Intro -- Acknowledgments -- About This Book -- Dates and Currency -- The Qing Reign Periods -- Dates and Dating Protocol -- Currency Equivalents -- Contents -- About the Author -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Manuscripts Cited and Translated -- 1 Introduction -- 1 The Story of the Wealthiest Man -- 2 A Contract Society? Research Question and State of the Field -- 2.1 Economic Success, Social Order, and Contracts -- 2.2 A General Puzzle of How and Why the Contract Worked -- 3 Sources: The Qingshui River Region and Beyond 3.1 A Brief Introduction to the Qingshui River Manuscripts and Their Studies -- 3.2 Sources in and Beyond the Region -- 4 Analytical Framework and Synopsis -- References -- 2 Rediscovering Contracts in the Qingshui River Region -- 1 Introduction: Standard and Borderline Contracts -- 1.1 A General and Complex Term -- 1.2 The Chinese Terminology of Contracts -- 1.3 "Standard Cases" and "Borderline Cases" -- 2 Contracts: Legal Definitions and Chinese Practice -- 2.1 Contracts in Contract Laws -- 2.2 Categorization of Contracts in Everyday Life -- 3 Contents of a Contract: Beyond Agreement 3.1 The Tense of a Contract: Future or Past? -- 3.2 The Performance of Contracts -- 3.3 Championing the Past in the Future -- 3.4 Transcending as an Agreement -- 4 Identifying Contracts by Form: The Internal and External -- 4.1 The Textual Form -- 4.2 The Ritual Form -- 4.3 The Formulaic Beginning of a Contract: Indicating and Integrating -- 5 Paper Matters: The Materiality of Contracts -- 5.1 The Burning of Contracts -- 5.2 The Non-conceptual Contract: The Contract and Its Material Carriers -- 5.3 The Validity of the Material: Oral and Non-original 6 The Tripartite Structure of Contracts: A Theory -- 6.1 Three Stages and the Sequence of Examination -- 6.2 Application and Verification -- 7 Conclusion -- References -- 3 Middlemen -- 1 Introduction: Understanding Middlemen Within a Contract -- 2 The Primary and the Secondary: Formation and Restoration -- 2.1 Four Roles -- 2.2 Two Levels -- 3 The Primary Level: Introducers, Witnesses, and Guarantors -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Witnessing -- 3.3 Guarantee -- 4 The Secondary Level: Arbitrators and Peacemakers -- 4.1 The "Original Middleman" -- 4.2 Arbitration -- 4.3 Mediation 5 The Middleman as the Third Party and the Third Party as the Middleman -- 5.1 The Involvement of the Middleman in a Contract -- 5.2 Incorporating Various Third Parties as Middlemen -- 5.3 A Partly Open System of Middlemen -- 6 Conclusion -- References -- 4 Scribes -- 1 Introduction: Taking Scribes Seriously -- 1.1 Scribes and the Writing of Contracts -- 1.2 Contractual Scribes, Official Scribes, and Litigation Lawyers -- 1.3 The Institution of Scribes and Its Operation -- 2 The Demand for Scribes -- 2.1 The Typology of Contract Writers -- 2.2 The Number of Scribes
Summary:
This book is the first Western-language monograph on the study of the Qingshui River manuscripts. By examining over 3,000 contracts and other manuscripts, this book offers constructive insights into the long-standing question of how and why a society in late imperial China could maintain a well-functioning social system with few laws but many contracts, i.e., Hobbesian words without sword. Three interrelated questions, what contracts were, how and why they worked, are explained successively. Thus, this book presents a non-stereotypical contract society in southwest China, arguing that the social order which provides predictability and regularity for economic prosperity could be formed and maintained through contracts even under the condition of relatively weak influence of governmental and legal authorities. This book benefits readers who are interested in law, society, and history. While presenting the socio-legal landscape of a frontier area in late imperial China for historians, this book provides a novel and empirical interpretation of the supposedly well-known contract device for legal researchers, thereby proposing materials for an integrated theoretical explanatory framework of contracts in general. By employing the innovative theory of blockchain in its key argumentation, the book offers a creative interpretation of historical and social phenomena.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.