{"title":"Lightening bonds: servile resistance in early imperial China","authors":"Laurie Venters","doi":"10.1080/00182370.2023.2217635","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Resistance to enslavement is a well-known phenomenon, attested to the vast majority of historical societies in which slaveholding was prevalent. Despite this, servile resistance in early imperial China (i.e. the Qin, Western, and Eastern Han dynasties) has received little attention. This article first contextualizes private slavery in the wider milieu of unfree labor, before proceeding to offer a concise rundown of the maltreatment and objectification of bonded persons. With the necessary groundwork laid, the present study then moves to establish an initial taxonomy of resistive behaviors as observable in the ancient literary and legal source material. From everyday acts of work avoidance and theft, to the extremes of abscondence, suicide, and murder, enslaved men and women deployed a range of subversive tactics. As will be demonstrated, such exhibitions of servile defiance moved to challenge the authority of the master class and, in doing so, lighten the bonds of slavery.","PeriodicalId":44078,"journal":{"name":"HISTORIAN","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"HISTORIAN","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00182370.2023.2217635","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT Resistance to enslavement is a well-known phenomenon, attested to the vast majority of historical societies in which slaveholding was prevalent. Despite this, servile resistance in early imperial China (i.e. the Qin, Western, and Eastern Han dynasties) has received little attention. This article first contextualizes private slavery in the wider milieu of unfree labor, before proceeding to offer a concise rundown of the maltreatment and objectification of bonded persons. With the necessary groundwork laid, the present study then moves to establish an initial taxonomy of resistive behaviors as observable in the ancient literary and legal source material. From everyday acts of work avoidance and theft, to the extremes of abscondence, suicide, and murder, enslaved men and women deployed a range of subversive tactics. As will be demonstrated, such exhibitions of servile defiance moved to challenge the authority of the master class and, in doing so, lighten the bonds of slavery.
期刊介绍:
Founded in 1938, The Historian has one of the largest circulations of any scholarly journal in the US or Britain with over 13,000 paid subscribers, both individual and institutional. The Historian seeks to publish only the finest of contemporary and relevant historical scholarship. It is the commitment of The Historian to serve as an integrator for the historical profession, bringing together the many strands of historical analysis through the publication of a diverse collection of articles.