View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Columbia University Academic Commons Governing Imperial Borders: Insights from the Study of the Implementation of Law in Qing Xinjiang Huan Tian Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Huan Tian All rights reserved ABSTRACT Governing Imperial Borders: Insights from the Study of the Implementation of Law in Qing Xinjiang Huan Tian This research examines, through a detailed analysis of the way in which laws were implemented, the changing strategies that the Qing Empire employed to govern Xinjiang from 1759, when this area was annexed into the empire, to 1911, when the Qing dynasty collapsed. Focusing on the changes in the applicability of the two legal systems—Qing state law and indigenous Islamic law—in the criminal and the civil domains respectively, as well as the dynamic of the Qing legal policies, the dissertation studies the Qing‘s state building project in a multi-ethnic context from the legal perspective. Different from many historians studying European expansion, who argue that law was an important tool of forced acculturation, my research on Xinjiang shows that the Qing rulers managed to integrated this area without full acculturation. The story this dissertation is telling is one of the creation of Xinjiang as a province over time, though one that still holds an ambiguous status as an autonomous region even to today. It is against this background that the dissertation looks at how the two vast legal systems collided in China‘s northwestern frontier, and how the area‘s indigenous inhabitants and immigrants used the law to advance and defend their own interests. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 Qing Imperialism ............................................................................................... 4 Legal pluralism ................................................................................................ 14 Significance of Research.................................................................................. 23 Organization of Dissertation ............................................................................ 25 Chapter 1 Legislation in Xinjiang and the Qianlong Emperor’s attitudes. 29 The Emperor‘s basic consideration on ruling Xinjiang ................................... 32 The Xinjiang administrative system of Xinjiang ............................................. 35 The legislation .................................................................................................. 44 The emperor‘s basic opinions toward law applicability and practice .............. 57 Qianlong‘s Xinjiang policies and bureaucratic monarchy ............................... 68 Chapter 2 Legal implementation and perceptions about the applicability of law before the muslim rebellion ......................................................................................................... 77 Punishment of serious criminal offences in Xinjiang ...................................... 82 The Mianxing-Yingyun case.......................................................................... 103 Rebellion and the state of Kashgaria: a chaotic period .................................. 115 Cultural policies for the new province ........................................................... 118 Dealing with criminal cases after the 1880s .................................................. 123 i Flexibility and the culturally tolerant policy .................................................. 142 Chapter 3 Uyghurs’ civil matters (I): the gendered world of family and marriage ............ 148 Multiple legal authorities and changes after the 1880s .................................. 148 Marriage and divorce in Eastern Turkestan ................................................... 156 Social status of Uyghur women: showed by legal cases................................ 169 Chinese court as an option for the resolution of domestic disputes ............... 184 Chapter 4 Uyghurs’ civil matters (II): contracts and property rights .................................. 201 How Xinjiang Uyghurs negotiated their property rights ............................... 202 The role played by Chinese courts ................................................................. 238 Late Qing changes.......................................................................................... 264 Chapter 5 Transactions between Uyghurs and Chinese ......................................................... 270 Transactions between Chinese and Uyghurs ................................................. 270 Economic Conflicts between Uyghurs and Chinese ...................................... 309 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 335 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 343 ii TABLES Table 1 Duration of zumai Relationship Recorded in Contracts or Mentioned in Lawsuits before the Muslim Rebellion……………………………………………..282 Table 2 Results of zumai disputes after the Muslim Rebellion…………………….310 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a pleasure to express my appreciation to many people who have made my PhD a memorable and valuable experience. First of all, I would like to express my sincere and great gratitude to my advisor, Professor Madeleine Zelin, for the support and guidance she showed me throughout my dissertation writing. She has always been supportive in my intellectual pursuits as well as in the more mundane problems of graduate school. Without her help and patience, my research cannot reach current stage. I also take this opportunity to fervently thank Professor Eugenia Lean, Professor Robert Hymes, Professor Nicola Di Cosmo, and Professor Zvi Ben-dor, for their encouragement and wisdom. They all have followed and helped me with this work in both the initial and final stages of the process, though I am afraid I have implemented too few of their valuable suggestions. This study would not have been possible without the financial support of various organizations. The Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the History department and the EALAC department funded my years as a graduate student and my fieldtrips to Xinjiang. I have profited from discussions with Professor Robbie Barnett, as well as my classmates, Chen Li, Han-peng Ho and Tom Mullaney. I have learnt a lot from them. I would also like to show my gratitude to Professor Pan Zhiping in Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences and Professor Wang Dongping in Beijing Normal University, who shared with me their deep knowledge and steered me to the important literature. My husband and my parents provided support, comfort and patient indulgence to keep me balanced throughout the long years of this project. They all look relieved when they hear that I am writing Acknowledgements now. iv 1 INTRODUCTION Recent scholarship has demonstrated the fundamental role of law in structuring Western colonial expansion and governance from the sixteenth century onwards. However, little attention has been drawn to its role in the process of state building in the East. As many historians have illustrated, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, China shared the same expansion project as its European counterparts.1 Research on the development of the legal system of Qing Xinjiang will certainly shed light on our understanding of how the Qing carried out state building in its newly acquired frontier. Mostly due to the lack of materials, little research has been done on this topic, especially on the legal arrangement in Xinjiang. In this dissertation, I investigate how the Qing authorities established and modified the legal system in Xinjiang in order to integrate this northwestern ethnic frontier as well as the influence of legal pluralism on the lives of local people, both indigenous inhabitants and immigrants. 1 Scholars have long been locating Qing expansion within early modern world history as a form of colonialism. As early as 1947, Qing rule over the Mongols was compared with British colonial rule by Luo Yingrong. See Luo Yingrong ―Zhong e meng de jiechu yu Qingdai de lifan zhengce‖, Lishi zhengzhi xuebao, vol.1, 1947, p. 32. For recent research, see Nicola Di Cosmo, ―Qing Colonial Administration in Inner Asia.‖ The International History Review 20.2 (1998), pp. 287-309; Peter Perdue, ―Comparing Empires: Manchu colonialism‖, The International History Review, vol. 2, June 1998, pp. 23-504, and Laura Hostetler, ―Qing Connections to the Early Modern World: Ethnography and Cartography in Eighteenth-Century China.‖ Modern Asian Studies 34, No. 3 (2000): 623-662. 2 Based on historical, political and topographic differences, during the Qing dynasty, the new frontier, Xinjiang,2 as a whole could be divided into three parts: North Xinjiang (Zungharia), East Xinjiang, and South Xinjiang (the latter two parts were also called as Altishahr, Eastern Turkestan, Chinese Turkestan, or Huijiang). The entire region totaled some 650,000 square miles. After Qing troops defeated the Zunghar Khanate in the late 1760s, almost all the Mongolian tribal people, who constituted the majority of the population in North Xinjiang, were killed in the purge after the war or were forced