This book offers the first comprehensive study of cosmopolitanism in education between China and Europe from the late Qing to the Republican period.

Drawing on previously untapped archives, it examines transnational Sino-French educational initiatives led by the World Society, an anarchist learning association, from 1907 to 1946. Readers gain insight into the journals published in France that promote the World Society’s educational experiments, revealing how cosmopolitan ideals shaped by anarchist principles negotiate with nationalism. The book explores how these ideals, rooted in a transcendent vision of humanity, intertwine with the universalism of modern Western thought, ultimately taking the form of a hierarchical and aggressive mode of cosmopolitanism.

Educating China in Europe is written for scholars and students of Chinese studies, transnational education, and modern intellectual history, and is valuable for those researching anarchism, cosmopolitanism, and Sino-European relations.