The Cambridge History of China

The Cambridge History of China is a series of books published by the Cambridge University Press (CUP) covering the history of China from the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC to 1982 AD. The series was conceived by British historian Denis Twitchett and American historian John King Fairbank in the late 1960s, and publication began in 1978. The complete History will contain 15 volumes made up of 17 books (not including the Cambridge History of Ancient China) with volumes 5 and 9 consisting of two books each.^[1]

Chinese history before the Qin dynasty is covered in an independent volume, The Cambridge History of Ancient China (1999)^[2] which follows the Pinyin romanization system; the other volumes except vol. 2 use Wade–Giles romanization. The final volume, Volume 4, was to be published in 2020, but is indefinitely delayed. An unauthorized Chinese translation of volume 7 (The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1) was made in 1992 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In this version, the map of the Ming empire in the original was replaced by a more extensive map from The Historical Atlas of China, while the other maps were used unchanged.^[3]