Launched in early June 2006, and endowed with millions of pounds, the British Inter-University China Center has greatly advanced the capacity of research into the modern history of China at the universities of Oxford, Bristol, and Manchester. Much of that funding had been set aside for the digitization of the extensive collection of Chinese Maritime Customs (CMC) archival materials held at Nanjing. Eminent China historian Hans van de Ven has been intimately associated with the Center's CMC archival project and is otherwise a leading expert on Hart, the Ulsterman who served from 1863 to 1911 as Inspector-General of the CMC. Breaking with the Past is very much the fruit of that association and intimate familiarity with the records: it is based on countless CMC documents that have scarcely been used thus far and are particularly valuable in reconstructing the relations CMC senior foreign staff had with the Kuomintang (KMT) in...

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