The Jacquinot Safe Zone recounts the remarkably successful efforts of a French Jesuit missionary to establish a part of the city of Shanghai as a refuge for Chinese civilians from a war raging between Japanese and Chinese forces in the area. The missionary, Father Robert Jacquinot de Besange, brought to the task fluency in several languages, previous experience in rescue, good relations with Chinese and Japanese officials, ideas current in Europe about civilian safety zones in wartime, and an abundance of diplomatic skill. Beginning in November 1937 and lasting into 1940, the Shanghai safe zone sheltered and cared for over three thousand people. The author describes attempts to reproduce the model, with mixed results, in other Chinese cities caught up in the same war. She usefully analyzes the differences. Aside from extensive secondary material, the study draws on: various Jesuit archives, Japanese foreign ministry archives, French diplomatic and consular archives, various U.S. official archives, the Shanghai municipal archives, and contemporary newspapers and journals in English, Chinese, French, and Japanese. This impressive research base lends the book authority. The author is also concerned to register the lessons to be drawn from Jacquinot's achievement, which was noted in the postwar Geneva Convention of 1949.