The Exploration Of Chinese Legal History In The Late Qing Dynasty (1840-1900)

The scholars in ancient China did not view Chinese Legal History as a discipline.After the Opium War, the influence of “West learning spreading to the East” posed achallenge to traditional Chinese Legal System and the legal history based on it,providing a historically cherished opportunity for the formation of modern Chineselegal history. During the transition process, basing on bringing in the Westernacademic classifications, the modern Chinese Legal History system was established.As the Jingshi Academy and Jingshi Academy of Politics and Law was regarded asthe milestone to make Chinese Legal History as a independently compulsory course inearly20thcentury, the time-span that more than half of a century after the Opium Warwould be considered as the incubation period of it. The thesis aims to explore theprocess of the development and regularity of the subject by sorting out this “period ofpre-discipline”, which will offer the current and future development of Chinese LegalHistory with nutrition and reference. In the meanwhile the thesis focuses on filling theblank of the relevant research of this period.From the point of view of historiography, the thesis adopts the interdisciplinaryview of both “Internal History” and “External History”, trying to come up with theinternal development track of Chinese Legal History in Late Qing Dynasty. Then theauthor will discuss the externalities of this subject, such as the social background, related disciplines, overseas Chinese Legal History research, to name but not a few. Atthe same time, basing on what has been mentioned above, the thesis will work on theacademic value and social function of this subject.Chinese Legal History was not the natural product of traditional history, nor wastransplanted from the West world, it was born from the development of traditionallegal history with the communication between the Eastern and Western culture. In thisprocess, Chinese Legal History in the Late Qing Dynasty was of great significance, asit served as a link between past and present. On one hand, the comprehensive,systematical and conscious research notified that the traditional legal history hadarrived at a mature stage, which laid the foundation for present Chinese Legal History.On the other hand, under the influence of the Western culture, the traditional legalhistory was gradually liberated from traditional history when absorbing the essentialcontent of west culture and figuring out new points in the field of research methods,areas as well as perspectives, thus creating the robust environment for the subject ofChinese Legal History.