Midway through the reign of the Ch'ien-lung emperor, Hungli, in the most prosperous period of China's last imperial dynasty, mass hysteria broke out among the common people. It was feared that sorcerers were roaming the land, clipping off the ends of men's queues (the braids worn by royal decree), and chanting magical incantations over them in order to steal the souls of their owners. In a fascinating chronicle of this epidemic of fear and the official prosecution of soulstealers that ensued, Philip Kuhn provides an intimate glimpse into the world of eighteenth-century China. Kuhn weaves his exploration of the sorcery cases with a survey of the social and economic history of the era. Drawing on a rich repository of documents found in the imperial archives, he presents in detail the harrowing interrogations of the accused--a ragtag assortment of vagabonds, beggars, and roving clergy--conducted under torture by provincial magistrates. In tracing the panic's spread from peasant hut to imperial court, Kuhn unmasks the political menace lurking behind the queue-clipping scare as well as the complex of folk beliefs that lay beneath popular fears of sorcery. Kuhn shows how the campaign against sorcery provides insight into the period's social structure and ethnic tensions, the relationship between monarch and bureaucrat, and the inner workings of the state. Whatever its intended purposes, the author argues, the campaign offered Hungli a splendid chance to force his provincial chiefs to crack down on local officials, to reinforce his personal supremacy over top bureaucrats, and to restate the norms of official behavior. This wide-ranging narrative depicts life in imperial China as it was actually lived, often in the participants' own words. "Soulstealers" offers a compelling portrait of the Chinese people--from peasant to emperor--and of the human condition.

孔飛力（英文名：Philip Alden Kuhn，1933年9月9日-2016年2月15日），生於英國倫敦，1964年獲得哈佛大學博士學位。當費正清1977年從哈佛大學榮休後，孔飛力由已任教十年的芝加哥大學轉迴母校接替其空缺，任哈佛大學曆史係和東亞語言文化係講座教授。他曾擔任過芝加哥大學 遠東語言文化係主任，哈佛大學費正清東亞研究中心主任，哈佛大學東亞研究委員會主席。曾獲得包括古根漢姆學術研究奬在內的多種學術榮譽，是美國藝術人文科學院院士。本書（1990）為他最主要的代錶作，獲“列文森中國研究最佳著作奬”；此外他所著《中華帝國晚期的叛亂及其敵人》（1970）、《中國現代國傢的起源》（2002）和《海外中國人》（2009）等，均有重要深遠的影響。