In the Ming and the Qing periods all the local administration offices, such as
fu _??_ (prefecture),
zhou _??_ (subprefecture) and
xian _??_ (county), had only one prison,
jian _??_, each within their formal institutions. In the late Ming and the early Qing periods, however, we find the existence of another, different type of prisons, generally called
pu _??_ in the Jiangnan provinces, and also called
cang _??_ in the other provinces.
These new jails were not legally authorized, but were instituted by each local administration office of its own accord. The high officials of provincial level, such as
xunfu _??__??_ (Grand Coordinator) and
xun'an _??__??_ (Regional Inspector), treated and utilized these new jails virtually as the institutional section of local administration office, and sometimes ordered that not only
jian but also
pu or
cang should be inspected at regular intervals. In the Xunzhi _??__??_ reign, the bureaucrats of both the central and the local governments frequently referred to these jails in their memorials submitted to the Emperor. We may conclude from this that these jails were practically, though not legally, as good as authorized by the Emperor and the ministers of the Qing central government. In the late Kangxi _??__??_ reign, however, the Emperor gave a consent to the proposal, submitted by a scholar-bureaucrat, Zhou Qingyuan _??__??__??_, that a ban should be placed against instituting and utilizing the illegal jails, such as
pu, cang, suo _??_,
dian _??_,
ce _??_ and so on. And this prohibition became an express provision in the Great Qing Codes after the Yongzhen _??__??_ reign. But the local officials obeyed this ban only ostensibly, and actually and practically ignored it. Thus the illegal jails continued to exist through the middle and late Qing period under the names of
zixinsuo _??__??__??_,
shoujinsuo _??__??__??_ and so on.
In this article the author has investigated into the existence or non-existence of these informal jails in each province of the mainland China in the late Ming and the early Qing periods. As to the Provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Hebei, Henan, Shangdong, Shanxi _??__??_ and Fujian, the existence of this new type of jails during these periods has been confirmed in all or some of their subprefectures and counties. In Guangdong, this new type of jails seems to have been still in the process of growth, and in Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Sichuan it was not yet instituted. As to the other provinces, such as Shanxi _??__??_ Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou, the author has no source materials from which to conclude. In the author's opinion, the growth of this new type of jails was closely connected with the social, economic and political change taking place among the rural communities of these days, a change characterized by the collapse of the power of the rural-landlord class.
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