| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Thomas M. Buoye. Manslaughter, Markets, and Moral Economy: Violence Disputes over Property Rights in Eighteenth-Century China. (Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature, and Institutions.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Pp. xvi, 283. $59.95.

How did the long eighteenth century of rapid population growth, commercialization, and pressure on land affect China? In this ambitious application of the theoretical insights of Douglass C. North, R. Bin Wong, and others, Thomas M. Buoye proposes a nuanced theory of structural and economic change, linking developments in the country's legal and social institutions and commercialization. Based on a careful reading of 630 homicides (out of over 56,000 extant case files, although some Chinese sources reported over 58,000) resulting from contractual and noncontractual disputes, the author argues that the violence stemmed from the frustrations of a rural society as commercialization and rising population pressure and property values eroded traditional norms and customs. The author analyzes disputes over rent, evictions, redemption, land boundaries, water rights, and debt from Guangdong province in south China. Growing profits from commercialized crops and rising land prices meant that tenants competed furiously for land, contradicting earlier arguments that emphasized class struggle and solidarity. Tenants and landlords tangled over demands for higher rents and the clarification and enforcement of obligations, in the process breaking long-held expectations or implicit understandings. Even-handed local officials did their best to administer justice, resulting in the rationalization and elaboration of the relevant state codes concerning redemption and supplemental payments for conditional sale of land, standardization of land deeds, and criminalization of rent default. As rural society reconciled itself to these institutional changes and incorporating the transactional costs, homicide cases declined. . . .

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