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ZHANG, T. Buying and selling law books in Qing Beijing. East Asian Publishing and
Society, v. 7, n. 2, p. 94–126, 2017.
“No previous scholars have focused their attention on law books – one of the main categories
of books commercially published in Beijing.” P. 96
LAW BOOKS?
“The term ‘law books’ in this article refers to books related to laws, regulations, and precedents that
officials like Yanchang would use in judicial administration, such as the Code, collections of substat-
utes and regulations, guides to laws and regulations, collections of case precedents, legal treatises,
forensic handbooks, official handbooks with detailed legal instructions, and so on.” P. 96
Beijing commercial publishers produced only nine editions of legal books in the
long eighteenth century, which consisted of less than 15% of the 60 legal books.
One possible reason for the lower-percentage of high Qing law books is that later
books have higher survival rates. Another possible reason is the strong
government control and strict censorship in the high Qing, which might
have led to the stagnation of commercial legal publishing activities. For example,
in 1725, the Yongzheng emperor banned commercial publication of books
related to administrative regulations.16 In 1740, the Qianlong emperor
launched a nation-wide campaign to ban ‘secret handbooks for litigation
masters’ (songshi miben 訟師秘本).17 Although other genres of legal books were
not the target of this campaign, the tightening control on legal publications
might have discouraged commercial legal publishing activities—Beijing’s
publishers probably directly sensed the impact of government policies because
of their close connections with the court and the central government. P. 100
Under the demand of these new tests, the demand for legal books increased. P.
101
ome officials even chose to stay in bookstores rather than hotels when they
visited Beijing.64 Bookstore owners used these carefully cultivated relationships
with officials and clerks to buy and sell books, to get access to inside information
in the government, and to invite people to contribute prefaces for their
publications. P. 113