This groundbreaking book challenges standard interpretations of metropolitan strategies of rule in the early nineteenth century. By the 1830s the conviction that personal connections were the best way of exerting influence within the imperial sphere went well beyond the metropolitan government, as lobbyists, settlers and missionaries also developed personal connections to advance their causes.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century the British Empire was confronted by two great Chinese questions. The first of these questions (often known as the 'Far Eastern question') related specifically to the maintenance of British interests on the China Coast and the broader implications for British foreign policy in East Asia. While safeguarding British interests in the Far East presented British policymakers with a range of significant challenges, as they wrestled with this first Chinese question, another question kept knocking at the door. Since the eighteenth century, when plans for the establishment of a British colony at New South Wales had begun to materialize, Australia's potential relations with China had attracted considerable interest. During the first sixty years of European settlement, China retained a prominent place in both metropolitan and colonial schemes for the development of British Australia. From the 1850s, however, when large numbers of Cantonese miners travelled to the Pacific gold rushes, these earlier visions began to appear hopelessly naive. By the late 1880s the coming of the Chinese to Australia, and the reaction to their arrival, had developed into one of the most difficult issues within British imperial affairs. This book sets out to tell that story. Reaching back to the arrival of the British in the 1780s, it explores the early history of Australian engagement with China and traces the development of colonial Australia into an important point of contact between the British and Chinese Empires.

The book is divided into two sections. The first half provides a historiography of the literature on state formation from antiquity to the present day. In the second, Gordon identifies a new theme using the methodologies of economic history, the history of economic thought, and the history of ideas. His interdisciplinary approach demonstrates that the process of state formation is best understood through the prism of science, economy, and culture. The narrative highlights significant events and institutions as markers of change in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era. The core of the book focuses on England's economic culture and its impact on state management. University elites in science and Aristotle's philosophy educated literate and numerate professionals for the Royal court. They became indispensable for the ever-growing complexity of governing. England was unique because it embraced statistical thinking and quantitative reasoning at the heart of the English State.