Wooden collar

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Photo of a man with a wooden collar in Shanghai , John Thomson around 1870.

The wooden collar ( kang , also known as cangue in Western languages ) was a method of punishment in China , Korea, and Japan .

It consisted of a square wooden board with a circular hole for the neck in the middle. The wooden collar had a hinge and a lock that held both halves of the board together.

The wooden collar was used to humiliate and shame the convict. This was put on public display (sometimes for months). The person concerned could not hide his face , could not turn away, could not eat alone, could not lie down and could not run. This also restricted the possibility of escape . Sometimes the wooden collar was so tight that it made breathing difficult.

In the 19th century, the wooden collar became a widespread topos in the perception of China by the western world. It was considered a symbol of the backwardness and cruelty of the Far Eastern legal system.

Quotes

"... that two banners officials that appeal to a construction site on the Yellow River several times to her work had pressed , should be made to punish several months in heavy wooden collar on the riverbank on display. This case was included in the chufen zeli - as a precedent - under the category “ Destruction of the dikes [by officials]”. This punishment soon enjoyed great popularity and was often used in the case of dike breaches on the responsible lower officials and those who sought to enrich themselves with the construction work . […] [So] z. B. the general director for the waterways in Henan and Shandong Wen Chong in the year DG21 (1841), who had failed in the preparation of the repair of a large dike breach and stood for three months in the heavy wooden collar on the river bank in the pillory [...]. Two years later, the same fate befell the general manager Hui Cheng, who had to stand in a wooden collar on the river bank for two months when he was unable to repair a dike breach in Henan. The Hui Cheng case also makes it clear that this measure was an extraordinary measure, which arose from the emperor's full power and which he reserved for cases in which he was particularly dissatisfied with the performance of his bureaucracy . "

- Iwo Amelung : The Yellow River in Shandong (1851–1911).

“Ultimately, it is not possible to assess the extent to which such penalties improved the discipline within the waterway administration . What is certain, however, is that in the relevant rules and codes of law they only had an extremely thin basis and were largely determined by the arbitrariness of the court and the emperor. By no means were all directors-general in whose jurisdictions dike breaches occurred with the degrading punishment of wearing the wooden collar on the river bank. "

- Iwo Amelung : The Yellow River in Shandong (1851–1911).

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Mühlhahn: "Forming decent citizens out of the ignorant, scandalous and weak." The birth of the prison in China at the end of the Quing dynasty. In: Sabine Dabringhaus (Ed.): China on the way to modernity from a global perspective (= Periplus. Yearbook for non-European history. 2005). Lit, Münster / Hamburg / London 2005, p. 72 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ^ Iwo Amelung: The Yellow River in Shandong (1851-1911). Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 978-3-447-04337-3 , p. 158 ( limited preview in the Google book search; dissertation, FU Berlin 1999).
  3. ^ Iwo Amelung: The Yellow River in Shandong (1851-1911). Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 978-3-447-04337-3 , p. 159 ( limited preview in the Google book search; dissertation, FU Berlin 1999).