When the first volume of Otto Franke's great Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches was published in 1930 it bore the descriptive subtitle ‘An account of its origin, nature, and development up to most recent timesx2019;. But alas, in spite of the author's prodigious efforts, the times were unpropitious, and the great design was not, in the end, to be fully realized. The first volume (Das Altertum und das Werden des konfuzianischen Staates) took the story from the earliest age down to the fall of the Han. The second volume (Der konfuzianische Staat, I, Der Aufstieg zur Weltmacht) appeared in 1936 and carried the account of China's history on through the period of division between North and South (Universalismus und völkische Krafte) to the centuries of re-unification under the Sui and T'ang dynasties (Der Sieg des Universalismus: die konfuzianische Weltmacht). In the following year came volume three, with the notes and supplementary materials to the first two.