Product Description

To what extent do newly available case records bear out our conventional assumptions about the Qing legal system? Is it true, for example, that Qing courts rarely handled civil lawsuitsthose concerned with disputes over land, debt, marriage, and inheritanceas official Qing representations led us to believe? Is it true that decent people did not use the courts? And is it true that magistrates generally relied more on moral predilections than on codified law in dealing with cases? Based in large part on records of 628 civil dispute cases from three counties from the 1760s to the 1900s, this book reexamines those widely accepted Qing representations in the light of actual practice.