Season 1 Ep. 6 - Understanding Slavery in Medieval China

Charlotte Tate
From the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs at Middlebury College, this is New Frontiers. I’m Charlotte Tate, associate director of the Rohatyn Center. New Frontiers podcasts highlight research undertaken by Middlebury scholars and others, on matters of international and global concern. Everything is fair game—from big tech, environmental conservation, and global security—to religion, culture, and changing work patterns.

In this episode, Mark Williams—director of the Rohatyn Center—sits down with historian Don Wyatt, to discuss his recent research on slavery in medieval China, what it tells us about Chinese society at the time, and how it compares with the institution of slavery in other societies and eras.

Mark Williams
Don Wyatt is the John M. McCardell Jr. Distinguished professor of history at Middlebury College, where he specializes in early to modern Chinese history. He’s authored a number of books, book chapters, and essays on Chinese history. And today he’s agreed to sit down with me and discuss some of his most recent scholarship published as part of “The Cambridge World History of Slavery.” It’s a chapter in that volume titled “Slavery in Medieval China.” I’m really happy he’s decided to join me today. Don Wyatt, thank you very much for visiting us on New Frontiers.

Don Wyatt
Well, thank you for having me, Mark. I’m a big fan.

Mark Williams
Thanks. Don, I have to confess that when I think of China and Chinese history, slavery is not something that readily comes to mind. And I’m wondering is this because I’m a poor historian?  I’m not an expert on the country, I haven’t kept up with what scholars are publishing in the field?

Don Wyatt
Actually, probably neither of those reasons or none of those reasons, Mark. In comparison to other sociocultural activity, slavery is a much under researched subject in relation to China. Whether for the ancient, the Imperial or the modern period.

Mark Williams
Okay. So, I’m not necessarily an outlier. Why hasn’t there been that much research or discussion on slavery in China?

Don Wyatt
Well, there are numerous reasons, but chief among them is that whereas slavery was practiced perhaps since the beginning of the civilization, which distinguishes it from perhaps nowhere else in the world, at least during historical times, which extend back to the appearance of written records, roughly the mid second millennium BCE, slavery was practiced exogenously. That is the enslavement of outsiders. And also, endogenously. That is, Chinese enslaving their own people.

Don Wyatt
The latter group, that is the insiders has always made up the great preponderance of Chinese slavery.

Mark Williams
Chinese themselves were.

Don Wyatt
Yes. Okay. So consequently, the study of people who enslaved their own lacks, the same allure as inquiry into those who enslave mostly or exclusively outsiders.

Mark Williams
It has less of an imperialist bent perhaps or less of a, a conquering edge to it? Or a dimension to it?

Don Wyatt
Something more of a less, it seems inherently less exploitive.

Mark Williams
Oh, okay. You say that slavery is sort of primordial. It’s always been there. Was there a time in China when it didn’t exist? How did it actually get started?

Don Wyatt
The starting point for slavery in China, was warfare. With such being the case because the original slaves of China were prisoners of war. We know from evidence, dating back to the end of the Chinese neolithic period that the historical dynasty that was not the first Chinese dynasty, but the first that we know significant amounts about, the Shang dynasty, which came to power approximately 1600 BCE and lasted until the year 1046 BCE, was one in which enslavement of non-Chinese peoples was commonplace. There were slave expeditions or forays out into non-Chinese areas where tribal peoples were basically enslaved and brought back to the Shang domain.

Mark Williams
For purposes of being workers?

Don Wyatt
They were employed in various forms of labor but chief among those was the construction of royal tombs. We also know that the Shang, and again this is not typically dwelled upon by Chinese historians, were practitioners of human sacrifice. And these individuals were excellent fodder, if you will, for sacrifice to be offered up to the gods.

Mark Williams
That’s what I was going to ask. These were religious rituals, to some extent, these sacrifices?

Don Wyatt
They were ritual sacrifices, particularly to the chief Shang deity, Shangdi. This practice was carried out throughout the period of Shang rule.

Mark Williams 
It’s remarkable. Well, this raises a couple of questions for me. And one of them, the answers to which you might have already touched on. What is the time period that we’re really talking about with respect to medieval Chinese slavery from when to when?

Don Wyatt
Taking as really the touchstone and recognizing that there’s little parity between chronologies from civilization to civilization, the touchstone years for the volume is the common era year 500 to 1420. And this certainly works from the Western perspective as basically incorporating the classic medieval period. The tricky part with respect to China is that this is also a period of time when China basically entered on the threshold of early modernity. There were a number of changes in the society that suggest that from about the late 10th century onward that China was essentially moving toward modern times.

Mark Williams
Well, you talked a bit about difficulties in terms of the chronologies between civilizations. It makes me wonder about any parity or distinctions or differences between slavery in medieval China and slavery and medieval West. Are we talking basically about the same type of institution that is just set in a different locale?  Or are we talking about an institution that’s fundamentally different in China than its Western counterpart? And if it is different then how. Is it different in scope or maybe it’s permanence, or maybe the assumptions on which the slavery itself rested?

Don Wyatt
I think the most fundamental difference, to be born in mind in terms of scope, is that at no time in China, did slavery ever become the chief mode of economic production as it did, for example, in the early modern Portuguese maritime empire or the antebellum, pre-Civil War United States. I think a real difference here too is to be found in thinking about percentages per capita of the population. The Chinese enslaved population during Han dynasty times, which is correspondent to the beginning of the Christian era, for instance in our terms or contemporary with the Roman empire, was probably one percent of the population. In later times in a more populous China, it probably rose to two percent, but by contrast on the eve of the American Civil War, probably something close to a quarter of the population was enslaved. That’s a huge difference.

Mark Williams
Yes. I see the differences in terms of the population, the numbers, themselves being different, the number of people who are enslaved within the population. So, there are some important distinctions between slavery in China and slavery in the West. What about…

Don Wyatt
And since you mentioned it, you asked too about assumptions. And I think it’s important to underscore that there continued to be the assumption in medieval Chinese slavery that enslavement was a punitive action. And I think this idea of slavery as punishment certainly had become lost in Western medieval slavery and certainly in later Western slavery.

Mark Williams
In the Chinese context, slavery as punishment, this would be punishment in terms of those who were enslaved were the adversaries of the slaveholders?

Don Wyatt
Well, that’s a great question.

Mark Williams
Punishment for what?

Don Wyatt
Yeah, exactly. It’s arguable that the first sin of individuals who were enslaved, who were non-Chinese, was that they simply resisted and consequently, they were victimized because of that. But it’s also important to bear in mind that Chinese slavery has a strong and even more dominant, endogenous aspect. And this aspect is one in which cultural insiders, largely because of the transgressions against higher authority by an individual, typically the patriarch of a family, these individuals fell into slavery at the command of higher authority. In this sense, the Chinese situation is a classic example of the intrusive application of slavery. On the one hand, the slave is adversary. And the extrusive imposition of slavery on the other hand, where someone typically of standing within the society, because of rebellion, because of treacherous behavior, because of insult, fell and collaterally members of that person’s family, clan were enslaved.

Mark Williams
I see. So, punishment for resistance, punishment for opposition, punishment for lack of deference or insult….

Don Wyatt
And it applied in either the intrusive case or the extrusive case. By the way, this terminology is, directly from Orlando Patterson, sociologist of comparative slavery in his famous book, “Slavery and Social Death” 1982.

Mark Williams
Thank you. Were there any distinctions within China itself from region to region regarding the type of slavery that might exist there? Or was it pretty much the same?

Don Wyatt
Especially later we do encounter such conventions as debt bondage which is again a kind of limited term slavery that is practiced in various cultures. And also since you ask about regional differences, the prominent phenomenon of child enslavement in south China in later centuries, much to the consternation of Imperial authority. And also civilian officials. But fundamentally, no, the two fundamental types of slavery had long been and continued to be official slavery and private slavery.

Mark Williams
What’s the distinction between them?

Don Wyatt
The distinction is essentially, and connected with my discussion of intrusive and extrusive modes of enslavement, official slavery typically involved someone who had fallen into disfavor and their descendants had been enslaved. There was also official slavery in the form of tribute that was given to the Imperial court by various foreign dignitaries. Oftentimes the gifts were human gifts and these individuals were enslaved. And then there was private slavery which began to proliferate particularly during the medieval era. And this was the enslavement of most typically Chinese individuals by their countrymen.

Mark Williams
I see. Okay. Listening to this and thinking about the institution of slavery you’re describing in China, I can’t help but compare Chinese slavery with the type of slavery that developed and then plagued the United States. And, you know, here in the United States slavery was hereditary. If the Black parents were slaves, then their offspring were too and their offspring’s offspring. To what extent did something like that exist in China? Was it the same kind of hereditary condition there? If so, how extensive was it? Or if it was hereditary, was it more limited in terms of its coverage?

Don Wyatt
In essence, Chinese slavery was hereditary though probably not with the same sort of consistency that you would find in the United States. But one development, social development, that tended to ensure this kind of hereditary status of slavery was the fact that early on in China there developed a division of society into so-called good people, respectable people, the Chinese term is Lian, and Jin people, debased, ignoble people. Best estimates are that this group of base individuals probably constituted no more than five percent of the overall population. But the important thing from the standpoint of slavery is that whereas not all base people were slaves, all slaves were base people. And this base category included great numbers of other people. And there was a tendency for it over time to become largely occupational. Consequently, certain occupations necessarily fell under the rubric of baseness. This included torturers because torture was a constituent of the Chinese legal system, executioners, jailers, watchmen.

Mark Williams
So, the individuals performing those functions would themselves be slaves.

Don Wyatt
They weren’t slaves, but they were base.

Mark Williams
They were base. I see.

Don Wyatt
Particularly after the advent of Buddhism, butchers, because they killed animals. Took life. But also some occupations you would not necessarily expect: actors, musicians, boat people.

Mark Williams
Musicians?

Don Wyatt
Yeah.

Mark Williams
That’s fascinating. One of the things that always seemed to terrify slave holding societies regardless of time, regardless of locale, was the possibility of a slave rebellion. The Spartans feared this back during the time of the Peloponnesian war, the French feared a slave revolt in their colony of Haiti. They got one as well. One thing that the slave holders in the American South feared during antebellum times was the prospect of slave uprisings. And I’m wondering whether or not your research is uncovered something similar, a similar type of fear amongst Chinese slaveholders. Were there any episodes of significant slave revolts and maybe if so, what impact did this have on the institution of slavery?

Don Wyatt
In a word, no.

Mark Williams
Really?

Don Wyatt
Yup. Part of the answer for this is to be seen in the percentages that I offered you in terms of the overall population. The slave component was just too small to be able to raise a rebellion or…

Mark Williams
Pose any real risks.

Don Wyatt
Significant threat to authority even no matter how rest of it might have been. But your question, because again, of the punitive basis of Chinese slavery, raises another very counterintuitive way in which medieval Chinese slavery, but really Chinese slavery of any period, differed from Western slavery. And this was the fact that mutilation was a common practice in Chinese slavery.

Mark Williams
Mutilation of the slaves.


Don Wyatt
Yes, with the slaves falling prey to anything short of the most extreme of the five ancient punishments in China. And these were in increasing order of severity. Tattooing, which involved the incising, scarification and inking of the face especially the forehead. The second of the five ancient punishments was the cutting off of the nose. The third of these, which was probably the least frequently applied was the cutting off of one or both feet, which obviously was seriously debilitating. The fourth of these was castration and the fifth was capital punishment, which almost always meant decapitation. And as a consequence of this, these punishments, because Chinese traditional punishments were always mutilative, became cultural code for anyone encountering someone like this. In other words, this person was obviously a criminal. And very potentially also a slave.

Mark Williams
Yes. So, anyone you see that might have bore the scars of any of these types of punishments.

Don Wyatt
The so-called markings of the body as they were called.

Mark Williams
How did slavery finally end in medieval China? And what did the end of slavery signify in terms of perhaps the bequeathing of new liberties or new rights for the people who were governed under Chinese rule?

Don Wyatt
Regrettably, it didn’t end but more or less transformed in later centuries, in that a new channel emerged as the main source of recruitment of slaves. And this was self-enslavement, self-sale.

Mark Williams
Really? How did that come about?

Don Wyatt
Well, it’s a feature of, of Chinese society that is probably one of the most difficult elements to translate to students in the sense that they have to somehow become persuaded that there were conditions in the world in the past, such that slavery was more preferable than living under those conditions. And you know, we live, especially those of us who are products of the liberal democratic West. We live in an age of affluence in which it’s difficult to conceive that sacrificing liberty could actually be beneficial to us in terms of survival. That’s not necessarily the case in China in subsequent centuries.

Mark Williams
Are you talking about economic deprivation? Are you talking about something else?

Don Wyatt
I’m talking about economic deprivation. I’m talking about famine. I’m talking about pestilence. I’m talking about warfare. I’m talking about a number of socially disruptive forces that were so severe and so debilitating, disease, plague, so forth, that being in a situation in which one might be enslaved but relatively well taken care of was preferable to being exposed to these sort of elements. To give an example, this goes a long way toward explaining the Chinese eunuch tradition.

Mark Williams
Would you care to elaborate?

Don Wyatt
Well, it’s simply the fact that under destitute circumstances someone might volunteer, so to speak, to enter the palace by making that sacrifice.

Mark Williams
Yes. How did this actually work? How, if you research has revealed this, how would one go about finding someone to enslave yourself to who was not afflicted by the things that were afflicting the person contemplating voluntary slavery?

Don Wyatt
You essentially take a chance and make yourself available. You know, you show up at their gateway. And sometimes that meant showing up at the court. Whether you would succeed or not, that’s another matter. And you may have made that sacrifice in vain. But you did ask about an endpoint and essentially slavery was not abolished in China until 1910. And this was not really an emancipation so much as it was a ban on the sale of slaves. So consequently, it became illegal to…

Mark Williams
How did that come about? Why was that?

Don Wyatt
It’s a number of factors. Part of it is official condemnation. It is the influence of early constitutionalism in China. It is the influence of missionary involvement in China. And perhaps the fact that in the quest for modernity, China had to move in a direction in which this ancient institution was laid to rest. But needless to say, since it wasn’t an emancipation, slavery continued to be practiced illicitly, of course, but it continued for a good deal of time after that. Certainly, up until the communist revolution in 1949.

Mark Williams
The end of slavery in the United States is something that many can look back to and celebrate just as those who were living at the time that it ended in the United States, many celebrated. Was there anything analogous to the end of slavery or the demise of slavery that happened in China? Was this action you’re talking about that occurred in 1910? Was this something of note that people, at least some people celebrated or was it just more of the sort of grinding the function of the state and something that happened more as a matter of fact, that was little taken notice of.

Don Wyatt
I think it probably attracted little notice.

Mark Williams
Interesting.

Don Wyatt
And probably the further away you were from, you know, the seat of power the less it mattered to you.

Mark Williams
Do you think that it’s possible that China’s version of slavery might owe anything to, or perhaps was influenced by slavery that existed outside of China?

Don Wyatt
There is some speculation regarding transferability of the eunuch tradition. Some contact perhaps between China and ancient Assyria. And the Persians have also been cited in this connection. We do know from Herodotus that the Persians did practice eunuchism. He attributed it to the Persians as one of their practices. He even praised it suggesting that eunuchs were more loyal, more dedicated than normal people.

Mark Williams
Yes.

Don Wyatt
The evidence for this is very tenuous and very weak. I think it’s arguable more likely that much like the Chinese writing script, much like the Chinese development of bronze metalwork technology, that it was an indigenous development.

Mark Williams
I’m wondering if the knowledge that we get from examining slavery in China might be transferable. And by that, I mean, is understanding medieval Chinese slavery, does that help us better understand other world slaveries? Either, you know, during the same time period or maybe at different time periods?

Don Wyatt
Chinese medieval slavery is perhaps a prime example of functionalism determining status in a way that had the effect of making it really an organic institution within the culture. One that was almost invisible because it was based on the functionalist contribution that slaves made. Chinese did not regard as slaves, individuals whom we typically would classify as slaves. I think great examples of this are the eunuchs that we’ve already touched upon. But also, concubines who essentially because of their function were at best regarded as a kind of specialized slave, if regarded as slaves at all. And their status within the home or at the court was certainly superior to other slaves. But nevertheless, from our standpoint, anyone who can be bought or sold is a slave.

Mark Williams
Yes. Is property. When you talk about the invisibility of slavery, you ascribe that invisibility here to perhaps functionalism.

Don Wyatt
Yeah. A kind of a seamless, regulatory contribution made to…

Mark Williams
Society.

Don Wyatt
To society okay. To the culture, to sustaining the culture.

Mark Williams
Is the invisibility also a function of how few people relatively speaking were actually enslaved? And here I’m thinking about situations in the United States, for example, where it’s the numbers are, are much larger. It’s very clear. It’s very much out in the open. These are not activities that are behind closed walls in the court.

Don Wyatt
It’s probably not divorced from that. The relative lack of prominence in terms of numbers might have had some effect but very often too these individuals were individuals of consequence.

Mark Williams
You mean because of the function that they played?

Don Wyatt
Because of the function that they played. The role that they had. We can see this in the diversification of functions of eunuchs, for instance. Their original function was of course, as harem guardians. But over the course of time, they come to take on many roles. And even someone so famous of late as the Ming dynasty eunuch commander Zheng He, the great navigator, who made seven expeditions, even as far as the east coast of Africa, was a eunuch.

Mark Williams
Remarkable. Perhaps on a related note, when you think about the world today, there are still unfortunately, pockets of slavery, some types of slavery that still exist in different parts of the world. Do you think that any of the insights about contemporary global slavery, are there any insights that we can draw from examining medieval Chinese slavery?

Don Wyatt
Probably the most difficult of your questions to try to get a handle on. I think essentially, we can learn how tenacious the institution can be, and that it, continues to take many forms. Particularly, I think the case of medieval Chinese slavery goes a long way towards informing our understanding of current day human trafficking. It also has a way of explaining child exploitation.

Mark Williams
In what way would it illuminate either one of those areas, human trafficking, or child exploitation?

Don Wyatt
In terms of your first question about human trafficking, China today is a place in which we have a population of approximately 1.4 billion people. And there are many more males than females. In fact, the rough estimate currently is that there are about 35 million more males than females. These individuals are going to have to find wives. And very oftentimes that’s going to have them casting beyond China. And consequently, this situation I think, is informing in terms of human trafficking and driven by this element of functionality that I suggested to you earlier.

Mark Williams
That you alluded to earlier.

Don Wyatt
We also know that much like prison labor, child labor is a fixture in China. And unfortunately tends only to come to the world’s attention when there is some sort of unfortunate accident in which children are the principal victims. And I guess the message there is that slavery as an institution, especially when driven by functionalist imperatives, is very difficult to stamp out.

Mark Williams
Yes, I could see that as well. As we look towards the future, Don, in terms of your own research, what’s next for you? Are you going to continue to study aspects of slavery in China? Are you going to be researching different aspects of Chinese history?

Don Wyatt
Much of my work has been largely in three areas: Chinese intellectualism, Chinese violence and warfare, and Chinese ethnicity and slavery. The slavery component certainly has taken the lead and is the driver in the sense that, it seems to be what is most in demand and like all scholars, we, no matter how high-minded we are, we have to respond to demand. So, it’s fair to say that I’ll be delving further into these questions in the future. At least in the short-term future.

Mark Williams
Well, it’s a really fascinating topic. It really is. And I want to thank you for sharing that with us.

Don Wyatt
Well, I really only wish that I had the opportunity to talk about something a bit more uplifting. But at any rate, thank you for having me.

Mark Williams
I’ve been speaking with Don Wyatt of Middlebury College about the arguments that he makes in a new volume called “The Cambridge World History of Slavery” published by Cambridge University Press. His chapter contribution to that work is titled “Slavery in Medieval China.” Don, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today and thank you very much for visiting with us on New Frontiers.

Don Wyatt
It’s been a pleasure being with you and continued success.

Mark Williams
Thank you.

Student (Nora Hyde)
A native of Illinois, Professor Don Wyatt lives with his family—and his dog, Clive—in Weybridge Vermont. He loves green tea, basketball, and his favorite city in China is Xi’An. Outside of the classroom, students are most likely to find him prowling the stacks and working on his research in the Library.