On the Petition Documents of Huizhou in the Qing Dynasty
Submission was a way for the people of the Qing dynasty to seek dispute resolution in their villages.The petition document was a type of document related to submission that had a specific writing format.The discovered Huizhou petition documents in the Qing dynasty were mostly produced in the late Qing dynasty.Their writing format and content were similar with but more concise than liti-gation.By comparing the dispute documents of the Ming and Qing dynasties,it is found that the forma-tion of petition documents should be related to the litigation system for the elderly people that began in the early Ming dynasty.The petition documents in Huizhou during the Qing dynasty had a fixed for-mat,but there were subtle differences in writing due to regional differences,which reflected the differ-ences in social order in various villages and towns in Huizhou.
petitionHuizhou documentsvillage mediationsocial order