This collection celebrates T J Byres’ seminal contributions to the political economy of the agrarian question. Four essays in the volume build directly on his work and four complementary essays address peasant politics and communist strategy in North China in the 1920s; globalisation and restructuring in the Indian food industry; foreign trade as a mechanism of economic retrogression in ‘agriculture-constrained’ economies; and the reasons for China’s success and Russia’s failure at the end of the twentieth century. Uniting the various themes of the essays is the demonstration of the continuing vitality and relevance of a critical, historical and comparative materialist analysis of agrarian questions exemplified by the intellectual project of T J Byres and its achievements.