ABSTRACT
The contracts from the local Zhejiang county judicial archive discussed in this chapter represent a mosaic of specific events and space-time environments. They bring to light aspects of socio-economic lives, as well as portions of litigation events. Archival documents draw our attention to the historical context of contract production and execution, through which we can explore the contractual ordering and conceptualizing of traditional society. Examined in their particular social context, these files reveal not just how contracts were retrieved, reviewed, interpreted, and circulated among different interest groups amid family separation, transactions, disputes, and litigation in changing legal environments, but also processes of negotiation, verbal agreement, and the nuances of social relations linking those involved.
