Introduction

The traditional view that Chinese empires relied primarily on rituals and ceremonies while neglecting the role of law has been increasingly challenged. Archaeologically discovered sources show that sophisticated laws with meticulous procedures constituted the backbone of early Chinese empires. The Qin and Han dynasties were more “Legalist” than their counterpart in the West, the Roman Empire. This book revives the stories of the main operators within the imperial bureaucracy – technical bureaucrats (law implementers) and convict laborers – whose histories had been forgotten for nearly two millennia.Leveraging methodological innovations from the digital humanities, I have collected data on a large number of officials who were criminalized and later re-employed in officialdom. This discovery enables me to propose a new framework for examining Confucian criticism of law and legal practice in early China. The biographical database also transforms linear storytelling into multidimensional narratives and helps identify Confucian social networks otherwise hidden in current literature.