INFORMATION AND POWER: PRINTING, LAW, AND THE MAKING OF CHINESE LEGAL CULTURE, 1644-1911

Law;Printing;Legal Information;Popular Legal Education;the Great Qing Code;History

Zhang, TingRowe, William ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: Law;    Printing;    Legal Information;    Popular Legal Education;    the Great Qing Code;    History;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/60295/ZHANG-DISSERTATION-2014.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation explores the production and circulation of legal knowledge, and the role of legal information in the formation of early modern Chinese legal culture. It combines the methodologies of print culture and legal history. Based on a detailed examination of 131 different editions of the Great Qing Code and many other legal imprints, including administrative guides for officials and manuals for legal lectures, many previously unknown and unexamined, it reveals that the Qing government did not monopolize the production and circulation of authoritative legal information. Commercial publishers and non-official editors played a leading role in supplying judicial officials with access to printed, up-to-date editions of the Qing Code. Commercial editions of the Code were not only published in larger quantities and of better quality, but also included additional legal information, such as private commentaries, administrative regulations, and case precedents. By the 1800s, based on popular editions published in Hangzhou, commercial publishers had established a standard format for compiling and publishing the Code, a format quite different from that of imperial editions. These Hangzhou editions quickly dominated the book market and became the most widely-used and authoritative texts in the Qing judicial system and society.This dissertation demonstrates that the commercial printing revolution in early modern China fundamentally transformed the Qing judicial system and legal culture. The commercialization of legal knowledge enhanced the judicial authority of unofficial commentaries and case precedents. Qing officials frequently referred to them when making judicial decisions. County magistrates, who received no professional legal training and could not receive copies of the Code from the state, could easily buy commercial copies in the book market and locate specific provisions when sentencing a case, thanks to the reader-friendly arrangement of texts in commercial legal imprints. The book market, rather than the Qing state, played the leading role in the production and dissemination of legal information. Qing officials and the common people had access to accurate and newest legal information through commercial legal imprints and state-sponsored community legal lectures, and many of them were quite familiar with the laws.