This is the first book to relate a history of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS) from 1854 to 1952 with the stated aims of writing “the Customs Service back into the history of modern China and modern globalization” and “to bring the foreign back” (p. 7). In this venture it complements the body of work by scholars writing across a wide spectrum of topics, including Paul Cohen, Robert Bickers, Stephen Platt and Jeffrey Wasserstrom. Through this book, van de Ven's three novel contributions are, primarily, a broad comprehensive CMCS history, which is supplemented secondly by deeply rich narrative accounts over major periods of transition in China; thereby thirdly bridging the gap between PRC scholarship and the vast English-language literature of CMCS studies.

As a complete survey of the CMCS's history, the book ranges across a staggering array of issues relating to the service's administrative systems. Such is the difference between these structures and those of any other Chinese government departments that historians frequently find them difficult to study in their entirety. Van de Ven is particularly successful here, although sometimes the hybrid structure conflating narrative and exposition for each chapter is hard to follow. When the CMCS was split by the maelstrom of events into two parts, he focuses on only one thread, for example the Chungking Inspectorate from 1941 until 1945 or the Beijing Directorate after 1949, whereas their counterparts, namely the collaborationist Inspectorate of 1941–45 and the Taiwan Inspectorate after 1949, are not covered. The logic of this choice is confusing. If one main theme of his monograph is the CMCS's tradition of continuity, then conspicuous by its absence is the Taipei Inspectorate which inherited most traditional characteristics and retained its pre-1949 structure until 1990. On the other, if the focus is on power and influence then the Wang Inspectorate was over twice as big as the Chungking Inspectorate.

Over its 96-year history, the CMCS survived the collapse of the Qing Dynasty as well as the Northern and Nationalist governments, so from its records van de Ven sheds light on a rich array of lesser-known topics, including the interrelationship between the National Loans Bureau and the CMCS's autonomy within the Chinese state, tariff autonomy and smuggling; we also read various witness accounts of a China in transition. Using such records, the author successfully weaves strands of under-researched topics into the tapestry of modern Chinese history, and posits alternative periodizations: from 1895 to 1914 and from 1914 to 1929. However, his argument about the purported contribution of the London Office towards the Self-Strengthening Movement is not persuasive. Moreover it is curious that chapter three, “The Customs Service during the Self-Strengthening Movement, 1870–1895,” starts in 1870, as it is generally accepted that the Movement began in 1861. This periodization confuses the chapter's analysis of the period, which in turn renders the CMCS's contributions to the Movement in the 1860s opaque.

This book begins a dialogue with a new generation of PRC historians. To this end, van de Ven's goal is to “bring the Chinese back” into the academic fold, as PRC Chinese historical research has been passed over by Western scholarship to date. He employs the research findings of scholars at Xiamen University, linking them back to the grand narrative arc of English-language literature on the CMCS. However, the long tradition of Japanese and Taiwanese historical studies on the CMCS that stretches back to the 1970s is ignored. The research of Okamoto Takashi, Kubo Toru and Tang Chi-hwa, for example, span the transition from traditional China's Native Customs to modern China's Maritime Customs, China's struggles over tariff autonomy, and the Northern government's responses to the CMCS's autonomous assumptions and practices. The CMCS was a bureaucratic bridge between China and the West, but studies of the CMCS's history are not only fruits of the collective labour of Chinese and Western scholars.

The CMCS was par excellence a microcosm of Sino-foreign interrelations. As van de Ven states, “a book must end with regrets” (p. 302), since no book can cover everything. Notwithstanding this modesty the author manages to cover a vast swathe of history. By the same token he is arguably guilty of attempting to track too many trails, at times obscuring his more powerful arguments. Through a new chronological periodization he tentatively raises important questions about our grasp of modern Chinese history, so it is frustrating that these have not been fully explored in greater depth. Of course, how any author balances the writing of a complete history and the exploration of discrete issues is a fine and perhaps personal judgment. If the book contributes to “bring the foreign back,” having re-embedded the significance of foreignness, readers might like him to elaborate his arguments against “harsh criticisms of the CMCS and its leaders” (p. 308). Such a critique by no means disparages the monograph, instead it is intended to offer easier access to a comprehensive and informative book. Above all, it is hoped to elucidate further fruitful lines of enquiry for future studies of the history of Sino-foreign relations and the CMCS.