Introduction -- Historical geography -- Exotic Guangzhou -- Confucian incursions -- We and they -- The land -- From registered households to lineages -- Early Ming society -- The recession of labor service -- The Yao wars and ritual orthodoxy -- Administrative transition -- Lineages gentrified -- Lineage building: the Huo surname of Foshan -- Magnates on the sands -- From Ming to Qing -- Gentry leadership in local society -- The end of empire -- The proliferation of lineage institutions -- The ordering of community in ritual life -- Incorporation: the power of an idea -- A note on prosperity -- The nineteenth-century transformation -- The Mulberry Garden dike -- From paramilitary to militia -- Local power in the Taiping rebellion -- The foreign element in Pearl River Delta Society -- Contradictions of the nation-state: the backwardness of lineages -- Epilogue -- Beyond the Pearl River Delta.

Appendix 1: brief Chinese chronology – 2. Chronological table of Ming Emperors – 3. Chronological table of Qing Emperors – 4. List of administrative provinces on the Qing dynasty – 5. Table of central and governmental organs in the Qing – 6. Character conversion table –7. Heavenly stems and Earthly branches – 8. Twenty-four solar terms.