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Tis volume has been published thanks to the financial support of the PRIN 2015 research project “Translating Worlds: Towards a Global History of Italian Culture (1450-1914)”, Prot. 2015XW47P2, and of the Department of Humanities, University of Trieste. Opera sottoposta a peer review secondo il protocollo UPI – University Press Italiane To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://www.openstarts.units.it/handle/10077/15562 or scan this QR code with your mobile device Impaginazione Gabriella Clabot © Copyright 2017 – EUT EDIZIONI UNIVERSITÀ DI TRIESTE Proprietà letteraria riservata. I diritti di traduzione, di memorizzazione elettronica, di riproduzione e di adattamento totale o parziale di questa pubblicazione, con qualsiasi mezzo (compresi i microfilm, le fotocopie o altro), sono riservati per tutti i Paesi EUT - Edizioni Università di Trieste Via Weiss, 21 – 34127 Trieste http://eut.units.it https://www.facebook.com/EUTEdizioniUniversitaTrieste ISBN 978-88-8303-842-6 (print) ISBN 978-88-8303-843-3 (online) EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste Via Weiss, 21 – 34128 Trieste http://eut.units.it https://www.facebook.com/EUTEdizioniUniversitaTrieste Back cover: 大清律例 (Da Qing lü li), 1740, reprint edited by 鄭秦 (Zheng Qin) and 田濤 (Tian Tao) (Beijing: 法律出版社, Falü chubanshe, 1998) Law, Justice and Codification in Qing China European and Chinese Perspectives Essays in History and Comparative Law edited by Guido Abbattista EUT EDIZIONI UNIVERSITÀ DI TRIESTE Contents List of Illustrations XI Guido Abbattista General Introduction XIII Guido Abbattista Chinese Law and Justice: George Tomas Staunton (1781-1859) and the European Discourses on China in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 1 Preface 1 Introduction 5 I. Eighteenth-Century Discourses on Chinese Law and Justice 8 I.1. European Views on China in the Early Modern Period 8 I.2. Du Halde on Chinese Justice 17 I.3. Views on Chinese Law and Justice after Du Halde: Admirers and Detractors 24 I.4. British Views on Chinese Institutions from William Temple to Adam Smith 33 I.5. Contributions and Opinions in the Last Tirty Years of the Eighteenth Century 41 II. An End-of-the-Century Turning Point 71 II.1. Diplomatic Evidence: Lord Macartney, George Leonard Staunton, John Barrow 75 II.2. French Perspectives from the Early Nineteenth Century 85 II.3. Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes 88 II.4. Popular Images of Chinese Penal Justice 93 III. George Tomas Staunton and the Qing Code 100 IV. English Reactions to the Qing Code 116 V. Te Qing Code in Europe and the Italian and French Editions 122 Li Xiuqing Nineteenth-Century Western Perspectives on Chinese Justice: An Analysis of Te Chinese Repository (1832-1851) and Te China Review (1872-1901) 139 Introduction 139 I. Te Chinese Judicature in Te Chinese Repository 141 II. Te Chinese Judicature in Te China Review 145 IX III. Te Shift: Western Perspectives on Chinese Judicature during the Nineteenth Century 147 IV. Epilogue 152 Zhang Lihong and Dong Neng Te Great Qing Code in Comparative and Historical Perspective 155 Introduction 155 I. Compilation and Promulgation of the Qing Code 156 II. Basic Structure and Distinctive Nature of the Qing Code 159 III. Diffusion of the Qing Code in Borderland and East Asian Countries 165 IV. Te Qing Code in European Eyes 168 V. Legal Reform in Late Qing and Disputes between Law and Lijiao 171 VI. Conclusion 176 Marina Timoteo Of Old and New Codes: Chinese Law in the Mirror of Western Laws 177 I. Te Arrival of the Great Civil Law Code Models in Late Imperial China and the Doomed Fate of the Qing Code 177 II. Importing a Civil Code: Not Simply a Technical Operation 179 III. Writing a Civil Code: Not Simply a Question of Drafting 182 IV. One Civil Code, Several Legal Models 188 V. Back to the Future 190 Giulia Iannuzzi Te Cruel Imagination: Oriental Tortures from a Future Past in Albert Robida’s Illustrations for La Guerre infernale (1908) 193 I. La Guerre infernale 194 II. A Yellow Peril from a Future Past 198 III. Te Cruel Imagination 199 IV. Merciless Tropes and the Precedent of Saturnin 201 V. Te Image of Horror in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproduction 204 VI. Robida’s Original Sketches for Pierre Giffard’s La Guerre infernale 205 Abstracts 213 Notes on Contributors 217 Index 221 X GIULIA IANNUZZI THE CRUEL IMAGINATION: ORIENTAL TORTURES FROM A FUTURE PAST IN ALBERT ROBIDA’S ILLUSTRATIONS FOR LA GUERRE INFERNALE (1908)*1 I. LA GUERRE INFERNALE – II. A YELLOW PERIL FROM A FUTURE PAST – III. THE CRUEL IMAGINATION – IV. MERCILESS TROPES AND THE PRECEDENT OF SATURNIN – V. THE IMAGE OF HORROR IN THE AGE OF ITS MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION – VI. ROBIDA’S ORIGINAL SKETCHES FOR PIERRE GIFFARD’S LA GUERRE INFERNALE It is the Tird World War, and a Chinese army has just taken Moscow. European and Russian captives, lined up in the street, are being subjected to horrible mutilations and tortures: three men locked into wooden cangues have their ears and noses cut off with sharp swords, a woman tied to a pole has an eye gouged out of its socket with a metal spoon, another has the soles of her feet burned again and again. Aerial warfare (including saucer-shaped flying machines and chemical weapons) are being used inten- sively in a German assault on London, and in battles between the United States and Japan. We take a step back, and find ourselves standing safely in Trieste, in Diego de Hen- riquez’s Civic Museum of War for Peace, admiring a series of Albert Robida’s original illustrations for Pierre Giffard’s La Guerre infernale (1908).1 Fortunately, the twentieth century went by without all the ominous predictions of the Infernal War coming to pass *1 I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Guido Abbattista for sharing with me ideas and sources without which this research would have been impossible. Any merit there may be in these pages is partly his, while the responsibility for any inaccuracy or mistake is mine alone. Piero Gondolo della Riva put a wealth of rare and valuable material at disposal of this research and I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to him. T anks to Antonella Cosenzi, the archives of the Civico Museo di guerra per la pace “Diego de Henriquez” of the City of Trieste were made available to me for this research and I am most grateful to her for her invaluable help. Tanks also to Judy Moss for editing the English of this text. 1 Pierre Giffard, La Guerre infernale, illustrated by Albert Robida (Paris: Èdition Méricant, 1908), 30 weekly instalments, in-4°, 952 pp. GIULIA IANNUZZI (although the World Wars did see the use of weapons of mass destruction and some battles not unlike the ones Giffard imagined). Today, this early work of science fiction is still a graphic example of the collective imagery of coeval times related to future wars and technologies, Chinese punishments and atrocities, and the Yellow Peril. In fact, it was for a planned future section of his war museum entitled “Storia dell’avvenirismo – Precursori della Futurologia” (“Te His- tory of Futurism – Te Forerunners of Futurology) that in 1957, Diego de Henriquez, ex-soldier and passionate collector,2 bought fifteen of Robida’s original sketches from a bookstand in Rome – fourteen black-and-white ink and charcoal drawings and one watercolour – of which eight are reproduced here.3 By 1908, the theme of Chinese torture, and the topos of Oriental cruelty was not unprecedented in Robida’s work, nor was it an isolated case in popular French and Western publications. Be that as it may (and perhaps precisely because it taps into broader cultural currents), the clash between ethnic stereotypes in La Guerre infernale, which informed the representation of Oriental brutality and sadism, and those visions of a future driven by technological progress, offer a unique vantage point from which to observe and critically assess Sino-Western cultural relationships at the dawn of the Twentieth century (or at the end of a “long” Nineteenth century). I. LA GUERRE INFERNALE Artist, novelist, war reporter, theatre critic, and correspondent from the Internation- al Exhibitions, illustrator and caricaturist, watercolourist and engraver, Albert Robida (1848-1926), also known as the inventor of the “Vieux Paris” at the Paris Universal Ex- position in 1900, is recognized today not just as a key figure on the cultural scene of the Tird Republic, but also as one of the founding fathers of the international science fic- tion genre, thanks to increasing scholarly attention.4 During his prolific career, Robida 2 On Diego de Henriquez (Trieste 1909-1974) see Antonella Furlan, Antonio Sema, Cronaca di una vita: Diego de Henriquez (Trieste: APT Trieste, 1993). 3 Archivio del Civico Museo di guerra per la pace “Diego de Henriquez” del Comune di Trieste, cassettiera 2, cassetto 4; Archivio del Civico Museo di guerra per la pace “Diego de Henriquez” del Comune di Trieste, diari nn. 163, 265, 266, 269, 271, 272, 274, 290, 291, 295, 296, 298, 301, 308, 311, 312, 313. Te circumstances of the purchase are briefly described in the captions that Henriqez himself prepared for the drawings exposition; there is no mention of it in the seventeen manuscript notebooks that constitute his 1957 journal. He may have come across them on one of the book-stands in Piazza Borghese, noted in an entry from September 14th, diary n. 301. 4 Significant landmarks of critical attention are: Philippe Brun, Albert Robida, 1848-1926. Sa vie, son œuvre. Suivi d’une bibliographie complète de ses écrits et dessins (Paris: Editions Promodis, 1984); Daniel THE CRUEL IMAGINATION contributed to more than one hundred periodical publications, illustrated ninety-four books and was himself the sole author and illustrator of almost fifty.