The Logic of Lies: False Accusation and Legal Culture in Late Qing Sichuan

Introduction False accusation [wugao] was a strategy deployed by a range of individuals in order to bring their complaints to the court for remediation. It lays bare the very real ways in which locals—including the poor—actively shaped formal disputation as it entered the courtroom. The study of false accusation exposes the sophisticated strategies Qing subjects employed to advance their interests in court, and makes clear that even among the rural poor there was a broad knowledge of the workings of the legal system. Indeed, many individuals resorted to cunning strategies to circumvent normal channels of local dispute resolution in order to avail themselves of state authority. Conversely, one also sees the state, as represented by the local magistrate, ignoring the maneuvering and manipulation of locals in order to intervene in local disputes, which were often economic clashes at their root. In this interaction between locals and the county magistrate, the state remained deeply relevant in local life even at the very end of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). False accusation cases not only reveal the driving role for locals in the late Qing, but also expose an expanded sphere of state engagement. Instead of turning away cases based on hollow accusations, magistrates went out of their way to rule on the often-petty disputes that lay at their core. Why would they do this? A simple explanation suggests that this is what local governance looked like in the late Qing. Magistrates exhibit a surprising willingness to adjudicate, and turn a blind eye toward the false accusations that landed a case in court. The examination of false accusation cases exhumes an expanded role for the state at the local level.1 The county magistrate’s engagement with the communities he oversaw enhanced the Qing state’s vitality and legitimacy at