City Research Online

Abstract

This article examines how Qing legal norms governing entrustment shaped Chinese commercial practices in Malaya, and how British colonial courts subsequently re-characterised those practices within the framework of English private law. Under the Great Qing Legal Code, disputes over entrusted property were not organised through an abstract law of obligations but evaluated in terms of misuse, trust, and social order. These norms travelled with Chinese migrants and structured remittance, deposit, and partnership practices within diaspora networks. Colonial courts, however, translated these relationships into the categories of debt, bailment, and trust, typically classifying them as debtor–creditor relationships where funds were mixed or used. This article argues that this process did not merely clarify legal relations but transformed their normative character, with significant distributive consequences. The encounter reveals a deeper tension between relational and categorical legal orders and challenges assumptions about the universality of private law reasoning. The shift might also be said to have changed the Chinese diasporic subconsciousness of that which is important in commercial relationships.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2026, the authors.
Publisher Keywords:	Qing legal system; Entrustment; Bailment; Chinese diaspora finance; Colonial legal transplantation; Comparative private law; Malayan legal history
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DS Asia H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance J Political Science > JQ Political institutions Asia J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration J Political Science > JX International law K Law > K Law (General) K Law > KD England and Wales K Law > KZ Law of Nations
Departments:	The City Law School The City Law School > Academic Programmes
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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