Localizing Learning, the Literati Enterprise in Wuzhou, 1100–1600 By Peter K. Bol. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2022. 418 pp. $70.39 (cloth)

in huge factories. The studies also show that it is beneficial, and indeed necessary, for the archaeologists who deal with matters in economy to conduct research under agendas developed by social historians, so the meaning of their material evidence can be fully appreciated by historians in cross-cultural analyses. On the other hand, historians of China have also begun to take the period into their general account of the economic development of pre-modern China. However, we are yet to see systematic analyses of the period as a whole that can both establish the theoretic framework and methodological guidelines, and also account for its archaeological as well as paleographic evidence. Such studies should have the potential to explain economic changes in the centuries during which the territorial state was formed, thus offering new explanations about the rise of the imperial economy. This is an important book, and it will be remembered as one of the stepping stones by which the study of the economic history of early China has taken off. There is still a long way to go for early China scholars to develop their own positions about the economy of early states and empires, but the way was even longer without the contributions in this book.