Lost Modernities: China, Vietnam, Korea, and the Hazards of World History (The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures Book 2001)

In Lost Modernities, Alexander Woodside offers an overview of the bureaucratic politics of preindustrial China, Vietnam, and Korea. He focuses on the political and administrative theory of the three mandarinates and their long experimentation with governments recruited in part through meritocratic civil service examinations. This book removes modernity from a standard Eurocentric understanding and offers a unique new perspective on the transnational nature of Asian history.