Lars Laamann's book, based on his doctoral thesis, examines the condition of Christianity in China in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during the Manchu, or Qing, dynasty. It covers roughly the period from the Rites Controversy which embroiled the Jesuits and the Vatican in acrimonious doctrinal debate for years, to the onset of the prodigious Protestant missionary enterprise that followed China's defeat in the 1839–42 Opium War. The central thesis concerns the development of a local version of Catholic Christianity, largely in the absence of foreign missionaries who had been expelled as a result of the anti-Christian edict approved in 1724 by the emperor Yongzheng. Christians in China were not only persecuted by the Qing state, as were other religious organisations that were perceived as a threat to the state, but were also condemned as heterodox by established Christian bodies. This period offers an important test case of the inculturation of Christianity, which remains a live and contentious issue in China today. Laamann's main Chinese sources are memorials written by local Chinese officials to their superiors about their dealings with Christians; these were found in the Number 1 Historical Archives in Beijing. They are balanced by the correspondence of Catholic missionaries to their own superiors which is drawn from the archives of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. The contrast between the two sets of documents has yielded wonderful material, much of it of lasting value. Because this is such an important and fascinating episode, it is a pity that the narrative is not more coherent and that the text is not easier to read. It is a short book and many of the extracts from both archives would have benefited from more context and explanation than is offered. There are also solecisms which helpful editing would have ironed out: the ruling elite of the Qing were Manchus, not Manchurians, and the word Christian in Japanese, being of foreign origin, is normally written in katakana script rather than hiragana. The dates in the title are arbitrary and unhelpful. The Yongzheng emperor succeeded his father, the Kangxi emperor (during whose rule Catholic missionaries had flourished) in 1723: surely Yongzheng's 1724 edict on the prohibition of Christianity and the expulsion of foreign missionaries would have been the best historical starting point for this account? Similarly it is not made clear why the end date of the study is 1850, although it is true that this was the end of the Daoguang emperor's reign and that the Xianfeng and Tongzhi reign periods that followed saw a significant increase in (mainly Protestant) missionary activity. 1842, the year of the treaty of Nanjing which reopened the door to western missions, or 1846, when the Daoguang emperor restored confiscated property to its Christian former owners, have a better claim.