"A remarkable chapter in trans-Pacific history. Drawing from a huge array of local archives and personal papers, Professor Rhoads has produced the most authoritative study of the Chinese Education Mission. This collective biography of 120 teenage boys pre

"Meticulously researched and well written, this book is an essential reading for anyone who wants to understand China's past, present, and future through the lens of China's first government-sponsored studying abroad program." - Xu Guoqi, associate profes

"Professor Rhoads has meticulously constructed the individual and collective histories of the 120 young men and boys sent by a beleaguered late Qing government to live and acquire English and Western knowledge in white New England families, schools and un

Edward J. M. Rhoads is a historian of late nineteenth-early twentieth century China. He is the author of China's Republican Revolution The Case of Kwangtung, 1895-1913 and Manchus and Han Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928. The latter work was awarded the Joseph R. Levenson prize in 2002 as the best book on twentieth-century China by the Association for Asian Studies. Rhoads is also interested in the history of the Chinese in the United States. He has published articles on the Chinese in Texas and on a group of Chinese workers in a cutlery factory in southwestern Pennsylvania in the 1870s. His next research project is a history of the bicycle in China. He retired in 2003, after thirty-seven years, from the history department at the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently living in New York City.