Matters Not That Trivial: Damage to the “Safety-Valve” Mechanism in Civil Justice and the Rise of the Boxer Movement in the Late Qing Period

Abstract

Litigation in rural China under the Qing involved “trivial matters” 细事 over marriage, land transactions, debt, theft, and so on. “Going to court” 打官司, as a regular means of resolving such disputes, functioned as a “safety valve” in maintaining social order, while the mishandling of civil disputes by local magistrates and prefects often had severe consequences. After 1860, Western missionaries became increasingly active in rural North China under the system of unequal treaties. Their arrogance and interference with lawsuits by providing local converts with judicial protection caused damage to the safety valve and disgruntlement among the victims of their abuses. It was the growing enmity toward the missionaries that led to rampant violence by the Boxers around 1900.