Huricihan Islamoglu is Professor of Economic History and Political Economy, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, and Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Her research interests are economic history, economic theory as well as international relations and European studies. She is the author of Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and West (2004); State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire (1994); and Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (1987). Peter C. Perdue is Professor of History, Yale University. He was Professor of History, MIT from 1982 to 2008. His doctoral research at the Havard University was in History and East Asian Languages. He co-edited the recent volume: Imperial Formations (2007). Some of his monographs include: China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (2005); and Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan, 1500-1850 A.D. (1987).