Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China: Translation and Study of the Zhangjiashan Legal Texts

FAIN: RZ-50718-07

University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA 93106-0001)
Anthony Jerome Barbieri (Project Director: November 2006 to June 2010)

The translation, annotation, analysis, and interpretation of a group of Chinese legal and administrative texts from the late 3rd to early 2nd centuries BCE, which were recently excavated from a tomb in Hubei Province, China. (24 months)

This project will translate and study a group of Chinese legal and administrative texts dating from the Qin and Han empires (late 3rd-early 2nd centuries BCE), recently excavated from a tomb at Zhangjiashan (Hubei Province, China). The importance of these texts for understanding the development of the early imperial legal and administrative system, social organization, and cultural values cannot be overemphasized. These extraordinarily detailed legal texts show how the Han rulers adopted and adapted Qin legal, bureaucratic, social, and economic precedents and how they and their Qin predecessors used the law to dominate and exploit local populations, including minorities, eventually forging a Chinese people. Our translation will be of value not only to historians of China and comparative historians, but also to those studying the importation of Western law into modern China.

Associated Products

Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China (2 vols) A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb no. 247 (Book)
Title: Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China (2 vols) A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb no. 247
Author: Robin D.S. Yates
Author: Anthony Barbieri-Low
Abstract: In Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China, Anthony J. Barbieri-Low and Robin D.S. Yates offer the first detailed study and translation into English of two recently excavated, early Chinese legal texts. The Statutes and Ordinances of the Second Year consists of a selection from the long-lost laws of the early Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). It includes items from twenty-seven statute collections and one ordinance. The Book of Submitted Doubtful Cases contains twenty-two legal case records, some of which have undergone literary embellishment. Taken together, the two texts contain a wealth of information about slavery, social class, ranking, the status of women and children, property, inheritance, currency, finance, labor mobilization, resource extraction, agriculture, market regulation, and administrative geography.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://brill.com/display/title/27138
Primary URL Description: Publisher's page
Publisher: Brill
Type: Multi-author monograph
ISBN: 978-90-04-2928
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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