Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China

Fengshui, literally "Wind and Water," was deeply intertwined with public life and law during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). Facing a growing population, dwindling natural resources, and an overburdened rural government, judicial administrators across China grappled with disputes and petitions about fengshui in their efforts to sustain forestry, farming, mining, and city planning. This talk discusses fengshui's fascinating roles in the law and politics of the last dynasty through archival cases, official handbooks, and divination manuals.
Tristan G. Brown is Assistant Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a social and cultural historian of late imperial and modern China. His research focuses on the ways in which law, science, environment, and religion interacted in China from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. His first book draws on Qing judicial archives and cartographic materials to investigate the uses of cosmology in imperial Chinese law. He is also preparing a second project that employs Chinese, Arabic, and Manchu sources to reveal how Islam was practiced as a local religion in late imperial China.