The Diaoyu Islands: A Historical and Legal Study from a Chinese Perspective examines the issue of the Islands in the context of Chinese and Western maritime history, including knowledge and research methods from a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, geography, textual criticism of historical sources, tectonics and the principles of international law that are applied for a holistic and in-depth analysis. In particular, the rigorous analysis of a large number of historical maps is especially valuable as a supplement to the textual sources examined.