| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Bradly W. Reed. Talons and Teeth: County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty. (Law, Society, and Culture in China.) Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2000. Pp. xxiii, 318. $55.00.

Who governed China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911)? Certainly the emperors and their courts played important roles, as did Beijing bureaucrats and thousands of degree-holding civil servants sent to the provinces as magistrates in district offices. Court and officialdom have long been studied through the voluminous record of edicts, memorials, administrative manuals, and memoirs produced by China's monumental bureaucratic establishment. In these sources, little attention is given to the vast army of clerks and runners who did most of the work of local administration on behalf of county magistrates. While magistrates rarely stayed longer than a few years in one assignment, clerks (record keepers and document handlers) and runners (messengers, guards, and constables) often worked in the same county offices for decades. The opening of local archives in recent years has made detailed study of this vital layer of government possible. Bradly W. Reed's book is a pioneering exploration of county administration that takes into account the point of view of the clerks and runners. . . .

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