The Panthay Rebellion held the armies of Qing dynasty at bay for nearly two decades, making it the longest of several mid-century revolts in imperial China. Yet it has been eclipsed in the historical imagination by the better known Taiping Rebellion to the east. David G. Atwill offers remarkable panorama of the cosmopolitan frontier society from which it sprang. The rebel leader Du Wenxiu, took the name Sultan Sulieman, established a Muslim court at the ancient city of Dali and sought tp unite the population against Manchu rule, with considerable success at a time when Qing faced threats in all parts of the empire. Atwill offers the first detailed account of Du's seventeen-year rule and upturns a historiography that filters the Panthay Rebellion through the political and military lenses of the Chinese center. The insurrection was not rooted solely in Muslim hatred of Chinese, he argues, nor was it primarily Islamic in orientation. Atwill draws out the multitudinous complexities of Yunnan province, China's most ethnically diverse region and a crossroads for Tibetan, Chinese and Southeast Asian culture. The downfall of the Panthay Rebellion marked the beginning of a renewed offensive by the imperial government to control its border regions and influence the cultures of those who lived there.