Australian Centre on China in the World, the Australian National University

This seminar investigates legal information about aliens and foreign countries collected in two types of source. The first is Ming official accounts of diplomatic missions. The second is popular daily encyclopaedias (riyong leishu 日用類書) compiled and published in south China during the last few decades of the Ming (1368-1644). These popular works catered to the tastes of the new urban class, which sought knowledge and entertainment from self-studying guidebooks. These two types of source show that the Ming reading public conceived of a world far larger and more complex than earlier generations had imagined. The sources also recognise that although some foreign peoples might have lacked formal penal codes, they were by no means lawless. They acknowledge that communities living outside Ming territory had social orders that different differed significantly from that of the Ming state, but that those alternative modes of justice, though exotic, were not inferior to Chinese legal systems.

About the speaker

Tam Ka-chai is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Hong Kong Baptist University. He has recently published three books on Chinese legal history: Justice in Print: Discovering Prefectural Judges and their Judicial Consistency in late Ming Casebooks (Brill, 2020); Ming Zhongwanqi de falü shiliao yu shehui wenti 明中晚期的法律史料與社會問題 (Wanjuanlou 萬卷樓, 2020); and The Spread and Restrictions of Catholicism under the Judicial Perspective in Ming and Qing China 天道廷審—明清司法視野下天主教的傳播與限制 (co-authored in Chinese, HK City University Press, 2021). As well as legal history, his areas of research interest include the maritime and transportation history of East Asia from the 14th to 21st centuries, and the development of Historical Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

Dr. Tam received his B.A. (Hons) History and M.Phil. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Having lived and studied entirely within a seven-kilometre radius of the University Library of that institution, he then moved to the University of Oxford, from which he received a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies. He returned to Hong Kong to take up teaching and research posts at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and CUHK, before moving to his current position at the Hong Kong Baptist University.

The ANU China Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.