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This study of the regulation of sexuality in the Qing dynasty explores the social context for sexual behavior criminalized by the state, showing how regulation shifted away from status to a new regime of gender that mandated a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal liability for all people, regardless of their social status.

Drawing on newly available archival case records, this book demonstrates that Chinese women's rights to property changed substantially from the Song through the Qing dynasties, and even more dramatically under the Republican Civil Code of 1929-30.

What changes occurred and what remained the same in Chinese civil justice from the Qing to the Republic? Drawing on archival records of actual cases, this study provides a new understanding of late imperial and Republican Chinese law. It also casts a new light on Chinese law by emphasizing rural areas and by comparing the old and the new.

Based on newly available records of 628 civil dispute cases from the 1760's to the 1900's, this book challenges many conventional assumptions about the Qing legal system.

Asserting that litigation in late imperial China was a form of documentary warfare, this book offers a social analysis of the men who composed legal documents. Litigation masters emerge as central players in many of the most scandalous cases in 18th- and 19th-century China.

Shows that contrary to previous scholarly belief, the courts in Qing and Republican China dealt extensively with civil matters and, moreover, did so in a consistent and predictable way.

An in-depth study of county government personnel and informal administrative practice in the Qing dynasty and their implications for state-society relations in the late imperial era.