Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

This is the revised and augmented edition of a now classic book which is an introduction to sub-Markovian kernels on general measurable spaces and their associated homogeneous Markov chains. The first part, an expository text on the foundations of the subject, is intended for post-graduate students. A study of potential theory, the basic classification of chains according to their asymptotic behaviour and the celebrated Chacon-Ornstein theorem are examined in detail.
The second part of the book is at a more advanced level and includes a treatment of random walks on general locally compact abelian groups. Further chapters develop renewal theory, an introduction to Martin boundary and the study of chains recurrent in the Harris sense. Finally, the last chapter deals with the construction of chains starting from a kernel satisfying some kind of maximum principle.