Research On Non-governmental Economy At Southern Xinjiang In Qing Dynasty Through The Respect Of Chahetai Contracts

From Ming and Qing dynasty, when people trade, pawn and mortgage their real estate such as land, house, etc., they usually contracted an agreement which does not need to be authorized by the government. The Uygur nationality especially valued the importance to the tradition of signing contract, which was believed as widely-accepted habitual behavior to deal with disputes among the people and to adjust social relationship. At the southern foot of the Tianshan Mountain in Qing dynasty, Chahetai agreements and contracts are valuable historical documents, which vividly described all respects of the social life. Besides, these logical and systematical contracts are important materials to research into a series of questions of that time, such as politics, economy, commodity market, state and regional legislation, language, family life, etc. But most of the existing research results were based on the historical documents in Chinese and foreign languages. The minority languages are seldom used and the research on the economy rarely refers to non-governmental economic field. Because of the problems mentioned above, it is necessary to investigate and bridge the gap in the research of non-governmental economic exchanges in southern Xinjiang in Qing dynasty based on the documents in nationality language and combined Chinese and foreign materials.Through ways of collection such as directly buying from the local people, I've already gathered 52 original contracts. Despite those difficult to read and broken, I selected 40 copies of contracts with moderate length, appropriate content and clear writing, converted, categorized and translated 15 of them into Chinese that were attached into this thesis. The conversion, translation and research of the Chahetai contacts and agreements in Qing dynasty is a good way to get a deep understanding of feudal economic conditions and implementation of concrete measures in the southern area of Xinjiang in modern history. In addition to this, the thesis also aims at helping readers know about the non-governmental economic exchanges and development situation at southern Xinjiang in Qing dynasty.