Book excerpt: Banishment to Zinjiang ranked second in severity only to death in Qing law. Initiated immediately upon the addition of that Central Asian frontier to the Chinese empire, it became a vital element of both the legal system and the project of colonizing the new frontier. In this book Joanna Waley-Cohen traces the establishment and inital years of the system, showing how the Qing government worked in the decades before dynastic decline took firm hold, exploring the role of banishment in Chinese mainstream and frontier society, and evaluating the system in the context of state expansion, political conflict, and the criminal justice system.