In 1895 the military forces of the Great Qing Empire were defeated by Japan. The stakes seemed modest - a struggle for supremacy in peripheral Korea - but the defeat prompted an explosion of radical reform proposals in China and the beginning of elite Chinese disillusionment with the Qing government. In a larger sense, it also prompted five decades of efforts to strengthen the state and the nation, to democratize the political system, and to build a fairer and more unified society.

The book weaves narrative together with thematic chapters that pause to address in depth central themes of China's transformation. While the book proceeds chronologically, the chapters in each part examine particular aspects of these decades in a more focused way, borrowing from the methodologies of the social sciences, cultural studies and empirical historicism. China in War and Revolution draws a picture of the personalities, ideas, and processes by which a modern state was created out of the violence and trauma of these decades.