Justice on the steppe [electronic resource] : legal institutions and practice in Qing Mongolia
Keywords: History.

This dissertation examines changes to the form and function of the Mongolian legal system in Qing Inner Mongolia between the Shunzhi (1644-1661) and Qianlong (1736-1795) reigns as a result of top-down imperial policies and bottom-up socio-demographic forces. It argues that the Qing state accommodated culturally diverse legal practices and ideologies while simultaneously promoting procedural uniformity throughout the empire. It finds that the Yongzheng reign (1723-1735) played a crucial role in this transition. In the decades after 1644, the Qing legal system included very different legal regimes: in the Chinese provinces, the Qing code inherited from the Ming dynasty was promulgated; in Mongolia, a Mongol code largely based on customary Mongolian law was in effect. Following reforms in the Yongzheng period, these two legal regimes were administratively integrated into one empire-wide, hierarchical Qing legal system. Chapter One examines Beijing's growing role in the administration of justice in the Shunzhi and Kangxi (1662-1722) reign periods. After reviewing the origins of Qing engagement with Mongolian law before 1644, the focus turns to the central state's participation in the review of criminal cases both by dispatching Lifanyuan representatives to Mongolia and by carrying out special investigations in cases of capital appeal. In the Kangxi reign, all capital crimes from Mongolia were required to undergo mandatory review in the capital. Moreover, the Lifanyuan no longer independently reviewed Mongol criminal cases, but instead did so jointly with the Three High Courts. Chapter Two examines the crucial role of the Yongzheng reforms in the search for bureaucratic centralization and administrative standardization. By 1723, Mongolia and China proper could no longer be treated as two entirely distinct spheres of jurisdiction. "Mixed cases, " involving parties normally governed by two different bodies of law and procedure, became more frequent as social and economic interactions between the indigenous Mongolian and immigrant Chinese populations increased. Reforms under the Yongzheng emperor introduced the prefectural model of administration into parts of Inner Mongolia, creating a contiguous multi-jurisdictional zone along the southern edge of the Great Wall. This legal plurality was characterized by overlapping bodies of law with different geographical reaches, co-existing institutional systems, and conflicting legal norms. A major concern of this dissertation is how, in practice, Qing officials dealt with conflict of laws when two legal orders with different laws and punishments were effective within the same geographic region and community. Chapters Three and Four look carefully at a range of cases from two categories of capital crimes that received particular attention from the Qing state: homicides and livestock theft. Over time, Qing influence was displayed in the principles of adjudication, the use of evidence, and even the form of documents. In homicides, officials introduced the mandatory medical examination by a coroner and routinized the use of the confession in place of the traditional Mongolian form of evidence -- the judicial oath. Chapters Three and Four also consider the crucial question of punishment. In the pre-Qing period, homicides and theft were punishable by large cattle fines. They were initially reclassified as capital punishment crimes in the early Qing. This remained true for homicides. Officials were chiefly concerned with standardizing the type of death sentence with those prescribed by Qing law. Livestock theft laws demonstrated a somewhat different trajectory. Mongolian thieves were initially punished more harshly than Chinese thieves; the former sentenced to death and the latter assessed a fine. In the Yongzheng reign, the penalty for livestock theft was reduced from death to enslavement, and further reduced to exile in the Qianlong reign. Although the punishment was not the same for Mongol and Chinese criminals, as it was for murder cases, the degree of severity of the punishment in Mongolian law was reduced to align with the Qing code. This dissertation argues that standardizing judicial procedure was a tool of Qing empire-building. The Qing central state increasingly expanded its control over the venue for conflict resolution and the basis for judgment. By the late eighteenth century, the legal treatment of serious crimes was relatively consistent despite the existence of multiple legal orders. Mongolian criminal categories aligned with Qing legal categories. Qing officials continued to modify Mongolian law up to the promulgation of the Lifanyuan code in the Jiaqing reign.