Böcker av Philip C. C. Huang

How can we account for the durability of subsistence farming in China despite six centuries of vigorous commercialization from 1350 to 1950 and three decades of collectivization between 1950 to 1980? Here, scholars attempt to answer this question.

Presents a fresh interpretation of the origins and nature of the agrarian crisis that gripped the North China Plain in the two centuries before the Revolution. In this book, the author documents and illustrates the long-term trends of agricultural commercialization, social stratification, and mounting population pressure in the peasant economy.

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.

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.