ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, the Department of History at Shanghai Jiaotong University has collected local archives, amounting to almost six million pages from more than 50 cities and counties across numerous provinces. This chapter introduces a judicial archive from the 1950s that we uncovered from a country in Jiangxi. These documents include files from Public Security Bureaus, procurators, and People’s Courts, and span a range of political and criminal offenses. It includes highly ideological “documents of results,” as well as “documents of process” that are more pragmatic, often focusing on particular problems or issues. This chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges involved in using public security archives as historical materials, and points to specific research projects that might be pursued using them in conjunction with other relevant documents and fieldwork.
