Introduction
The central concerns of this book are crime and law enforcement in Guangdong province in south China during the mid-Qing dynasty, roughly the years from 1760 to 1845. The author’s focus is on bandits, sworn brotherhoods, and local law enforcement. Specifically, this study is divided into three parts: one, preventive measures and protective strategies; two, crimes, criminals, and community; and three, state and local law enforcement. The first part addresses the interactions of state and local communities in developing protective measures against banditry. The second part analyzes the activities, composition, and organization of bandit gangs and sworn brotherhoods in Guangdong. The third part examines in detail the policies, especially the adoption and application of laws, employed by the Qing government for suppressing these criminal associations and curbing their activities. This study, therefore, focuses on collective predatory crime and the legal responses of the state to those crimes. My purpose is to fill a hiatus in the existing scholarship on Chinese social history by examining mid-Qing Guangdong through the perspective of crime and law enforcement.