A collection of essays on Tang and pre-Tang China. The first item Chinese History and World History, is an abbreviated version of the author's inaugural lecture as Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge. Professor Pulleyblank's first aim was to criticize historicist views, then prevalent among both Marxist and non-Marxist historians in Japan and China, that attempted to fit Chinese history into a Procrustean framework based on Western models of periodization. At the same time he wanted to criticize the Eurocentric view of human history that he found prevalent in the West generally but especially at Cambridge and to show, on the one hand, that contacts with East Asia had played an important role in European history and, on the other hand, that comparisons and contrasts with the Chinese experience were important for a true understanding of that history.