ABSTRACT
Most justice in the Qing was made in local communities, forged without state intervention through a frequently violent expression of everyday politics. In this way, violence or the threat of it played a regular and constructive role in the county’s communities, where bloodletting formed a regular practice of rough justice rather than an anarchic force. The seventeenth-century magistrate Huang Liuhong warned against young men who came together to practice this sort of violence: “Whenever someone complains about injustice, these young men volunteer their services to avenge him. The official acceptance of local justice and private violence should not be surprising. In fact, in at least some circumstances, this official tolerance was written into the Qing Code. Violence, such as kidnapping, was available to them as a tool for both protecting their interests and displaying their power. The private spaces for rough justice and violence in local communities are also clear in other instances of sexual impropriety.
