Han Social Structure by T'ung-tsu Ch'ü; Jack L. DullReview by: Yu-Shan HanThe American Historical Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (Oct., 1975), pp. 1023-1024Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1867574 .

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Asia and the East 1023

points out is not the view of his informants, Feierman demonstrates the overriding impor- tance of reconstructing a microhistory such as this in its wider regional and international context.

My only complaint about this excellent book concerns Feierman's frequently tantalizing ref- erences to fuller discussions of aspects of Sham- baa society in his unpublished companion study. But when we have this volume, too, we can anticipate as arresting a reconstruction of the history and culture of a precolonial African society as we now possess.

EDWARD A. ALPERS

University of California, Los Angeles

ALLEN F. ISAACMAN. Mozambique: The African- ization of a European Institution, the Zambesi Prazos, I750-1902. Madison: University of Wis- consin Press. 1972. Pp. xviii, 26o. $17.50.

The owners of prazos in Mozambique have long attracted comment for their unique blend of European and African life-styles over nearly five hundred years. A careful study of the heyday of this institution, such as Allen F. Isaacman has here presented, is thus most welcome.

Documentary material in Portuguese, Mozam- bican, and British archives has been tested, weighed, and balanced with extensive inter- views and the collection of scientifically con- trolled oral historical data in five sections of the Zambezi basin. The study focuses upon the last 150 years of the prazo system but is by no means limited to that period in its implications or contribution. It is not a little surprising, and much to the author's credit, that he has so much success working in the field during the days of the Salazar-Caetano domination of Mozambique.

The result is a careful, but readable enough, narrative of the arrival and intermingling of Europeans with resident and migrant African societies in southeastern Africa. In a sense the prazo became a quasi-feudal landholding-cer- tainly it was a title and a power base recognized, in some fashion, by Portuguese law-but it also became a part of the fabric of African life and was strongly influenced in many of its forms by African customary and political traditions. Indeed, most of the prazeros-especially tile successful ones-played a delicate game of bal- ancing marriage policies between European lineages and African alliances, and they ma- neuvered, like fiefdoms, between alliances and opposition (including direct, violent action)

among one another and between themselves and their African neighbors. Thus, Africans were sometimes wards, sometimes allies; at times Africans held an upper hand in this balanc- ing, perlhaps as often as the relatively weak and distant colonial government. But the prazero benefited from the power to balance these factors at the fulcrum of practical, day-to-day regional politics and society.

Isaacman has given us details by prazero families, by individual African societies, and by the judicious use of all types of sources illumi- nating the subject. The result is a significant contribution that will be one of tlle models of historical analysis in societies and situations of this type.

The bibliography and notes are ample, the index is good, and the maps are quite satisfac- tory supplements to the text.

DONALD L. WIEDNER

Temple University

ASIA AND THE EAST

T'UNG-TSU CH'U. Han Social Structure. Edited by JACK L. DULL. (Institute for Comparative and Foreign Area Studies, University of Washington. Han Dynasty China, volume i.) Seattle: Uni- versity of Washington Press. 1972. Pp. xix, 550.

$17.50.

In hiis foreword to Han Social Structure Karl L. Wittfogel writes, "While here and elsewhere different interpretations can be expected, all serious students will agree that Professor Ch'ui's contribution has raised the investigation of Chinese society and Ihistory to a new level of factual inquiry and coordination." This is a very fair statement. The tremendous amount of source materials used and made available to students with or without a good knowledge of the Chinese language sets a sound landmark. It is also Ch'ii's contribution that he blends legal history into this study.

The book is divided into two parts, "Anal- ysis of Han Social Structure" and "Documents of Han Social Structure." The former contains five chapters; the latter, three sections; each occupies approximately 250 pages. The bibli- ography and index will prove very useful.

Witlh a preconceived topical analysis of Han social structure, Ch'iu inadequately treats so- cial change and development, even though he was free to draw materials from the dynastic histories within a span of four hundred years. More space was given to the upper (pp. 66-io, 16O-245) and lower (pp. 135-59) strata of Han

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1024 Reviews of Books

society than to the "commoners" (pp. 101-27) -the scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants,

as carriers of education, producers of food and commodities, manufacturers of salt, iron, fuel, paper, andl tools, and distributors or traders, domestic and "international."

Following the German economic historian and sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), the author analyzes social structure through the possession of economic goods, political power, and social prestige in the ruling bureaucracy. Weber stressed the relationship between re- ligious ideas and economic development; but such was not true of China. Chinese civiliza- tion has been humanistic; of the twenty-six (lynastic histories, sixty-two per cent are biog- raphies, twenty-one per cent treatises, eleven per cent annals of emperors, and two per cent annals of nobles. Perhaps this accouints for ex- treme brevity of the treatmenit of religious function in Han society. Ch'ii draws more heavily from biographies than from any other section.

Treatment of the position of women (pp. 49-62), guests or retainers (pp. 127-35, 444, 454), Yu-htsia or wandering knights (pp. 185- 95, 245-47), and Jen-hsia or redressers-of-wrongs (pp. i86, 393, 413, 420-24, 440, 449) illumines Clhinese society. With a deep interest in legal history, Ch'ii gives a good resume of opinions from leaders of all schools of thought (Con- fucian, Moist, Legalist) regarding Yu-hsia and jen-hsia as violators of law in making illegiti- mate use of coersive power and violence (p. 190). Due to their valor and unselfishness, Yu-bisia and jen-hsia were admired, and they gained many followers throughout Chinese his- tory in one form or anotlher.

Even though monographs on administrative geography, agriculture, communications and transportation, temples and monasteries, and the western regions are in progress, this volume needs an introductory chapter with a graphic sketch of these aspects whereby the reader can see the setting for the Han social structure. Further, the dlates giveni on page margins in part 2 seem arbitrary, with two hundred years for eaclh section, one hlundre(d for B.c. and one hundred for A.D. No doubt, it serves some pur- pose; then, why not apply this chronology to part i ?

YU-SHAN HAN

University of California, Los Angeles

THOMAS A. METZGER. The Internal Organization of Ch'ing Bureaucracy: Legal, Normative, and

Communication Aspects. (Harvard Studies in East Asian Law, 7.) Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard University Press. 1973. Pp. x, 469. $20ooo.

In this architectonic work, Metzger proclaims further revisions in Co;nfucian studies. Marx overstressed the economics of the ruling class; Weber, with preferable insights, erred in posit- ing the bureaucrat's comfortable ideological ad- justment; Wittfogel overplayed old China's despotism; Eisenstadt is misled in supposing no "transformative quality" or pressure for change in the Ch'ing government. Another cliche': the late Ch'ing bureaucracy was corrupt as well as reactionary.

Metzger makes his amendments in a detailed study of Ch'ing ch'at-fen, or law of administra- tive punishments, with most of his rich case material drawn from the salt administration. The theoretical framework is clear throughout. We see one of government's antinomies: the need to foster effectiveness in the bureaus while somehow keeping and rationalizing the indis- pensable sanctions and restraints.

To the received tradition that Chinese scholar bureaucrats were amateurs despising legalisms, Metzger opposes a detailed demon- stration of concern witlh the intricate regula- tions. Impeachment was a constant, but this led not to pervasive terror; rather, Metzger argues, it returns us to the ambivalence of canonical Confucianism. Human nature was not always called good; the world was assessed as "partly bad." Confucianists had a "charis- matic sense" of their central role in saving their world, but, per contra, these same men were raddled by a sense of their failure in that mission. They expected punishment; sometimes they impeached themselves in calculation of it. Metzger tangentially links their "probationary etlhic" with the Protestant ethic, but he stresses among the contextual differences the familiar fact that China's official offenders, even after stigmatization as criminals, could be reap- pointed or continued in office, without rank, in expiation. Indeed, the Ch'ing bureaucracy was more distinguished by "functional" than "dysfunctional" patterns; its "moderate realists" were more likely to strive and worry than to evade and line pockets. It really worked quite well.

Metzger lhas given us another of the newer institutional-legal studies designed to peel back the macroscopic generalizations that obscure "Confucian" reality. His tracing of Ch'ing ad- ministrative law is masterful, and his glossary, appendixes, bibliography, and index are solidly

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