Information on the Foreign Laws Found in the Governmental Publications and the Privately Published Daily Encyclopaedia from Ming China

This paper investigates the legal information of aliens and foreign countries outside China collected in the Ming official accounts of diplomatic missions, as well as popular daily encyclopaedias, or riyong leishu 日用類書, compiled and published in south China during the last few decades of the Ming period (1368-1644). These works were designed to cater to the vulgar taste of the newly emerged urban class who sought knowledge and entertainment from the self-studying guidebooks. Revealed by the sources in question, the Ming reading public must have understood that the world is much bigger than imagination and many of the foreigners were by no means lawless peoples, even though some of them had no formal penal codes. They realized that the others outside China Proper have their own social orders significantly different from that of the Chinese, and sometimes their modes of justice, though exotic, are not inferior to the legal system of the Middle Kingdom. More importantly, since they had been advised about the legal system outside China, the Chinese merchants sailing aboard were then better prepared to meet legal disputes in foreign lands, and perhaps seas, when entering the ocean of commerce in the 17th century.