Organizer: Philip C. C. Huang, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair: Kathryn Bernhardt, University of California, Los Angeles
Discussant: William T. Rowe, Johns Hopkins University
All eight papers in this two-part panel are based on research in newly opened archives. All examine not only how the legal system was supposed to work but how it actually operated as seen through archival case records.
Part One, "Law, the State, and Local Society," examines legal practice at the central and local levels. Nancy Park considers procedures and practice in the handling of bribery cases at the highest levels of the bureaucracy; Bradly Reed looks at how magistrates dealt with disputes between local runners and residents over abuses and supposed abuses in tax collection. Mark Allee examines the interaction between codified law and social custom in Ba county, and Philip Huang documents two patterns in how the local courts of Baodi, Baxian, and Danshui-Xinzhu settled civil disputes.
Part Two, "Law, Women, and Culture," explores the legal system from the perspectives of women and of cultural studies. Matthew Sommer focuses on legal constructions and treatment of prostitutes, as a different status group and as an unavoidable phenomenon among the "good people." Kathyrn Bernhardt looks at the complex relationship between lineal succession and property inheritance through the prism or the rights of widows. Zhou Guangyuan studies narrative elements in the composition of magistrate reports submitted for review by higher levels; Karasawa Yasuhiko analyzes literary devices used in plaints filed at local courts.
The papers preview eight in-progress books on late imperial law that together should substantially revise our understanding of the subject.
Bribery in Imperial China
Nancy Elizabeth Park, Vassar College
My paper examines the socio-economic, legal, and political cause of bribery in late imperial China. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence from Beijing and Taiwan, I investigate the underlying reasons for bribery in 18th-century China and evaluate its significance for the imperial Chinese state and society.
A major theme of this paper is that the socio-economic causes of bribery were closely related to the fiscal policies of the Qing dynasty. The recognized fiscal need for bribes, coupled with the cultural importance of gift-giving, resulted in widespread tolerance of bribery in the eyes of officials and members of the larger society and contributed to the proliferation of bribe-giving and bribe-taking among Qing bureaucrats.
A second theme is that selective and flexible enforcement of the bribery laws was a tacit encouragement to many officials to risk engaging in such criminal activities. Faced with certain dismissal if they did not fulfill their administrative duties and possible punishment if they accepted bribes, officials often chose to engage in bribery and hazard the vagaries of the legal system.
A third theme addressed in this paper is the influence of political factors on 18th-century bribery cases. Although it is difficult to make definitive judgments on many such questions, I attempt to provide a political framework for bribery, highlighting the temporal, regional, ethnic, and factional patterns that emerge from the cases.
Tax Men, Tax Farmers: Yamen Runners in Late Imperial Sichuan
Bradly W. Reed, University of Virginia
Utilizing newly available archival documents and legal case records, this paper discusses the system of tax collection by yamen runners in Ba county, Sichuan, and the impact such practices had on the nature of local government under the Qing as well as on state-society relations in the late imperial era.
The paper begins with an examination of the role played by the reputation of runners for corruption in the process of tax collection. It demonstrates, for example, how widespread assumptions as to the venality of runners were played upon by local residents to resist even legal tax collection. It also shows, conversely, how magistrates frequently used the threat of abuse at the hands of runners as a means of compelling residents to submit taxes in timely fashion.
The paper then moves on to consider a form of tax farming common among yamen runners. Although regularly excoriated by the central government as a form of tax engrossment, at the county level, the practice was legitimated by the willingness of magistrates to adjudicate tax-related debt disputes between runners and local residents. As an informal method of financing county government, providing basic living expenses for administrative personnel, as well as assuring that tax quotas were fulfilled, this technically illegal practice was transformed into an extra-statutory, yet regular feature of local administration which, by definition, lay beyond the control of the Qing central government.
Theory and Practice: Liu Heng as Ba County, Magistrate, 1825-27
Mark A. Allee, Loyola University of Chicago
This paper makes a preliminary examination of the theory and practice of local justice by focusing on Liu Heng, who served as magistrate of Ba County, Sichuan, during the early Daoguang period. Specifically, this paper evaluates the hypothesis that judicial outcomes were influenced not only by formal law and by the legal philosophy of any particular magistrate, but also by the customs and expectations of local people who came to court. Litigants were active agents who made the county court a dynamic site of state-society interaction.
Liu Heng was a seasoned magistrate already when he began his tenure in Ba County; he became a prominent authority on problems of local justice and administration through three "magistrate's handbooks" which he wrote based on his own experiences. Since the records of dozens of cases which he adjudicated survive in the Ba County archive, Liu Heng provides the unique opportunity to compare a magistrate's published ruminations with his actual practice of law at the county level. Moreover, Liu Heng was an activist magistrate who advocated a variety of reforms and innovations in local judicial and administrative procedures; the Ba County records provide the opportunity to determine to what extent he put his ideas intopractice, and whether they achieved any lasting effect.
Two Patterns in the Qing Civil Adjudicatory System
Philip C. C. Huang, University of California, Los Angeles
My three-county sample of 628 cases involving land transactions, debt obligations, marriage contracts, and inheritance shows two distinct patterns in how the Qing civil adjudicatory system worked. One pattern is illustrated by case records from Baodi county, Zhili, from the 1810s to the 1900s and Ba county, Sichuan, from the 1760s to the 1850s, and the other by Danshui-Xinzhu in Taiwan of the 1850s to the 1890s. The paper characterizes and documents the two patterns.
Official Qing sources attribute the differences to the unprincipled actions of litigation abusers. This paper shows that there are deeper social causes. My explanation for the two patterns tells about the paradoxical nature of the Qing legal system and helps to resolve some apparently contradictory findings of recent scholarship.