CCEAS Seminar: Jaymin Kim

Sinitic Law, Tributary Relations, and Interstate Jurisdiction: Qing Jurisdiction over Chosŏn and Lê Subjects in Eighteenth-Century Borderlands

Historians of late imperial China often pair “Chinese law” with “Western law” in their comparative analyses but have little to say about the role of Chinese law within Asia. In contrast, historians of Korea and Vietnam have long recognized the importance of Chinese law in the legal traditions of Korea and Vietnam. In this talk, I provide an alternative framework of comparative law by highlighting common Sinitic heritage in the legal traditions of China, Korea, and Vietnam.

In the first section, I will outline the complicated process of the Chosŏn state’s (1392–1897) adoption of the Ming Code. Rather than a simple wholesale importation, the Chosŏn court had to embark on various transcultural translation projects of the Ming Code and promulgate supplemental laws throughout the rest of the dynasty. In the second section, I will challenge the simplistic dichotomy of indigenous law and Chinese law in studies of Vietnamese law. Regarding the code promulgated by the Lê dynasty (1428–1789), the scholarly consensus is that most of the articles in the Lê Code were indigenous to Vietnam, which in turn makes the Lê Code a fundamental example of “Vietnamese law.” To these scholars, the legal code of the subsequent Nguyễn dynasty (1802–1945) represents an exception, as it is almost a carbon copy of the Qing Code. I instead suggest that we focus on the common Sinitic heritage shared by the Lê and Nguyễn legal codes and with codes used in other Asian regimes. In the last section, I will compare two cases in which the Qing state (1636–1912) asserted jurisdiction over Chosŏn and Lê subjects to focus on how Sinitic laws worked in practice when they encountered one another. Through analysis of interstate cases like this, my research highlights the elasticity of imperial and tributary sovereignties and provides a new framework for understanding interstate relations in early modern Asia, relations that defy post-Westphalian norms of inter-state equality and noninterference.