Gaining Wealth At The Expense Of Justice

This paper,with the Hehongbai’s property dispute records as the main body of the text,supplemented by genealogy,oral history,based on the introduction of Wuyuan wood merchant He Hongbai and Ho family,cards the economic disputes between He Hongbai and his three relatives.It deeply analyzes the castaway merchants’ living conditions,the drawbacks of Huizhou merchants’ family management and the Huizhou merchant’ actual legal life state reflected by the economic disputes in Mid Qing Dynasty.In Daoguang Dynasty,wood merchant Hehongbai and his widow sister-in-law Jirong because of sacrificial property,because of the debt Hehongbai and his nephew Zaisheng,had a fierce dispute.In this process Hehongbai also had a lot of contradictions with his nephew Heshumei because of all kinds of ecomomic disputes.The disputes between He Hongbai and Jirong,Hehongbai and He Shumei,Hehongbai and Hezaisheng are all related to the property,but the nature of the dispute is slightly different.The dispute bwtween Hehongbai and Jirong is mainly about sacrificial property;The dispute between Hehongbai and Heshumei is about family public propery,debt segmentation and other personal matters;the dispute between Hehongbai and Hezaisheng is purely about the debt.The case about the disputes bwtween Hehongbai and his three family relatives could make us understand Huizhou merchants in Qing Dynasty.Frist,judging from Ho family,the castawy merchant’s living conditons is very poor,not ony lack of food and clothing,but also having difficulty in raising offspring and even plagued by poverty and ill health and even buried in foreign land.Second,the family management of Huizhou merchants is one of the elements of their success,which has always been praised by the researchers.The case about Ho family can not deny thispoint,but it really can be seen that the huizhou family business develops to a certain extent,then begins to split.When splited,the imperfect accounting system caused unfair property segmentation,leading to endless disputes.This ultimately affects the further development of the Huizhou merchants.Third,the case of Hehongbai and his three family relatives’ disputes supports the academical idea that Huizhou merchant fond of making a lawsuit and good legal concept of legal system is one important element of their success.This case also reveals some details of the legal life of Huizhou merchants in Qing Dynasty.First,the merchants deals with the homeland disputes and foreign land disputes in different ways.Second,Huizhou merchant’s presentation of paper is not for lawsuit but leave the case paper in advance for the future.In other words,it is to protect the property right in the form of pre-filing.