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TSINGHUA CHINA LAW REVIEW
The Founding of Peiyang University Department of Law: Oxford Style Legal Education in China (1895-1899)
Created on:2022-11-18 10:18 PV:1908
By CHEN Li |Article |9 Tsinghua China L. Rev. 227 (2017)   |   Download Full Article PDF

Abstract
Peiyang University, established in 1895, was the first institute in China to offer modern legal education. Several students who studied law at the department during its first four years, such as the celebrated Chinese jurist Wang Chung Hui and his peers, would go on to seek the advanced legal education in America with the financial support from Chinese government, and earn the honour of being the first Chinese scholars to receive Master of Laws and Doctor of Civil Law degrees. Despite the historical significance of law program’s early years, they have been neglected in previous research. This paper strives to shed light on the foundation of Chinese first law school, its faculty, curriculum, pedagogical methods and quality of instruction.
 

I. Introduction
 

Peiyang University, established in 1895, known as Tientsin University in the West, was the first institute in China to offer modern legal education. As China’s first modern university, Peiyang University was a groundbreaking and bold historic venture. Several students who studied law at the department in the first four years of its operation, such as the celebrated Chinese jurist Wang Chung Hui and his peers, would go on to seek advanced legal education in America with the financial support from Chinese government, and earn the honour of being the first Chinese scholars to receive Master of Laws and Doctor of Civil Law degrees. Despite its historical significance, the first four years of the law program’s existence has been neglected in previous research. Therefore, little is known regarding the law school faculty, curriculum, pedagogical methods and quality of instruction. On the 95th anniversary of Tianjian University’s celebration in 1990, in order to publish an official history of the university, a group of university historians conducted an extensive research of various archives. Unfortunately, they did not find any material capable of shedding light on the incipient years of the law department’s operation, as the original school archival records were entirely destroyed during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Therefore, the University has no records regarding students’ admission and the date on which classes officially started in 1895. There is a serious gap in information related to the origin and initial development of China's first modern legal education. The first few graduates of the law department subsequently made a profound impact on pushing forward China's educational, legal and diplomatic modernization agenda. These precedent setters also became the first few Chinese students to earn various levels of law degree in the US. Therefore, it is essential to reconstruct this crucial chapter of history.

Since its establishment, Peiyang University faced skepticism regarding its legitimacy as an institution that would provide adequate career preparation for its students. Its creation was promoted by Sheng Xuanhai, a high-ranking government official of those days, and it came under the patronage of Wang Wenshao, a powerful Northern Minister and Viceroy of Zhili Province. Sheng Xuanhuai sent a proposal to establish this new institution to Wang Wenshao on September 19, 1895. Wang endorsed the plan and memorialized the Throne on September 30, 1895. His Majesty, by an imperial edict issued on October 2, 1895, authorized the opening of the University on the lines proposed by Sheng. It appears that the promoters of the University were confident that his Majesty would sanction the project, and thus the first news regarding the foundation of the University came much earlier than the imperial edict. The project was announced on September13, 1895. The Hong Kong Telegraph reprinted news from the Peking and Tientsin Times regarding the foundation of this modern University on September 17, 1895. It reported that at its inception, Peiyang University would be under the control of two Chinese Directors and one foreign President. The two Chinese Directors, Wu Tingfang and Cai Shaoji, were not strangers to progressive foreign education; they both had spent years in England and America. Wu was the first Chinese who studied law in England from 1874-1877, and afterwards qualified as an English Barrister in January 1877. Cai was among the first contingent of Chinese youth dispatched by the Chinese Government to be educated in America in 1872. He completed secondary schooling at Hartford Public High School and attended Yale College for three years before being recalled by the Chinese Government in 1881. Charles Daniel Tenney, a former missionary and educator, was named the first President of Peiyang. Born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 29, 1857, he was one of four children of Daniel Tenney, a Presbyterian minister, who studied classical course at Dartmouth College and received theological training at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati. Tenney was a founder of the Western College and Seminary for Women at Oxford, Ohio, and organized six churches in his life. Charles Daniel Tenney took his Bachelor of Arts degree at Dartmouth College in 1878, then studied at Oberlin Theological Seminary (Oberlin College) from 1881-82, where he gained a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1882. He was ordained by the Congregational Council of Oberlin on June 25, 1882 and was immediately sent to China with a few fellow students to spread the gospel in Taiyuan, Shanxi province under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. After two years of missionary work, he dissociated himself from the mission and organized the Anglo-Chinese School in Tientsin offering tuition to sons of Chinese gentlemen of high rank from autumn 1886 to 1895. The stated purpose of his private school was to prepare young men to “act as efficient interpreters, and to engage in foreign trade, in the railway service and in the various industry in China that required a knowledge of English.” Furthermore, Li Hongzhang, the famed viceroy, regularly visited the school and before long became favorably impressed with the substance and methods of education pursued by western nations as reflected by this school. Li had no hesitation in engaging Tenney as a private tutor for his own children. As a result, for several years Tenney was a private tutor to Viceroy Li’s sons and a persona grata to this most prominent Chinese mandarin. From early March 1894 to the end of June 1896, he also held vice consulship at American Consulate in Tianjian. We can discern Tenney’s vision of this new institution and the rationale for making English the sole language of instruction at the first Chinese Government University by reviewing his paper titled “English Education in China”. He read it during the third session of missionary conference at Beidaihe, Hebei on August 18, 1899. As noted by the organizers of this conference:

He (Tenney) said that the prejudice in the minds of many missionaries against the teaching of English was mistaken. For it was to be great benefit of themselves and their work, that the best educated men and those friendly to Christianity should occupy position of influence and power in the Government, and these would, in the near future, be the English-speaking, well-educated men who are now students. Further, the best results of scientific knowledge and attainment cannot be successfully imparted in the Chinese language, hence the necessity of English in order to prepare proper educator and reformers.



At the announcement of the University’s foundation, not everyone rallied to support this monumental endeavor. The conservative literati were very skeptical about this new enterprise’s prospect: “the whole thing will end in addle from the simple fact that no career will be opened in due course to the men of foreign education. Their non-participation in the honours of native scholarship and office will work disastrously.” Some of the foreign communities in China harbored grave doubts about the project’s viability and expressed their puzzlement over the use of the western notion of “university” for this fledging institution. The North China Herald ran a rather long editorial in November at the opening of the school to reflect these common thoughts:

Mr. Tenney and his able coadjutors, foreign and Chinese, are but planting the root of bitterness unless they can secure the prospect of careers for their students; and careers in China without the outward and visible marks of scholarship in the shape of degrees, ranks, and honors are a delusion and a snare. Our urgent advice to all concerned in this new venture is, in season and out of season to try and secure for the institution either a share of the Provincial literary honors, or aim at an Imperial decree, conferring new titles on graduates, such titles to bear a preferential claim for office and employment. These once secured, modern science, art, and culture will become “common or garden” plants throughout the Empire and like every influx of new thought into a nation will burst the old bottles within half a century. We, however, do not think this will be done; it is far too sensible and thorough-going to have any chance. We are a little puzzled at the title. A university as we take it, is a seat of liberal learning qualified by charter to confer degrees. We hope the new institution will have this qualification, but until it has it seems to us that High School or Polytechnic would have been a better name.



Francis Lister Hawks Pott, an accomplished American Episcopal missionary in China and then President of the mission affiliated St John's College in Shanghai, wrote an editorial for his College publication “the St John's Echo” in November 1895. He spoke well of the newly founded university at Tientsin and its American President, but echoed some commonly expressed thoughts typified in the above editorial, and expressed the view that every pupil had to be paid to attend because they had no career when they finished their education.