User:CWH/Ch'ü T'ung-tsu

Ch'u T'ung-tsu (Qu Tongzu; (瞿同祖), （b. 1910 July 12 Changsha, Hunan －2008 October 3）was a Chinese historian of Chinese law and social history. He is best known for his studies

天贶，后改天况，

The University of Chicago sociologist Andrew Abbott, writing under the pen-name, "Barbara Celerant," included Qu in a series of review articles on historically important works in his field. To read Qu, he concluded, "is to read a superficially Westernized scholar who nonetheless still views the world through the lens of constancy that characterized classical China."

Family and education
Grandson of Qu Hongji, first Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Qing dynasty

Google

Qu Tongzu was born in Changsha, Hunan, but after the 1911 Revolution the family moved to [Shanghai. In 1924, Qu went to Beijing with his grandmother to live in Qudui’s home. He attended Beijing Yuying Middle School and Huiwen Middle School. His mother died in Shanghai in 1928. In 1930, he was recommended to Yenching University to major in sociology. Among his classmates were Fei Xiaotong, Lin Yaohua and Huang Di. The four were born in the same year and were all under the guidance ofWu Wenzao, and were collectively known as the "Four Dogs of the Wu Men". In 1934, he obtained a bachelor's degree in arts and continued study at the Yenjing University Research Institute. Under the guidance of Wu Wenzao and Yang Kaidao, he studied Chinese social history. In 1936, Qu obtained a master's degree. His thesis "Chinese Feudal Society" examined imperial Chinese society using sociological viewpoints and methods, and was published in 1937 by the Commercial Press. It was translated into Japanese in ?? and into English in 2020..

In 1938, because Beijing was occupied by a Japanese puppet regime, he went south alone and served as a clerk in the Investigation Division of the National Government Trade Commission in Chongqing. In the summer of 1939, at the invitation of Wu Wenzao and Fei Xiaotong to teach at Yunnan University, he had a joint appointment lecturer in the departments of society, politics and economics, and law. Later he was promoted to Associate Professor, then Professor. He taught "Chinese Legal History" three courses. In 1944, he taught "Chinese Social History" in the Department of Sociology at Southwest Associated University. During this time, he wrote the book Chinese Law and Chinese Society. The Chinese version was published by the Commercial Press in 1947, and the English version was published in Paris in 1961 as Traditional Chinese Law and Society (School of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Paris Ministry of Science).

Chinese history Research Fellow, in the study of Chinese history. During this period, the first draft of "Social Structure of the Han Dynasty" ( Washington University Press, 1972) was completed. In 1955, on the recommendation of Yang Liansheng, he was taken on as a researcher at the Center for East Asian Studies at Harvard University, where he offered a course on Chinese Law. During this period, he completed the book Ch'ing Dynasty Local Government (Harvard University Press; 1962), which had a great influence. In 1962, he was invited to teach at the Asian Department of the University of British Columbia in Canada, offering courses in General History of China and Ancient Chinese.

In the winter of 1949, his wife, Zhao Zengjiu, left the United States with her children and returned to China. In 1965, he resigned his position in Seattle and returned to China just as the Cultural Revolution was developing. He lived in Beijing for a year without finding a job and returned to his hometown. His wife Zhao Zengjiu worked in the Guizhou Provincial Science and Technology Commission. Arranged to work in Hunan Literature and History Museum since 1971. His wife retired in the same year and returned to Changsha for reunion. The two translated Eden's Memoirs (published by the Commercial Press in 1976).

In 1976, after his wife died of illness, he stayed with his daughter in Beijing. He was seconded to the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to compile "Stilwell Information" (published by Zhonghua Book Company in 1978). In the spring of 1978, he was officially transferred to the Institute of Modern History as a second-level researcher.

After 1985, plans for a final work were not completed. On October 3, 2008, Qu died in Peking Union Medical College Hospital at the age of 98.

Scholarly contributions
from the perspective of law and society. It is known as a groundbreaking work and has The history of Chinese law,

Wallace Johnson, however,
 * The section called “The Confucianization of Law” in Ch’ü T’ung-tsu’s Law and Society in Traditional China has had great influence on views of Chinese law ever since the book’s publication in 1947. Much of his essay describes the legal privileges that separated the upper classes from the commoners and to a great extent protected the former from punishment. The stand of this class of persons was always that reflected in The Book of Rites (Li ji 禮記 ) which stated that: “Punishments do not extend up to the Great Officials (xing pu shang tafu刑不上大夫).”

While Ch’ü is correct in emphasizing the parts of that article that supported hierarchy within the family, most important are the four sections covering cases of plotting rebellion (mou fan 謀反), sedition (mou dani 某大逆), treason (mou pan 謀叛), or committing great irreverence (da buqing 大不敬) which cancel all the benefits mentioned above [24]

Moreover, Johnson notes that coming to the Tang period, in the Code of 653, we see a further reduction of legal benefits through articles that effectively cancelled legal benefits. [25]

Du Yue four major books a transition from the the "isomorphism between Confucian doctrines and Chinese social structure" Feudal Society in China, and Law and Society in Traditional China disappears in Local Government in China under the Ch’ing, which exclusively focuses on informal relationships and deviant behaviors in China’s bureaucratic system. Ch’u’s Western influences, represented by Maine’s work in Ancient Laws, and Ch’u’s subsequent ‘failed effort’ in his third book, Han Society Structure. Ch’u’s Western academic influences could best be characterized as the "desacralization of law," with an exclusive focus on social structure. When the formal structure of kinship groups and social classes failed to explain the maintenance of social order in the Han dynasty, Ch’u turned away from formal structure and pursued studies on informal structure and deviance. gained an international reputation. It has become a must-read reference book for studying

Chinese law and Chinese society. The spring of 1945, should Wittfogel invited the United States to any Columbia University

Family history
出身世家，祖父为晚清大学士瞿鸿禨. 父瞿宣治先后任职于中国驻瑞士及荷兰公使馆，1923

年病逝于法国马赛. 叔父瞿兑之.

名字来源

瞿同祖因生于1910年（岁在庚戌），祖父生于1850年（也是庚戌），因此名同祖. 出生之

日，恰好是天贶节，故字天贶.

Selected publications
《中国封建社会》

《中国法律与中国社会》

《清代地方政府》

《汉代社会结构》




 * Tongzu Qu, The History of Chinese Feudal Society (中國封建社會(精) Zhongguo feng jian she hui (Taibei 1984); New York: Routledge, 2020 Translated by Wang Qingyong and Deng Weitian.)


 * Tongzu Qu, 瞿同祖论中国法律 Qu Tongzu Lun Zhongguo Fa Lü (Beijing: Shangwu, 2014)


 * Tongzu Qu, Law and Society in Traditional China (Paris: Mouton, 1961)


 * Tongzu Qu, Han Social Structure (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972)