China geographically is a large place, and historically is easily as large. Since the beginnings of its
civilization along the Huang He, a number of kingdoms have risen and fallen, some of them attaining a
great enough size, power, and durability to call themselves dynasties. Each dynasty brought unique aspects
to the face of Chinese civilization, among other variations such as shifting geographic boundaries and
capitals. But some constants remain, one being that agriculture remains the backbone of the economy and
the predominant lifestyle of the people. Another is servitude among the multitude of the people towards
members of the elite. Among these servants, some remained as serfs, but a number entered slavery. Slavery
in China was a multi-layered system. There were slaves owned by private citizens and those whose services
were retained by the government. These is also a contrast between secular slavery and slaves who perform
religious functions or work in a religious setting. Some became slaves due to debt, while others were war
captives or were forced into slavery as punishment for crimes. The reasons why a slave was a slave bore
upon what types of treatment the slave received, as well as what, if any, legal protection and rights the
slave was afforded. The existence of, or absence of, extensive slave labor, coupled with the question of
what types of tasks did slaves perform, raises the question of whether China can be labeled as a slave
society or a society with slaves. The answer depends on what dynasty one discusses, as each dynasty had
its own peculiarities, and also on whether the slavery was secular or religious in nature. In addressing these
issues, a problem arises over what the best possible approach is. One can take a secular against a religious
approach, a private against government slave approach, though these may not be consistent with the proper
chronology, or to take a dynasty by dynasty chronological approach. A study that surveys several dynasties
spanning several thousand years might best be served by the chronological approach.
Chronologically, the Shang is China’s earliest substantiated dynasty. Situated around what is
present day Anyang in Henan province, the Shang lasted from 1760 BC until its demise in 1045 BC.
Without great agricultural technology, the people of Shang were less sedentary. The capital was fixed,
though the people were more mobile, curbing growth. For this reason, mobility, families did not own land
for very long, and if they did not remain in any one place for too long, then they did not own slaves on that
land for an extended period, so that while society did not develop, neither did slavery as an institution. For
the agriculture that was practiced, there was the jing tian system. A plot of land was divided into nine
squares. The center square was the home of the landlord and his family. The surrounding eight squares
were rented to peasants or worked by slaves. Since the economy was society was dominated by the
landholding elite, it can be argued that there really was no difference between the serfs and the slaves. The
slave was not considered the property of any on individual. Rather, the slave was commonly held by the
landlord family, perhaps suggesting that the notion of individual rights and individual property had not
arisen.
As the aristocratic landlords held slaves, the Shang king held the aristocratic families as his slaves.
In addition, the Shang led numbers of military expeditions against bordering states, bringing thousands of
war captives home as servants or sacrifices. Among the targeted peoples for captivity, the Jiang peoples
who lived in what is now eastern Tibet appear to have been the favorite. Shang religion was based on the
idea that the supreme being, Di, and the spirits of the ancestors of the royal family in association with Di,
required constant sacrifice and veneration in exchange for good fortune. The wishes of Di and the ancestral
spirits were ascertained by reading the cracks in plastrons and scapulas made through prodding such
substances with heated sticks. Records of the questions asked the spirits and the conclusions reached
sometimes indicate that any number of Jiang would have to be sacrificed. In addition, upon the death of the
Shang king, any number of people would be sacrificed in order to ensure the king protection. Those who
were sacrificed with the king were from all levels of society, from common slaves to members of the elite
classes. Likewise, kings were not the only members of Shang society to take servants with them to their
graves. Some elates also had slaves sacrificed in their tombs. Unearthing Shang tombs, one can determine
the social status of the sacrificed victims according to adornment and according to treatment of the body.
An intact body, carrying weapons and adorned with jewels, would be indicative of a high ranking member
of society, while a beheaded and sometimes mutilated corpse whose headless body is not adorned would
indicate the person was a slave, with intermediate levels of adornment suggesting corresponding social
strata.
Shang fell to Zhou, and Zhou itself fragmented into seven feudal states until one of them, Qin,
conquered the rest and unified China in 221 BC Its capital was Xianyang, near present Xi’an, in central
China. It was during Qin that it was put forth by Li Si that governmental status should be based more on
merit than by birth. By the same token, if high position was to be given on the basis of merit, then
punishments would be allotted similarly. Qin had a strict and rigid penal code, and while execution was
quite common, governmental slavery and penal labor were alternative measures of penalization. The Qin
penal code called for a combination of mutilation and labor, with tattooing and amputation of limbs or the
nose common forms of punishment depending on the severity of the crime. Slaves who committed crimes
were also tattooed and mutilated accordingly, and after completing their allotted time of labor, were
returned to their masters, while at the same time, a slave could be forced to undergo punishment even if he
or she did not commit the crime, as the Qin code stated “when commoners need to pay fines, commutation
fees, or debts, they may have their male or female slave, horse, or ox work it off for them.”
The practice of sacrificial interment continued through that time. One can view the ballad “Yellow
Bird” for a depiction of the sacrifice of three men on the occasion of the death of Duke Mu. First was Yan
Xi, who “was the finest of a hundred, but standing by the pit, he trembled in his dread.” He was followed
by Zhong Hang and Qian Hu, who could respectively “hold” and “ward against a hundred, but standing by
the pit, he trembled in his dread.”
In 206 BC, Qin was overthrown by the Liu family, and the Han began. Han would last until 220
AD, with its capital at Chang’an, also present day Xi’an. During the first few years, Han was in shambles,
recovering from the civil war that was fought to remove Shang and from some natural disaster. Overall,
however, by the time of the founding of Han, agriculture and society had progressed enough to be stable
and sedentary. China was also more established politically. Nonetheless, despite the greater stability, the
war had strained the nation so much that a huge famine lurked over the shoulders of the peasants. The
famine and the cost of the war created a financial crisis. While the lot of the poor peasant class was dim,
elite landlords remained in comfort. Many people sought the stability the elite had, and were willing to do
anything to attain it, even if that meant slavery. Many sold either themselves into slavery to social elites or
sold over their wives and children. Selling family members removed some financial responsibility, or
served to remove members from the household to facilitate relocation. Government edicts had little choice
but to assent to this practice of self enslavement, but then abolished it and freed all self- made slaves quite
quickly as the economy recovered. Selling people into slavery was illegal, but thus allowed in times of
emergency. The celerity on the part of the government to erase self induced slavery reveals that the Han
court perhaps did not wish to see the majority of the population enslaved, and took steps to ensure some
freedom of social and economic mobility.
Further evidence that the Han sought to go away from general enslavement of the people can be
found in the acquisition and treatment of war captives. Han did take in war captives, to be sure, but there
are no records indicating long term usage. Then again, Han did employ at its court a number of slaves.
Han government slaves were employed in a number of tasks. Males were employed as artisans, scribes, and
announcers, while females served as concubines and nurses. Han government slaves might also serve in a
number of penal labor projects. There was a greater shift towards penal slavery over execution during the
Han. However, Han resurrected a Qin law that placed culpability not only on the individual who committed
the crime, but also on that person’s family members, and also neighboring families, such that the penalty
for one person committing a crime might be that 3-5 separations of that person would all be enslaved.
The female slave was afforded some special recognition. The female slave, the concubine, was
exclusively the property of her master. A record from the Qian Han Shu (Book of the Early Han) dated 115
BC tells of a man named Po, who married into high status, but was arrested and tried for having had
relations with his father’s concubine. If another man had relations with a man’s concubine, even a male
member of the master’s family, then that person faced severe legal consequences. Concubinage was
definitely an exclusive master- slave relationship that could not be violated. Likewise, there were various
guidelines for determining the status of a slave’s offspring.
A peculiar aspect of Han government slavery is the blurring of gender roles. The blurring is done
primarily through the clothing worn by the slaves. Han government slaves wore mainly green colored
clothing, as indicated by a note by Han Jiu Yi in the Qian Han Shu, where it is written that male slaves
wear green turbans (hence the reason “green head” was a common slang expression for slave) and Palace
Women wear green robes. But one other Qian Han Shu record tells of times when the clothing worn by
slaves became a perverse reversal of both society and gender. The record comes in the form of complaint
about the opulence afforded government slaves while the masses remain impoverished, but nonetheless
describes a unique scene. The writer states that the slaves, who were in holding pens, were wearing elite
garb. The male slaves were dressed in embroidered clothes with tapered silk shoes, the clothing worn by
ancestral temple empresses, while female slaves were wearing braided white gauze and silk, the traditional
garb of ancient emperors. Perhaps the reason for switching clothing types was a means of reinforcing
social position- wearing incorrect clothing created the idea that the slave was below social status. A female
dressed in male attire may be reminded that she must work while elite women remained indoors and were
waited upon. A male in female garb might feel debased.
It seems quite clear that government slaves were in a better position than slaves owned by private
persons. It can even be inferred that the governmental slave was in a better position than a free commoner.
It can be asked, then, what was the public’s reaction towards government slaves. In times of economic
hardship, when many commoners were struggling or starving without aid from the court, while at the court
there were numbers of slaves enjoying luxuries and comforts, there was indeed negative sentiment towards
the governmental slave. There appears to exist a decided jealousy that a free person toils all their life while
a slave lives in luxury at the court. The significance of the protest concerning clothing may be its
description of gender reversal, but the writer’s chief concern was protest that slaves were dressed in royal
garb. Other similar complaints were voiced. A commentary in the Qian Han Shu from 74 BC refers to Liu,
who presented a ceremonial cap to a male slave. The commentary states that, “A ceremonial cap is
honorable clothing; a male slave is a mean person. He enjoyed conferring uncustomary ceremonial clothing
without reason, a symbol of disregarding honor. Ceremonially capping a male slave is equivalent to making
the height of honor fall down to the extreme of meanness.” Another complaint to the emperor stated that
“male slaves regard wine as soup and meat as beans. That the green heads and hut dwellers shall all be
employed and become rich is not heaven’’ intention.” In 44 BC, Kong Yu, the Grand Secretary, noted that
the government held upwards of 100,000 male and female slaves who did little or no work, at the annual
expense of millions in tax money collected from the people, so that the best course of action would be to
either free them or to employ them as soldiers. Lastly, the Yan Tie Lun (Commentaries on Salt and Iron)
by Huan Kuan recounts an 81BC statement that the “government accumulates male and female slaves who
sit and are stipended with clothes and food. Privately they create estates and make evil profits. Their
strength and labor are not exhausted; the government is losing. The people have no grain, yet government
male slaves gather 100 gold. The people from dawn to dusk are not free from affairs though male and
female slaves idle about.”
Chinese calligraphy adds another element to gender. The word for a female slave is bei. As might
be expected, it contains the female character. Bei, the pictograph that offers pronunciation, has a meaning
of baseness, such that the word can be interpreted as a base female. However, the word for male slave, nu,
also has the female character. Granted, the female character is what provides the word with its
pronunciation. However, the fact that a female pictograph is being used to represent a male cannot be
ignored. The way the female radical is coupled with the word for baseness to represent the word for female
slavery, the presence of the female character in the word for male slave delivers the psychological blow, the
indication that this male is lower than other men.
Private citizens also held slaves during the Han Dynasty. But unlike Shang, Han private slaves
were not employed in the fields. Rather, slaves served as artisans, producing goods for sale, or, more
commonly, as guards. A master who employed artisan slaves would be able to keep the profits the slave
made, and could become quite wealthy. Female slaves were trained as entertainers, then later hired out to
parties and events as singers, dancers, jugglers, acrobats, or musicians. Government slaves also carried on
private business, allowing them to get “100 gold.” However, there is something else at play. The
aristocracy wished to maintain as much power as possible, and this meant minimizing the amount of
imperial intervention into affairs. Peasants had to offer payments to both, rent to the aristocracy for land,
and taxes to the capital. Members of the elite, though, were able to house large numbers of slaves to build
local power. Slaves belonging to aristocrats thus became private police and private gangs. Nobles used their
slaves to bully not only the commoners for more rents, but also to bully the local government officials to
keep out of the business of the aristocratic class. Numerous cases exist where nobles and even some
government officials ordered their slaves to kill local or political rivals, extort more taxes, or for theft and
plunder. Slaves served the purpose of maintaining the local clout of the elite, as well as a status builder.
The wealthier one was, the more attendants and slaves that person could have on his estate. For this reason,
the court imposed a limit on the amount of land and slaves a person could possess. The limit was based
upon social rank, with higher officials allowed to hold larger estates.
One other key aspect of Han slavery, both in the private and governmental spheres, is that of legal
protection. The Han slave had few legal rights, but was not, however, viewed as sub human chattel. There
were penalties for excessive abuse, and although there were differences in penalty for crimes committed
against a free citizen as opposed to the slave, there were later edicts that reduced the discrepancies.
Particularly in the later Han, slaves were being given more and more protection. In 100 BC, Liu Shun was
tried for the murder of men and slaves. When Huo Wang killed a slave, his father commanded him to
commit suicide. In 18 BC, an official was tried and stripped of his post for kidnapping a former female
slave of his who had purchased her freedom and forcing her to resume her duties as a slave. The greatest
lack of legal recognition of the slave was the inability for a slave to testify in court against a free person,
especially if the free person was the slave’s master. In the Qian Han Shu, there is the recount of a slave who
reported the rape of his sister, a government slave. Chang An Shi, Superintendent of Palace Gentlemen,
ordered the slave to be punished for bringing “seedy” accusation against a gentleman.
These are individual cases. The Han court itself became more involved in guaranteeing slave
rights, gradually reducing differences in punishment given to free and slave persons committing like
crimes. In the year 14, when Han expansion into the western frontier was causing the frontiersmen to
become slaves, the court issued a decree that “Those officials or plebeians who dare traffic in frontier
people shall be publicly executed.” The Hou Han Shu, chronicling the dynasty’s later years, lists two
major enactments geared towards improving the lot of the slave. On March 6,35, the court declared that
anyone who killed a slave would receive no reduction in punishment, while another decree issued on
October 16 of the same year stated that if a master branded his slave, then the master would be tried, and
the slave would be freed.
A good example of the rights of a slave can be found in the record of Wang Bao, dated 59 BC .
Wang, while visiting a widow, asks the widow’s slave, Bian, to fetch some wine. Bian refuses, stating that
his contract requires only that he guard the grave of his dead master. Infuriated, Wang purchases Bian from
the widow. Bian calmly tells Wang that he will perform only those tasks that Wang indicates in the
contract. The contract is completed, the sale is completed, and Wang reads off an enormous slew of tasks
Bian will have to daily perform for his new master. Bian, after hearing the abundance of jobs he now has,
groans and complains, stating he should have just gone and fetched the wine. This document illustrates the
importance and validity of the slave contract. Were slaves complete chattel, Bian could have been forced
to run the errand. But due to the presence of the contract, Wang could not force Bian, nor could he beat
him. His only recourse was to purchase Bian and redefine Bian’s responsibilities as a slave. Bian does not
protest his transfer, recognizing his status as a slave, but does remind Wang that he will be bound only to
perform whatever tasks are included in the bill. Slaves, then, did have rights whenever a contract was
involved, and this contract presumably would stand in court.
The “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” led to Han’s collapse, followed by the eventual
emergence of Wei. As Han showed more progress towards recognizing personal freedoms of slaves and
even freedoms of commoners, the Wei appears to regress back into more rigid social stratification and poor
treatment of peasants and slaves. Wei was a far smaller nation than Han geographically, and was more
vulnerable to attack, having to relocate the capital at times in the face of invading armies from the north.
Wei was thus far more financially strained than Han. Without the presence of a strong, stable court, the
aristocracy had more of a free hand, and took advantage of it. Elites continued to extend their estates
through a number of means- purchase, claims made on vacant lots, grants, since some members of elite
families were also officials, and by outright seizure, since elite families possessed large numbers of slaves
who could act as a private army. As the wealthy landowners continued to accumulate land, more and
more peasants had no choice but to rent from those estates, or sell themselves into the estates as slaves,
thereby becoming exempt from paying taxes , making elites more powerful, in turn allowing the cycle to
continue. And as the estates grew, the government could do less and less to curb the estates. The court was
pressed in defense, and could not afford uprisings by nobles, and thus even though the court may not have
approved of the expansion of noble estates, it had to use caution and allow the noble families a degree of
autonomy. The Han was able to impose limits on the size of estates. But Wei was not as strong and could
not do so. Thus, Wei became more and more an almost two tiered government, with the imperial court at
top, but then the aristocratic class constituting another level, as both levied and collected taxes. Thus, the
wealthy accumulated more wealth, and the impoverished became poorer still.
There appears to have been a regression into more strict, less humanitarian views regarding slaves.
Once again, people were selling family members and children into slavery to avoid extra per head taxes, or
to cut the number of their dependents, or to move away; on a more grim perspective, people sold their
relatives in the hope that sale to a wealthy family would better ensure survival, or lead to a better life as a
noble’s slave than as a free peasant. A literary version, entitled “The Grain Barge Wife,” tells of a man
agreeing to sell his wife for three years due to financial difficulty, and the wife commits suicide. Practices
that the Han had outlawed crept their way back into society-namely the kidnapping of free persons for sale
and enslavement, and the tattooing of slaves for identification purposes. Thus, while the late Han was
progressive, under the Wei, a slave was chattel, “their safety was not guaranteed, and their lives were
unprotected by the law.”
The court had lots of expenditure, exacerbated by taxation difficulties. Some landlords withheld
taxes. In addition, Wei carried out many military campaigns against bordering minorities, such as the
Uighurs, Mongols, and Manchus, both as pre-emptive strikes and also for captives, the men to be used as
soldiers, and the women to be retained as concubines or given as “gifts.” So while Wei was engaged in
war, and elites shrunk the tax base, Wei also assimilated thousands of war captives, adding to its fiscal
problems. Wei’s money problems were such that there was a shortage of labor at the court, since servant
salaries could not be met. Some provinces were wealthy, some poor, and some had little to offer in terms of
produce, since taxes were collected in terms of agricultural produce, not only money. In these areas, a
special kind of tax arose. Rather than paying cash or produce, some families would be able to pay taxes in
the form of services, serving as musicians, herdsmen, soldiers, various artisan trades, silk cultivators,
palace attendants, and caretakers at Buddhist temples, to fill the shortages at court. These services were
hereditary. A family would become commissioned to these service agreements, learn and specialize in a
trade, and each generation would send a member to the court to perform that trade function.
These service taxpayers were essentially government slaves. Since they were skilled artisans and
tradesmen, these slaves and their specialized families were also able to have private enterprises and could
build wealth. This type of arrangement might seem beneficial to both parties. The government gets the
services it needs, and the family is exempt from monetary taxation while learning and excelling a particular
trade. However, there were stipulations. The status of the family was frozen. They were government slaves,
however wealthy and however skilled. Other conditions were that the family could not move, nor could it
change the trade or service it was commissioned for. In addition, family members could not marry outside
the class of service households. Some officials and very wealthy elites set up, in addition to the
governmental service households, a private system, whereby families would provide special service
laborers to the estate of the private commissioner. One example of private establishment of family
commission was Cao Cao. An advantage of a private system would be to build alliances with other clans
and to cement local influence.
In that case, it would appear that the special agreement taxes were far more advantageous than
outright taxation. It allowed these families to build wealth through artisan work but also established
themselves as an elite class of government slaves, keeping in mind that a government slave, as during the
Han, was in a socially and economically better position than a free peasant, and certainly better off than a
slave working on an elite estate. The Wei, then, represented a time when private slaves and citizens were in
an increasingly more dire position. Government slavery, though, became more advanced and more
specialized. As the society became more rigid and more worse off, the government slave was very arguably
a good social position because it was perhaps the most stable position, even if there were strings attached.
In 618, Wei, Liao, and even Sui had come and gone, and China was now entering its golden age,
the renaissance that was the Tang Dynasty. The capital was once again at Chang’an. The Tang Code
differentiated between “Good” and “Not Good” persons. It is not that Tang society erased social
distinction. During Han and Wei, there was a far more blurred line between slave and peasant. Tang in fact
clearly marked that line, and made social classes more distinctly defined and rigid. Despite the enhanced
liberalism, it can then be asked if the slave was in a better position. The Tanglu Shuyi (Book of the Tang)
stated that “male and female slaves, like money and goods, are for their owner to dispose of.” The Tang
also expanded well westward and incorporated aspects of many Inner Asian peoples, such as the Sogdians.
In 750, protesting the emperor’s absconding of duties in favor of his mistress Yang Guefei, a part Sogdian,
An Lushan launched a rebellion. Perhaps reeling from the rebellion’s effects, perhaps voicing anti-Sogdian
sentiment, or perhaps complaining over the importation of foreign slaves to the capital while there were
many impoverished residents, one wrote of the Sogdian Palace Women who acted as dancers, “in vain did
you labor to come east… officials and concubines all learned how to circle and turn.”
Similar to the Han, a slave could not being testimony against a free person. Under Tang custom, if
a slave accused his or her master of a crime, whether the accusation was true or false, the slave was
executed, and if a slave brought testimony against a relative of the master, whether true or false, the slave
was banished. The reason for these caveats was not due to the inferior position of the slave, but rather to
the Confucian code of ethics that had emerged as the backbone of Chinese society. A slave was to be
entirely loyal to the master, as the master was in a position of authority. Testifying against the master
violated that code of loyalty and order. At that, a slave’s testimony against a free person was only
admissible if the free person was already on trial, as the testimony of a slave could not initiate a case
against a free person.
Emphasis on slave or free status was extended into childbirth. Slavery was not necessarily a
permanent institution. People moved into and out of slavery all throughout the Han and Wei depending on
economic position. The Tang Code solidified these positions however, so that slavery was emerging as a
hereditary, permanent position, slaves were a static class. It was possible to be freed through purchase or
amnesty, but at the same time slave status was no longer something one can easily be demoted into for a
fixed period of time. A contract from the year 731 tells of an 11 year old girl being sold for 40 bolts of silk.
Witnesses had to be present not necessarily to witness the contract, but rather to attest that the girl was
already a slave, as a free commoner could not be sold into slavery. A short poem entitled “Ballad of
Selling a Child” speaks of a woman selling a five year old child for four and a half measures of grain, after
selling her other child to care for cattle. The ballad ends as a petition against slavery, exclaiming:
“Alas! The wild tiger does not eat its cub, and the old ox will lick the calf. Please realize:
the rich grow crueler as their fields increase, and they buy servants and slaves with their
wealth. Then, one day, they curse them in anger, whipping them unfeelingly until their
blood flows! Don’t they know that all flesh and bone comes from the same womb, that
another’s son and my son are of one form? Alas! Will the four seas and nine continents
ever share the same spring time, so there will be no more people who must sell their
daughters and sons?”
Likewise, since the slave class was more static, the question arose as to the status of slave children. It
would appear that status was determined through the father. A free woman could not marry a slave, or she
would be listed as “Not Good,” and presumably the children would be slaves. The child of a slave woman
whose father was not the mother’s master was a slave, but the child was free is the father was the mother’s
master , further evidence that status of slave progeny was based on the status of the father. Tang would
eventually fall in 907, and after a period of instability, the Song Dynasty began in 960.
To the west of Tang, and nearly simultaneously with its founding, Songtsen Gampo was finalizing
his unification campaigns among the various peoples of Tibet, becoming the first sovereign of the Tubo
Kingdom. Almost immediately after consolidating the kingdom, Gampo demanded brides from both Nepal
and Tang China. After the Tang’s refusal, and Gampo’s military response that sacked Chang’an and forced
the capital to retreat to Luoyang, Wen Cheng was given to Gampo. It was these brides who brought
Buddhism to the Land of the Snows, Wen Cheng bringing a gold statue of the Buddha, and Nepal yielding
a princess only after Gampo promised to construct 108 temples. Gampo led other military exploits into both
Tang China and into what is now Xinjiang, taking over a key stretch of the Silk Route that included the
major cities of Dunhuang and Gaochang, near present Turfan.
Monasteries were recognized tax free establishments. Some attention must be paid to the Tibetan
landscape. At its high altitude, there is little arable land, and only a small, select amount of crops can be
cultivated. Monasteries thus occupy areas of usable land. Peasants thus are dependent on the monasteries
for use of that land for sustenance, especially as the monastery expands and accumulates more territory,
causing more peasants to live on and rent lands from the monks, and as poor peasants cannot meet tax
requirements and so enter monastery grounds to get exemption. Those who remained outside the
monasteries were not well off unless wealthy and independent. The environs were not kind, and masterless
people, runaways from monasteries, or debtors were collectively referred to as “black people.” The
monasteries themselves, by turn, are dependent on the peasants to work the lands around the monastery. It
is also important to note that while the monastery existed tax free, it nonetheless taxed the peasants who
lived and worked on its land. These taxes were paid in the form of produce, labor, and in the form of
donations to the monastery in exchange for prayers and religious services. In this case, the Tibetan
monastery is seen like the landlord aristocrat in the jing tian system. The serfs who rented these lands were
similar to slaves, as there was little alternative, given the dearth of arable land. In fact, some were outright
slaves owned by either the monastery or by the individual monks. It is important to note that serfs
provided services to the monastery such as cooking, cleaning, music, or patrol guarding, or goods such as
silk and produce, things that can be considered donation rather than payment as a means of circumventing
governmental taxes and also of circumventing the Buddhist principles of earthly desire- wealth being one
of those desires.
With the population converted to Buddhism, there was little difference between church and state.
The line between religion and politics was further blurred by the fact that a large portion of the population
rented and worked monastery owned land. Each monastery was expected to have a certain number of
laypeople on hand as servants to the monks, and abbots were given some power over not only religious but
also legal and penal decision making. A shining example of the way Buddhism came to dominate Tibetan
politics is the decrees of King Repalchen. Repalchen declared
“he who shows finger to a monk shall have his finger cut off; he who speaks ill of the
monks and the king’s Buddhist policy shall have his lips cut off; he who looks askance at
them shall have his eye put out; he who robs them shall pay according to the rule of
restitution of eighty times…if anyone does not act as though bound by my Religious Law,
he will be punished without fail by the Royal Law.”
The Tubo kingdom effectually ended in 842, when the Tibetan king, after leading a persecution and
suppression campaign against Buddhism, was assassinated.
The Tibetan Empire swept all of what is now Western China. A number of documents, some
accidentally preserved, was discovered in 1900 near Dunhuang. Some of these documents pertain to sales
and purchases of slaves for many reasons, and reveal something of the nature of slaves. At 28, Jiansheng
appears to be the oldest slave sold among the slave contracts collected by Yamamoto and Dohi. In one
document, dated 509, Zhai Shaoyuan purchased a 25 year old female named Shao Nu. In 661, Zuo
Chongxi, an official, purchased 15 year old Shen De from another official, Zhang QingZhu, in Gaochang.
A 916 contract states that “with nobody to provide food due to the early death of her husband, Wang Zai
Ying, the widow Wu has fallen deep into debt. Her naturally born son, Qing De, aged 7, is contractually
offered to commoner Ling ZhuaXinTong. The price is due today in full with no part owed. After the price
is paid, and the deal completed, Shen De will forever be owned by the Ling family.”
People were not always sold into abject slavery. At times people were merely mortgaged or sold
into indenture. In 921, commoner He TongZi, “suffering because his family lost everything” mortgaged his
son Shan Si. A November 3, 925 contract stated that Xiao SengZi was mortgaging his son, Guo Zi, to Li
Qianding, for some agricultural products. The contract included a provision in case Guo Zi became ill or
died, and had a limit of 6 years, and included, among other witness signatures, a signature from Monk
Yuantong. In 943, a commoner Wu Qingshen, because his family was poor and owed a debt, mortgaged
himself to the family of Longxing Temple Monk Suo. One other contract reported that Guo Nuzi was
giving his daughter, BenZi, to the temple to be made a nun. The fact that many of these documents have
the signatures of monks as witnesses, and the last two actually involve monks and temples reinforces the
view that the monastery was more than a religious institution in the Tubo Kingdom and the Tibetan
Empire. The monks and the faith pervaded all aspects of culture and acted as economic and political
stations as well.
Overall then, it can be said that from 1750 BC until 1000 AD, several conclusions could be made.
One, in cases where the slavery was based on religion, in Shang and Tubo, the slave performed his or her
tasks in an all pervasive setting. Slaves performed tasks that were needed for them to survive economically,
politically, and spiritually. A large number of the masses were involved in the servitude, and were vital to
the function and survival of the ruling class. In Shang, slaves were the sacrifices used to bribe the ancestors.
In Tubo, they performed the menial labor needed for the maintenance and sustenance of the monastery, the
lifeline of Buddhism. These states, then, must be considered as slave societies. Were the people to rebel
against the monasteries in Tubo, the political and religious, and therefore economic and social structure of
the civilization would crumble. In Shang, the plastromancy practice evolved into corruption, people did
rebel, and Shang was overthrown, as it was believed the spirit world lost favor with the Shang kings.
Han, Wei, and Tang civilization, including the initial years of Song, culture and society was not
based upon any religious ideology. Ancestral worship, Buddhism, and Daoism were practiced, but did not
dominate the society. Rather, the Confucian code of ethics was the moral determinant. There was far more
sophistication of the slave, as the slave performed a wide variety of functions to both the private sector and
the bureaucracy. Slaves were employed by the government to perform daily functions. Slaves were used by
private individuals for manufacturing, for commercialism, and for extortion. However, the government had
other agents. There were salaried officials and salaried soldiers. Were the government slaves to be
removed, the political engine would continue. In the private sector, China was, and is, an agricultural
society. The majority of people are peasants. Undoubtedly, some slaves were employed in the fields. Most
were used as status emblems. So if the private slaves were all manumitted, the aristocracy may have less
cash, but society would not halt, because the economic backbone, agriculture, would be unaffected. Slaves
then were only one aspect of the economy, a for profit sector rather than a sustenance sector, and so the
Han, Wei, and Tang Dynasties were societies with slaves.
Regardless of the dynasty, one was decidedly better off a slave of the government over being a
private slave. A private slave received whatever treatment his or her master wished to dole out, often the
minimum. The private slave owned little property, as the possessions of the slave belonged to the master.
government slaves, though, lived in the palace or the residence of the local official. Government slaves
carried on private enterprises. Many government slaves ended as soldiers, especially if they were captives,
and criminals were also government slaves. But these were enemies of the state. The ethnically Han
government slave, especially the special arrangement slave of the Wei, had a position many commoners
would want. In addition, any question that the private slave was superior could easily be refuted by the
observation that government slaves sometimes got to wear royal clothing.
Overall, it would appear that the general condition of the slave began bleak. There was almost no
difference between slave and peasant. Gradually, though, slavery as a class became more defined, and
refined, as the slave became specialized into various tasks. It seems that the late Han was the peak of slave
conditions for private slaves. Government slavery continued to evolve and specialize throughout. but
private slavery devolved after the fall of Han, so that the Tubo almost resembled Shang, with the
monasteries replacing the extended family members of the Shang monarch. It appears that because the
slave was so similar to the peasant, there could be no legal and social distinction. but as status and class
became more rigid, the slave was placed at the bottom of society, the free peasant was elevated to a
superior social strata. Nonetheless, the increasing ethic code implemented by Tang showed that as slavery
as a distinct and fixed social class matured, the condition of the slave did not necessarily worsen.
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THE CHANGING FACE OF SLAVERY IN CHINA TO 1000
Frank Cavitolo
History 705
