John W. ChaffeeJohn W. Chaffee is Distinguished Service Professor of History and Asian and Asian American Studies and directs the Institute for Asia and Asian Diaporas at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore Collge, Pennsylvania and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations (1985, 1995), The Branches of Heaven: a History of the Sung Imperial Clan (1999) and co-editor of Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage (1989). His book The Muslim Merchants of Premodern China: The History of a Maritime Asian Trade Diaspora, 750–1400 will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Read More Read Less