Perdue has a Ph.D. degree (1981) from Harvard University in the field of History and East Asian Languages.
He is the author of two widely acclaimed books: Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan 1500-1850 A.D. (Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987) and China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard University Press, 2005), which won the 2006 Joseph Levenson Book Prize.
In giving the award, the Levenson committee said the work The committee went on to commend Perdue for drawing on sources and scholarship from Chinese, Japanese, Manchu, German, French, and Russian, "to say nothing of English, the latter a language he also writes with clarity and grace.
"[2] The book established Perdue as a major figure in the New Qing History intellectual movement.
He is a recipient of the 1988 Edgerton Award, the James A. Levitan Prize, and a past holder of the Ford International Career Development Chair.