Haggling over Property: Land Sales Lawsuits during Late Ming China

Abstract

The commercialization of the economy in the late Ming dynasty profoundly affected people''s values, social relations, and everyday life. This essay, focusing on local litigations regarding new practices in land sales— demanding price markups and land redemption, examines two interrelated issues : how justice was perceived and constructed in the late Ming local communities, and how local justice construction and socioeconomic change affected each other. Drawing on one of the late Ming local court records— Yunjian yanlüe by Mao Yilu, I demonstrate that drastic social change led to adjustment in legal culture, which in turn facilitated social change. I further argue that in the course of local adjudication, all litigation participants, both judicial and non-official, took active part in the judicial process ; and, by negotiating among each other, they together created situated justice— the contingent and particularistic legal judgment of competing claims based on specific circumstances.