World Modern History

This book looks at the Muslims in Mainland Tanzania, as well as what people in Southeast Tanzania understood by Islam, or by being Muslim, and what they sought to attain by becoming Muslim. This question may seem contrived: the personal reasons why a set of people, most of whom are now dead, changed their religious allegiance are unrecoverable. The most fundamental problem lies with the timing of the expansion of Islam. It is clearly shown that certain challenges and processes recurred over time in different guises.

Traditional Chinese law, including Qing law, was often criticized as being inapplicable in civil trials, and it was often believed that the magistrate's court preferred mediation rather than decision-making. This volume challenges these views. With a detailed analysis of the Qing law codes and of 100 nineteenth-century case records from Baodi county, the volume examines much-debated issues such as the approach of Qing law to civil and criminal matters, punishment and mediation in civil trials, Confucius' preference for education and the idea of anti-litigation. This book brings a lawyer's perspective to some of the most debated issues in Chinese legal history.