'Fascinating.Apart from having accomplished the important task of assembling and analyzing these photographs, Thiriez has a fine eye for the telling detail.This book will be of great interest to virtually all those interested in nineteenth-century China, and in the colonial angle from which these photographs tell so many different stories, as well as those concerned with the history of photography itself.' - Joanna Waly-Cohen, New York University of Arts 'All historians of China now have a major debt to pay to Dr. Thiriez for her masterful study of the world of photography in nineteenth-century China. The book itself is especially fun for anyone who has ever done historical research. In fact, 'the historian as detective' is a major feature of the book, a subject all research historians understand and that few actually reveal in the writings . Clearly this is a work which has many dimensions and one which a very large number of historians are likely to profit from.

I recommend the book highly.' - Steven A. Leibo, Asia Book Review 'Regine Thiriez's level of scholarship is unmatched in this field . An innovative and worthwhile book that will make significant advances in the study of late imperial China and the encounter between China and the rest of the world.' - John Finlay, Curator of Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York.