Contents -- Maps and Figures -- Acknowledgments -- A Note for the Nonspecialist Reader -- Emperor and Ancestor -- Introduction -- Historical Geography -- Exotic Guangzhou -- Confucian Incursions -- We and They -- The Land -- From Registered Households to Lineages -- Early Ming Society -- The Recession of Labor Service -- The Yao Wars and Ritual Orthodoxy -- Administrative Transition -- Lineages Gentrified -- Lineage Building: The Huo Surname of Foshan -- Magnates on the Sands -- From Ming to Qing -- Gentry Leadership in Local Society -- The End of Empire -- The Proliferation of Lineage Institutions -- The Ordering of Community in Ritual Life -- Incorporation: The Power of an Idea -- A Note on Prosperity -- The Nineteenth-Century Transformation -- The Mulberry Garden Dike -- From Paramilitary to Militia -- Local Power in the Taiping Rebellion -- The Foreign Element in Pearl River Delta Society -- Contradictions of the Nation-State: The Backwardness of Lineages -- Epilogue -- Beyond the Pearl River Delta -- Notes -- References -- Glossary -- Index.