The veins of the earth: Law, geomancy, and the transformation of property in modern China, 1865-1928

In late imperial China, land was measured not just in quantifiable dimensions, but also by a community’s relationship to it. The harming of a lineage’s “earth vein” or a temple’s fengshui were valid legal claims in county courts. This project uses rare archival documentation and ritual manuscripts to show how geomancy was both a strategy employed by the local population of Nanbu County for the expression of property claims as well as a means by which the state judged and enforced those claims. It then reveals how new legal standards, tax regimes, and surveying techniques demanded a transformed relationship among state, subject, and earth in the twentieth century. This study thus brings Chinese and international legal history into conversation with religious territoriality and historical anthropology, and opens a window into the changing dynamics of property on the eve of the communist revolution.