Beyond Methodological Eurocentricism: Comparing the Chinese and European Legal Traditions

Abstract

The comparative study of Chinese and European legal history is arguably as old as the social sciences themselves. Comparisons between the “Chinese legal tradition” and European ones lie, after all, at the heart of Max Weber’s seminal studies on economy and society—hardly surprising, given Weber’s extensive legal background.1 In recent decades, comparative Chinese and European legal history, broadly defined, has thrived in both Chinese academic circles and foreign ones, across a number of disciplines, including history, law, economics, and sociology. This article reviews the basic trends in this literature and suggests avenues for future research, both thematic and methodological. Given its length limitations, it makes no claim to be a comprehensive survey of the “field,” if we can call it that. Rather, it seeks to highlight some of the major intellectual themes that, in the author’s perhaps idiosyncratic experience, scholars in the field have regularly grappled with, with varying levels of success. The goal, ultimately, is to discuss how progress might be made. Existing studies seem to fall, for the most part, into three general categories: the first, most densely populated category includes works that use comparative methods as an illustrative tool. Historical Chinese institutions are compared with functionally similar European ones, so that we can better understand their structure, operation, and, in some cases, origins—rarely are these works focused on better understanding European institutions. The second category, increasingly prominent in recent years, studies historical interactions between China and the West, including the translation of legal texts and treatises, imperial and colonial experiences, and disputes in the international legal arena. The third category includes what one might call “divergence studies,” which seek to explain how and, more importantly, why Chinese and European institutions differed, generally in the context of early modern global economic divergence. The first category, which has …