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A Chinese Reformer in Exile is an encyclopaedic reference work documenting the exile years of imperial China’s most famous reformer, Kang Youwei, and the political organization he mobilized in North America and worldwide to transform China’s autocratic empire into a constitutional monarchy. Chinese in Canada, the United States, and Mexico formed at least 160 Chinese Empire Reform Association chapters, incorporating schools, newspapers, military academies, women’s associations, businesses, and political pressure campaigns. Based on Robert Worden’s 1972 Georgetown University Ph.D. dissertation, a multinational team of historians contribute new insights from 50 years of additional scholarship and previously unknown archival materials.
Listen to Jane Leung Larson and Robert L. Worden's interview on how A Chinese Reformer in Exile came to be here.
Listen to Jane Leung Larson and Robert L. Worden's interview on how A Chinese Reformer in Exile came to be here.
Price: $162.00
Pages: 944
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Chinese Overseas
Publication Date:
30 January 2025
ISBN: 9789004713376
Format: Hardcover
"This worthy book is a monument to a man, a movement, and a moment when the fate of an empire was debated in the back rooms of San Francisco and the schoolhouses of Havana. Kang Youwei may have failed to save the Qing dynasty, but in exile he reimagined China as a moral civilization destined to lead the world into unity, equality, and peace."
– Massimo Introvigne, Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights (March 2026)
“A Chinese Reformer in Exile is authoritative on the full range of Kang Youwei’s overseas interventions in Chinese and global history. It also stimulates our imagination of historical paths not taken.”
– Jeffrey Kinkley, Northwest China Council newsletter (April – June 2026)
– Massimo Introvigne, Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights (March 2026)
“A Chinese Reformer in Exile is authoritative on the full range of Kang Youwei’s overseas interventions in Chinese and global history. It also stimulates our imagination of historical paths not taken.”
– Jeffrey Kinkley, Northwest China Council newsletter (April – June 2026)
Robert L. Worden, Ph.D. (1972) Georgetown University, retired in 2007 after 34 years at the Library of Congress where he authored more than 100 Asia-related studies for government agencies, and numerous China-related books, articles, and book reviews of personal interest.
Jane Leung Larson is an independent scholar whose broad-based research on the Chinese Empire Reform Association evolved from studying the papers of her grandfather Tom Leung, Kang Youwei’s student in Guangzhou and host, travel companion, and confidant in North America.
Jane Leung Larson is an independent scholar whose broad-based research on the Chinese Empire Reform Association evolved from studying the papers of her grandfather Tom Leung, Kang Youwei’s student in Guangzhou and host, travel companion, and confidant in North America.