“乡治空间”的变迁与晚清民国公证制度的演进

The Transition of“Rural Governance Space”and the Evolution of Notarization System in the Late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China

晚清民国时期,公证制度的出现经由古代“中人现象”、晚清官中制度、民初田房公证人制度及国民政府司法公证制度发展演变而来。公证方式也经历了“公证”在民、公证在官到公证在法三个阶段。以“乡治空间”为背景考察,公证制度的演进过程是以“乡治空间”的消长而发生变化。这一过程,从表面观之,公证权力渐有收归中央之势;但从社会结构分析,公证权力并非完全受政府掌控。从国家与社会、中央与地方的二元对立进行分析,并不能很好揭示公证制度的演进脉络,应该以其产生的社会秩序空间为坐标,才能展现这一过程的连续性。

From the late Qing Dynasty to the period of the Republic of China,the emergence of the notarization system evolved from the ancient“Zhongren phenomenon”,the official Zhongren system in the late Qing Dynasty,the system of notaries for fields and properties in the early Republic of China,and the judicial notarization system of the government of the Republic of China.The notarization method has also gone through three stages—“notarization”in the people,notarization in office,and notarization in law.Against the background of“Rural Governance Space”,we can see that the evolution of notarization system changes with the rise and fall of“Rural Governance Space”.On the surface,this process seems to indicate that the notarial power has a trend of gradually returning to the central government;but from the perspective of social structure,the notarization power is not completely controlled by the government.From the perspective of the binary opposition between the state and society,the central and local,we cannot well reveal the evolution of notarization system,and we should take the social order space as the coordinate to consider the notarization system,so as to better show the continuity of the evolution of the notarization system.