The essays which make up this book originated as papers presented at a conference on "Intellectuals and the Problem of Con- servatism in Republican China" which was held in 1972 under the auspices of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. Like many conference volumes, this one grew out of a sense among a small group of us that collective effort was needed in opening up a new perspective on a subject. In choosing to examine conservative styles of thought in Republican China, our aim is better to understand alternatives as the Chinese themselves saw them, and to illuminate the framework of common concepts of the age —a framework which cannot be understood by analyzing radical movements alone. Our aim is not to confirm exaggerated theories of the power of historical continuity in modern China, nor to offer a judgment, pro or con, on the historical inevitability of Mao's revolution. Rather, the essays here indicate how rapidly wide strata of the postimperial elite adapted to change within the frame- work of continued preoccupation with native history and culture. They help us subsume the impact of the "West" upon China under the broader rubric of the impact of "modernity." They show us more distinctly than radical movements alone can do what issues of political and intellectual controversy were essential in defming the revolution which finally occurred, and what ones only seemingly so.