Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China by Matthew H. Sommer Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press

Introduction · · · · · ·
A classic work in the field of legal history that studies sexual crimes. It focuses on widows, prostitutes, hired workers, beggars and other low-level people in Qing Dynasty society, restores wonderful real cases related to "sex", explores the regulation and guidance of sexual behavior and sexual concepts in the late Chinese Empire, and explains the changing laws of sexual order traditions. Produced by Daxuewen

Academic masters such as Chang Jianhua, Qiu Pengsheng, A Feng, Wang Zhiqiang, and Zhang Taisu have unanimously recommended it. Well-known scholars such as Peng Munlan, Gao Yanyi, Bai Derui, and Li Shuo have written articles to comment on the original English version. The simplified Chinese version is published for the first time.

【Content Introduction】

This book is a classic work in the field of legal history that studies sexual crimes. The book uses a large number of legal history documents since the Tang Dynasty, focusing on widows, prostitutes, hired workers, beggars and other low-level people in Qing Dynasty society, and uses a comparative history perspective to analyze issues such as sexual behavior control, widow chastity, "bachelor cases", and "prostitution", restoring real cases and showing civilian marriages from a micro perspective, as well as phenomena such as women shortage and discrimination against women.

The author combines different research approaches such as gender history, legal history and social history, conducts a macro-investigation of sexual crimes and legal issues, and explores the regulation and guidance of sexual behavior and sexual concepts in the Qing Dynasty. The cases in the book are vivid, the characters are three-dimensional and full, and the language is fluent, showing a complex and dynamic society in the late Chinese Empire.

【Highlights of this book】

1. Daxuewen "Practical Social Science Series" No. 009, another blockbuster new work after "Claws" and "The Formation of Modern China";

2. A classic work in the field of legal history that studies sexual crimes. It has been unanimously recommended by academic masters such as Chang Jianhua, Qiu Pengsheng, A Feng, Wang Zhiqiang, and Zhang Taisu. Many well-known scholars such as Ken Pomeranz, Gao Yanyi, Bradley, and Li Shuo have written articles to comment on the original English version. More than 20 top academic journals such as the American Historical Review, the Journal of Asian Studies, and the Harvard Journal of Asian Studies have published book reviews.

3. Focus on sexual crimes and approach from a legal perspective. The author conducts a macroscopic examination of sexual crimes and legal issues, meticulously records the legal changes that affect various sexual issues, and uses a comparative history perspective to analyze issues such as sexual behavior control, widow chastity, homosexuality laws and gender roles, "bachelor laws", and "prostitution", showing a complex society in the late Chinese Empire;

4. The author focuses on the living status and fate of the lower-class people, and is full of humanistic care. The author uses widows, prostitutes, hired workers, beggars and other lower-class people in Qing Dynasty society as the starting point, showing the marriage of ordinary people from a micro perspective, as well as the shortage of women, discrimination against women, "selling wives" and other phenomena, supplemented by a large number of detailed descriptions, revealing the deeper social structural problems in the Qing Dynasty;

5. Rich and detailed historical materials, restoring wonderful real cases. The book is based on criminal and civil litigation archives since the Tang Dynasty, supplemented by local chronicles, folklore survey reports, legendary novels (such as "Jin Ping Mei") and other documents, plus the author's excellent ability to cut historical materials, presenting a detailed legal narrative text, outlining the various aspects of the lives of the lower-class civilians;

6. The cases are vivid, the language is accurate and fluent, and the book is highly readable. The cases in the book are rich in details, the characters are three-dimensional and full, and the author's careful thinking is interspersed; the translation is repeatedly polished, accurate and fluent, and highly readable;

7. The book is a cross-disciplinary writing that combines different research approaches such as gender history, legal history, and social history. The book links the development of different fields of sexuality, rejects the overly simplistic concepts based on some elite cases in the past, and is committed to refining more complex related arguments on a multidisciplinary basis;

8. This book adopts the form of double cover inside and outside. At the same time, in order to better fit the theme of the book, the cover adopts the elements of "Harmony Music Picture" of Southern Tang Dynasty in the Five Dynasties, reproducing the scene of female musicians playing music in the palace of the Five Dynasties, closely following the themes of "prostitutes" and so on in the book.

【Recommended by famous experts】

This is a fascinating book. The author combines the changes in the laws regulating "sex" in the Qing Dynasty with the adultery presented in the judicial archives of the Qing Dynasty to explore the mystery and put forward a series of new views on sex, law, and society in traditional China, updating our understanding of the status-based society. The author's research breaks away from the position of polarizing China and the West in a binary opposition. He does not use the expansion of personal freedom as the only reference standard for observing China's recent history. Instead, he understands the regulation of "sex" in the Qing Dynasty from a broad perspective of historical changes. At the same time, he examines the regulation of "sex" in the Qing Dynasty in a broad social context and explores its relationship with the mentality and practice of various social classes at that time.

——Chang Jianhua (Professor at the Center for Chinese Social History Research, Nankai University)

The author of this book demonstrates that the Qing Dynasty's "adultery" law and the "broad social context" behind it had undergone a fundamental change in the 18th century. This not only criticizes Qu Tongzu's argument that there had been no major changes in the legal status and hierarchy norms in China before the late Qing Dynasty, but also proposes a revision to Jing Junjian's claim that China's market economy at that time promoted the development trend of individual freedom, emphasizing that this fundamental change should be regarded as a kind of legal and social interaction in the 18th century Qing Dynasty in response to the crisis of social disorder caused by population pressure, and thus echoes Huang Zongzhi's important claim to transcend the Western social theory paradigm to find the path of China's own historical change. To this day, these wonderful arguments are still very inspiring, and it is indeed a good book worthy of such a serious Chinese translation.

——Qiu Pengsheng (Distinguished Professor of History Department, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

This book combines the research methods of traditional historiography and gender history, and deeply analyzes various cases of adultery in the Qing Dynasty. Taking the "liberation of low status" during the Yongzheng period as the starting point, it explores the transition from identity status to social gender caused by the change in the legal and conceptual meaning of "good", as well as the process of establishing sexual morality and criminal responsibility standards that are applicable to everyone, thus perfectly interpreting the true meaning of "gender as a useful method" for historical research.

——A Feng (Professor of History Department, Tsinghua University)

This book focuses on the relevant legislation and legal practice of the "sexual" order in the Ming and Qing dynasties, explores the regulation and guidance of sexual behavior and sexual concepts in the late imperial era of China, and explains the changing laws of the sexual order tradition from the perspective of social control concepts and governance methods. The book's discussion is insightful and the conclusions are thought-provoking. It is an important work in the field of Chinese social history and legal history research.

——Wang Zhiqiang (Professor of Law School, Fudan University)

Today, Su Chengjie's book can be regarded as a classic in the two fields of legal history and gender history, and has influenced several generations of scholars. At the beginning of this century, this book quickly attracted the attention of the academic community with its novel perspectives and materials. Even today, its analytical depth and thinking vitality are still enough to set a good example for young scholars. The publication of the Chinese translation has once again stimulated its academic vitality, which is a benefit to the academic community.

—— Zhang Taisu (Professor at Yale Law School)

【Excellent book review】

The following content is excerpted from book reviews published in top academic journals such as The American Historical Review, Journal of Asian Studies, and Harvard Journal of Asian Studies.

This is an important book that places the study of sexuality in late imperial China on a more solid footing than ever before.

——Professor of History Department, University of Chicago,

Kenneth Pomeranz, author of The Great Divergence and The Making of Hinterland

Su Chengjie's clever embrace of the so-called "linguistic turn" gives him a crucial advantage when dealing with the elusive topic of "sex".

——Professor of History, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA

Dorothy Ko, author of Private Tutor

This book is a must-read not only for students of legal history but also for anyone interested in the social history of late imperial China, gender relations, and the nature of the Qing state.

——Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia, USA

Bradly W. Reed, author of "Claws"

As an important supplement to the growing body of research on China's sexual history, this book successfully reveals the far-reaching and profound changes that took place in relevant laws in the late Chinese Empire.

——Frank Dikötter, Professor of Humanities, University of Hong Kong

Su Chengjie's detailed and powerful research is of great significance not only to scholars studying law, but also to scholars engaged in cultural history, social history and Chinese literature.

——Sophie Volpp, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley

This book has a strong reference value and a rich bibliography, providing a foundation and introductory reading for further research in law and society-related fields.

——Benjamin E. Wallacker, Professor at the University of California, Davis

This book will be essential reading for scholars studying law, traditional gender norms, non-elite social life, and the history of the state in late imperial China. It is both an introduction to traditional Chinese law and a study of law as social engineering in the eighteenth century.

——Katherine Carlitz, professor at the University of Pittsburgh

The book draws many important conclusions about imperial Chinese history that will certainly appeal to scholars studying other areas of Qing China. It sets the agenda for research on sex and law for a long time to come.

——Melissa Macauley, Professor of History at Northwestern University

For social historians, the book is particularly interesting for its rich collection of legal cases and its microscopic view of the lives of ordinary people in the Qing dynasty. It will also be of interest to those studying legislation on rape, sodomy, and prostitution in other periods of Chinese history and in other countries.

——Neil J. Diamant, Professor of Dickinson College, USA

Needless to say, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of law and the regulation of sex in late imperial China.

——James Flath, Professor of History, Western University, Canada

Su's careful theorizing makes this an essential read for specialists of all historical periods, while at the same time making it accessible to the general reader thanks to the rich illustrative details and contextual explanations.

——Catherine Lynch, Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University

Particularly impressive is the focused analytical argument presented in this study, as well as the balanced discussion of the secondary literature based on in-depth thinking and active response to previous research results in the academic community.

——Jane Kate Leonard, Professor of History at the University of Akron

Su Chengjie's book Sex, Law and Society in Late Imperial China is a successful example of combining legal history with social history research. The author's changes and deepening of his research trajectory in recent years also reflect the broad academic prospects of starting from legal history and exploring the depths of social history.

——Li Shuo, young historian and author of Jian Shang

【Editor's recommendation】

This book is by no means a frivolous work about sex, but a profound, serious and thought-provoking academic study. The author combines the research methods of traditional historiography and gender history to deeply analyze various adultery cases in the Qing Dynasty, successfully revealing the far-reaching and profound changes that took place in the relevant laws in the late Chinese Empire.

"Bachelor's Case"

The lower class of men living outside the family system, collectively known as “bachelors,” were numerous and growing in number. Demonized as sexual predators and seen as a threat to the chaste wives, daughters, and young men of respectable families, the state introduced a host of new laws to deter them. This book shows the state’s efforts to cope with the many disturbing changes taking place in social structure and demographics. To adapt to a more fluid society, the state discarded some of the old legal categories that were outdated and enforced strict gender roles to support small peasant families against an underclass of single scoundrels.

Sex and Property of Widows in Ming and Qing Dynasties

Ming and Qing laws granted widows the most rights in terms of property and autonomy than other types of women. But these rights were contingent on a widow’s chastity, which could be undermined by remarriage or adultery (remarriage and adultery were therefore just different ways of expressing the same theme). This interconnectedness between sex and property provided material for a large number of civil and criminal trials, which were the most direct means by which the Qing court enforced its moral codes. The existing case records provide a new window into the Qing court’s efforts to promote female chastity and the impact of these efforts on the lives of ordinary people in the Qing dynasty.