Death by a Thousand Cuts - 9780674027732

Death by a Thousand CutsAuthor(s): Timothy Brook, Jrme Bourgon, Gregory Blue\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Harvard University Press, United States\nImprint: Harvard University Press\nISBN-13: 9780674027732, 978-0674027732\nSynopsis\nIn a public square in Beijing in 1904, multiple murderer Wang Weiqin was executed before a crowd of onlookers. He was among the last to suffer the extreme punishment known as lingchi. Called by Western observers death by a thousand cuts or death by slicing, this penalty was reserved for the very worst crimes in imperial China.\n\nA unique interdisciplinary history, Death by a Thousand Cuts is the first book to explore the history, iconography, and legal contexts of Chinese tortures and executions from the tenth century until lingchis abolition in 1905. The authors then turn their attention to an in-depth investigation of oriental tortures in the Western imagination. While early modern Europeans often depicted Chinese institutions as rational, nineteenth- .