Claude Chevaleyre (2020), 107 notices (traduites de l’anglais) in François Martin et Damien Chaussende (dir.), Dictionnaire biographique du Haut Moyen-Âge chinois : Culture, politique et religion de la fin des Han à la veille des Tang (IIIe-VIe siècles), Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 2020.

Le haut Moyen Âge de la Chine, qui s’étend du IIIe au VIe siècle de notre ère, fut une période particulièrement troublée sur le plan politique. Elle vit en effet s’établir sur le sol chinois une vingtaine d’États plus ou moins éphémères, dont certains furent fondés par des populations étrangères venues des steppes nordiques. Ces quelques siècles n’en furent pas moins extrêmement riches et bouillonnants du point de vue culturel. Ils virent en particulier le bouddhisme s’acclimater au sol chinois et le taoïsme se constituer en véritable religion organisée. La littérature connut d’importants développements, notamment dans le domaine de la poésie et de la prosodie. L’art bouddhique connut un âge d’or et donna lieu à de splendides réalisations sous la dynastie des Wei du Nord. La culture de cour qui se constitua dans les États chinois du Sud exerça quant à elle une influence profonde sur les arts, qui devait se maintenir pendant des siècles, notamment sous les Tang…

Claude Chevaleyre (2020), « Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China, written by Johanna S. Ransmeier, 2017 », book Review in T’oung Pao, Volume 105: Issue 5-6, pp. 636–643.

Sold People is a rarity. Based on her Ph.D. thesis,1 Johanna Ransmeier’s first monograph is the kind of book that sets a milestone and opens a new research field. In the space of 395 pages, Sold People takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the often-overlooked world of slaving and human trafficking in northern China (1870s-1930s). Although the topic has long been a recurring issue in the field of social history of the late Qing and Republican periods, few scholars had attempted to address it comprehensively and on its own right.2 For this reason alone, Johanna Ransmeier’s remarkable work will remain a landmark study and, it is to be hoped, inspire a new generation of social historians of China.

Claude Chevaleyre (2019), “The Abolition of Slavery and the Status of Slaves in Late Imperial China”. In The Palgrave Handbook of Bondage and Human Rights in Africa and Asia. Dir. Alessandro Stanziani and Gwyn Campbell, Palgrave, 2020, , p. 57-82.

In the West, human bondage remains synonymous with the Atlantic slave trade. But large slave systems in Africa and Asia predated, co-existed, and overlapped with the Atlantic system—and have persisted in modified forms well into the twenty-first century, posing major threats to political and economic stability within those regions and worldwide. This handbook examines the deep historical roots of unfree labour in Africa and Asia along with its contemporary manifestations. It takes an innovative longue durée perspective in order to link the local and global, the past and present. Contributors trace shifting forms of forced labour in the region since circa 1800, connecting punctual shocks such as environmental crisis, conflict, market instability, and crop failure to human security threats such as impoverishment, violence, migration, kidnapping, and enslavement. Together, these chapters illuminate the historical and contemporary dimensions of bondage in Africa and Asia, with important implications for the fight against modern-day bondage and human trafficking.

Béatrice Jaluzot (2019), « French Law in East-Asian Colonies », in Y. Kaneko (éd.), Civil Law Reforms in Post-Colonial Asia: Beyond Western Capitalism, Springer-Kobe University, pp. 3-20, 2019.

South-East Asian countries are going through a process of legal transformation. The end of dictatorships and the radical change of the socialist model make place for new societies where economic liberalism – which, to a large extent, includes civil liberties – has become mainstream. Viet Nam and Laos adopted for a socialist market economy in 1986, Cambodia followed in 1995, and Indonesia adopted a democratic political system in May 1998, just as Myanmar did in 2012. This major turning point has proven to be a success, as economic growth in the region has clearly increased. Howerver, this change of paradigm faces legal infrastructures inherited from the past, and among them form the colonial past…