A Study On The Custom Law Of Zhuang Nationality During The Late Qing Dynasty And The Republic Of China

Influenced by the traditionally legal ideology, the majority of researchers of Chinese legal history has given their attentions to the statute law and other official files and records much more than Zhuang custom law and other minority nationality custom law, engaging in the make-up and explanation of statute law system and ruling out other minority nationality custom law from the subject. According to the theory of functionalism of Anthropology and legal sociology, we can use Legal pluralism as the solution to the problems. And we also can take it to be applied to these non-statute laws called custom law that usually shares the similar form and symbol with statute law, in order to present some good advice for the legal modernization in the minority nationality areas. Facing the circumstances, therefore, the minority nationality custom law, as the different legal form and the culture tradition, has not been noticed seriously until recently and is becoming the significant object of sociology and jurisprudence and ethnology and anthropology and history. Nowadays, the custom law of Zhuang has yet to be put more strength to be studied. The article will study the custom law of Zhuang during the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China and analyze its content, its character, its function as well as the relationship between it and statute law. This will not only widen the scope of Chinese legal history but also make us more easily know the traditionally legal culture as well as the co-operation and development of Chinese people themselves. Moreover, the study will help us improve the legal modernization in minority nationality areas. And if we ignore what Chinese people really want to need and demand, the governmental law could make the matter much more worse. This thesis is divided into six parts altogether. The first part is the introduction and it describes the research history involved and simply comments on them. And it analyzes the concept of the custom law and presents the theory and method and the source concerned. In the second part, we analyze the background in this period in which Zhuang was governed by the central government and its agents these places. However, Zhuang could still do their business rather freely because of the existence of the traditional organizations entitled by the government. Obviously, the circumstances provided the arena for the custom law and the statute law to fight against each other. The third part is to describe the primary content and the character of the custom law of Zhuang. The content includes the institutions of marriage, family, inheritance and property distribution, land ownership system, traditional organization, traditional leadership institutions as well as the means and procedure of the punishment in Zhuang areas. The characters are nationality, the direction towards family value, the dependence for individualism and specification. The fourth part is to analyze the function of the custom law of Zhuang. Here, we make use of three different visual angles such as sociological control, culture transmission, economic improvement to study the custom law of Zhuang. In our conclusion, we hold that it protected the social peace of Zhuang, transmited the traditional culture and promoted the politically institutional change in Zhuang areas. The fifth part is to observe the relationship between the custom law and the statute law this period. We indicate that almost all Zhuang people supported their custom law and refused to use the statute law to protect their interests. And the government of the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China could not completely eliminate the custom law and to the extent to which the government take the policy of reaching a compromise with the custom law according to the interest for the governors. The sixth part tells that we should do our best to improve the legal modernization construction and we must know seriously the reality of the nationality of China. In addition, we will not only notice the official files and records but the practical rule in the society of minor nationality in China.