History of slavery in China

Coolie labourer c. 1900 in Zhenjiang, China. The bamboo pole he leans upon was used to hoist and carry the bundle at his feet with the pole over his shoulder and the bundle leaning against his back. On the left side of the image, in the background, another man uses this same technique of bearing a heavy load.

Slavery in China has taken various forms throughout history. Slavery was repeatedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law fully enacted in 1910, although the practice continued until at least 1949.

Shang dynasty (second millennium BC)

Slavery was not a common sight in the Shang dynasty but still occurred.

Qin dynasty (221–206 BC)

Men sentenced to castration became eunuch slaves of the Qin dynasty state to do forced labor, for projects like the Terracotta Army. The Qin government confiscated the property and enslaved the families of those who received castration as a punishment for rape.

Slaves were deprived of their rights and connections to their families.

Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD)

Further information: Society and culture of the Han dynasty

One of Emperor Gao's first acts was to manumit agricultural workers enslaved during the Warring States period, although domestic servants retained their status.

Men punished with castration during the Han dynasty were also used as slave labor.

Deriving from earlier Legalist laws, the Han dynasty set in place rules that the property of and families of criminals doing three years of hard labor or sentenced to castration were to have their families seized and kept as property by the government.

Xin dynasty (9–23 AD)

In the year 17 C.E, the Emperor Wang Mang usurped the Chinese throne and instituted a series of sweeping reforms, including the abolition of slavery and radical land reform. After his assassination in 23 C.E., slavery was reinstituted.

Three Kingdoms (220–280 AD)

During the Three Kingdoms period, a number of statuses intermediate between freedom and slavery developed, but none of them is thought to have exceeded 1 percent of the population.

Tang dynasty (618–907 AD)

A contract from the Tang dynasty that records the purchase of a 15-year-old slave for six bolts of plain silk and five Chinese coins.

Tang Law held that free people could not be enslaved, and slaves who were sold had to be previously held as slaves in order to be sold legally. A large amount of slave trading took place on Silk Road markets during this time; there are several examples of Sogdian slave girls being sold by Sogdian merchants to Chinese.

Chinese law segregated slaves and freemen into different classes, and slaves were classified as criminals. Only criminals and foreigners were allowed to be enslaved in China. Sexual relationships between foreign slaves and Chinese women were banned.

Tang army expeditions in Korea, Mongolia, Central Asia and India captured foreigners as slaves. After executing the men, Tang dynasty armies enslaved captive women.

Persians were kidnapped by pirates and kept in captivity on Wan-an, Hainan island, before being sold. Samanids in Transoxania sold Turks to the Chinese.

Free Chinese could not be legally sold as slaves unless they willingly sold themselves. If they did not sell themselves, the person who sold them could be executed. However, all other peoples were subject to involuntary enslavement. Southern aboriginals constituted the largest number of slaves. Other peoples sold to Chinese included Turks, Persians, and Korean women, who were sought after by the wealthy. China suffered from shortages of women for marriage, which led to Korean women being sold in Chinese slave markets to compensate for this. The Chinese demand for young Korean slave girls as concubines created a lucrative market for pirates in Korean waters. Their captives were sold in Shandong, China. The Chinese Governor of Shandong banned the trade in 692.

A massive market in the trade of southern aboriginal slave girls also existed. Chinese officials denounced it and attempted to ban it, to no effect. Indian, Malay, and Black African slaves were also sold to the Chinese. Their skin was noted to be dark, their hair wavy or curly.

Tang law considered slaves to be chattel without rights as people. Free women could not marry male slaves.

Song dynasty (960–1279 AD)

The Song's warfare against northern and western neighbors produced many captives on both sides, but reforms were introduced to ease the transition from bondage to freedom.

Yuan dynasty (1271–1368 AD)

As a colonial empire, the Mongol Yuan dynasty implemented a great expansion of slavery in China and restored harsher terms of service. However, because the Chinese were more integrated into the culture, such "slaves" often proved so invaluable they came to possess a great deal of power themselves, including slaves of their own motherboarder. During insurrections and slave revolts, such disloyalty often led to their property being targeted first, even before the Mongols' themselves. Great Khan Khubilai banned slave trade of the Mongols with death sentence in the late 13th century. But the Mongols discriminated the Chinese slaves.

Ming dynasty (1368–1644 AD)

Upon his victory over the Yuan dynasty in 1368, China's Hongwu Emperor established the Ming dynasty and sought to abolish all forms of slavery. However, in practice, slavery continued through the Ming dynasty.

The Javans sent 300 black slaves as tribute to the Ming dynasty in 1381. When the Ming dynasty crushed the Miao Rebellions in 1460, they castrated 1,565 Miao boys, which resulted in the deaths of 329 of them, they were then turned into eunuch slaves. This event occurred during the rule of the Zhengtong Emperor (Yingcong or Ying Tsung). Since 329 of the boys died, even more were needed to be castrated.

Later Ming rulers, as a way of limiting slavery because of their inability to prohibit it, passed a decree that limited the number of slaves that could be held per household and extracted a severe tax from slave owners.

Qing dynasty (1644–1912 AD)

The Qing dynasty initially oversaw an expansion in slavery and states of bondage like the booi aha. They possessed about two million slaves upon their conquest of China. However, like previous dynasties, the Qing rulers soon saw the advantages of phasing out slavery, and gradually introduced reforms turning slaves and serfs into peasants. Laws passed in 1660 and 1681 forbade landowners from selling slaves with the land they farmed and prohibited physical abuse of slaves by landowners. The Kangxi Emperor freed all the Manchu's hereditary slaves in 1685. The Yongzheng Emperor's "Yongzheng emancipation" between 1723 and 1730 sought to free all slaves to strengthen his authority through a kind of social leveling that created an undifferentiated class of free subjects under the throne, freeing the vast majority of slaves.

The abolition of slavery in many countries following the British emancipation led to increasing demands for cheap Chinese laborers, known as "coolies". Mistreatment ranged from the near-slave conditions maintained by some crimps and traders in the mid-1800s in Hawaii and Cuba to the relatively dangerous tasks given to the Chinese during the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s.

Among his other reforms, Taiping Rebellion leader Hong Xiuquan abolished slavery and prostitution in the territory under his control in the 1850s and 1860s.

See also

• Booi Aha
• History of slavery in Asia