it systematically compares two key macro-regions of rural China - the North China plain and the Yangzi delta - to demonstrate the ways in which the forces of political change, shaped by different local conditions, operated to transform the country. It shows that on the North China plain, the village community composed mainly of owner-cultivators was the focal point for political mobilization, whilst in the Yangzi delta absentee landlordism was exploited by the state for local control and tax extraction. However, these both set the stage, in different ways, for the communist mobilization in the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that although landlordism was much less developed in North China than in the Yangzi delta, the North China plain was more hospitable to the Communist revolution, because the village community on the North China Plain, once fully mobilized and organized, enabled the Communists to secure sustained long-term support in human and material resources. It was based on the North China villages and supported by the human and material resources generated from them, the Communists eventually grew into a formidable power able to defeat their adversaries and win the victory of 1949. Overall, this book is an important addition to the literature on the history of the Chinese Revolution, and will of interest to anyone seeking to understand the course of Chinese social and political development. .