Yongle Zhang

Yongle Zhang is a constitutional historian as well as political theorist. After he received his PhD at the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, he is now Professor for Legal History at Peking University. His book The Remaking of an Old Country: 1911‒1917 (2011) introduces theoretical perspectives of comparative history on empires and state-building, and analyzes different political and legal approaches that aim at reintegrating the huge Chinese territory. In contrast to the mainstream historiography on the Revolution of 1911, he shifts the focus from the revolutionary rupture to compromise and continuity and shows how the belief in progress entered China.