Contract and property in early modern China / edited by Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko, and Robert Gardella.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Zelin, Madeleine.

Ocko, Jonathan K., 1946-

Gardella, Robert.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Contracts--China--History.

Contracts.

Right of property--China--History.

Right of property.

Physical Description:

vi, 398 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The role of contract in early modern Chinese economic life, when acknowledged at all, is usually presented as a minor one. This volume demonstrates that contract actually played a critical role in the everyday structure of many kinds of relationships and transactions; contracts are, moreover, of enormous value to present-day scholars as transcriptions of the fine details of day-to-day economic activity. Offering a new perspective on economic and legal institutions, particularly the closely related institutions of contract and property, in Qing and Republican China, the papers in this volume spell out how these institutions worked in specific social contexts. Drawing on recent research in far-flung archives, the contributors take as givens both the embeddedness of contract in Chinese social and economic discourse and its role in the spread of commodification. Two papers deal with broad issues: Zelin's argues for a distinctively Chinese heritage of strong property rights, and Ocko's examines the usefulness of American legal scholarship as a comparative analytic framework.

Contents:

A critique of rights of property in pre-war China/ Madeleine Zelin

Writs of passage in late imperial China : the documentation of practical understandings in Minong, Taiwan/ Myron L. Cohen

Litigation, legitimacy, and lethal violence : why county courts failed to prevent violent disputes over property in eighteenth-century China/ Thomas Buoye

Property, taxes, and state protection of rights/ Anne Osborne

The status of contracts in nineteenth-century Chinese courts/ Mark Allee

The missing metaphor : applying Western legal scholarship the study of contract and property in early modern China/ Jonathan Ocko

Supplemental payment in urban property contracts in mid to late Qing Shanghai/ Feng Shaoting

Managing multiple ownership at the Zigong Salt Yard/ Madeleine Zelin

Custom, the code, and legal practice : the contracts of Changlu salt merchants in late imperial China/ Man Bun Kwan

Companies in debt : financial arrangements in the textile industry in the lower Yangzi Delta, 1895-1937/ Tomoko Shiroyama

Contracting business partnerships in late Qing and Republican China : paradigms and patterns/ Robert Gardella.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [359]-398) and index.

ISBN:

9781417519401

0-8047-6694-0

1-4175-1940-1

OCLC:

923699709