More precisely, the feudal social system has been formed since the Warring States period, and the implementation of a series of systems such as "abolishing Shiqing Shilu", "abolishing the well field system", "allowing land to be privately owned" and so on in the Shang Martingale Transformation Law has greatly damaged the living space of slave owners who originally held a large number of fields, and it can be said that the disintegration of slave society was formed from the Warring States period.
In the early days of the Western Jin Dynasty, the feudal system of "family world" replaced the backward slave society, and the Western Jin society was in the early stage of the feudal system. However, when we look at the history books, we will find that even in the Western Jin Dynasty society under the feudal system, there was no shortage of slavery:
The Book of Jin records the incident of Shi Chong and Wang Kai Doufu: they would often use maids to drink wine, and if the guests did not obey, they would strangle the maids. This also fully shows that these maids have no personal freedom, and that Shi Chong, Wang Kai, and others are slave owners. Regarding Shi Le, we often say that he was "the only emperor in Chinese history who was born of slaves", and it is clearly recorded in the Book of Jin that he was once sold to the door valves of the then shijia and engaged in production work, and he himself was often beaten and humiliated. The above examples also show that the slave system of the Western Jin Dynasty, which had transitioned to a feudal society, was still serious, and even in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, slavery had not completely disappeared, so why did there still be such a phenomenon in the Western Jin society in the feudal era? Today, let's talk about the remnants of the slave system of the Western Jin Dynasty in the early period of feudal society:
The remnants of slavery in the Western Jin Dynasty
The slaves in the early Western Jin Dynasty were much less than in the Qin and Han dynasties, but it is undeniable that there were still many slave owners in the Western Jin Dynasty, and the main body of these slave owners was composed of many Western Jin officials, whether it was a Qing tan celebrity like Wang Rong or a gengjie courtier like Zhang Hua, they all had a large number of official and private slaves as vassals to grab economic benefits for them:
"Jin Shu Wang Yan Biography": Yan Guo's greed, so he did not taste money. Guo wanted to try it, so that the maid wrapped the bed with money, so that it could not be done. For the sake of Yan Chen, when he saw the money, he said, "Lift up the block!" That's what it says. Book of Jin. The Biography of Gou Xi(Gou Xi): Out of loneliness, he is a supreme general, he is full of ambition, a thousand slaves will be a thousand, dozens of concubines, he will not go out of the court all day and night, the criminal government is harsh, and he indulges in lust.
The total population at the end of the Three Kingdoms was more than seven million, so why did millions more people suddenly appear in the early years of the Western Jin Dynasty? Slaves were not counted according to the residents, there were many slaves among the door valve clan at that time, and in order to maximize the profits, this part of the unregistered slaves would often be hidden by the door valves and become their private property, and Emperor Wu of Jin ordered that many slaves be returned to their slaves for freedom, but also made this number closer to the real data at that time.
It can be said that the phenomenon of hidden slaves by the family door valve is not only that the number at that time does not correspond to the actual situation, but also the drawbacks and many losses in various aspects:
The system of the Western Jin Dynasty was excessively inclined to the interests of the family magnates, the shijia itself did not need to bear taxes, and these slaves who served the shijia magnates were already a huge wealth for the Western Jin Dynasty, and the economic losses of these many slaves hidden by the shijia were undoubtedly huge to the Western Jin. By oppressing many slaves, the family magnates gained many economic privileges, which also made the life of the tyrannical door valves more corrupt, and the extravagant phenomenon of the early Jin Dynasty was caused by this, and also planted the seeds for the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty. The oppression of slaves will inevitably cause the revolt of many poor people at the bottom, and the Western Jin Dynasty officials' style of treating the people with wanton expropriation and tyranny has caused many people to resist, from the "change of Qin Liang" to the "Qi Wannian Uprising". Did the Sima family, who was the head of the Western Jin Dynasty, see this kind of drawback? To be precise, there is, so Sima Yan issued several edicts to restore many slaves to their homeland, and it can be said that the rapid economic recovery in the early years of the Western Jin Dynasty was deeply related to Sima Yan's good measures to free slaves.
However, even so, the slavery system of the Western Jin Dynasty still existed, which also contained many factors in it:
As the head of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Sima family itself was the largest slave owner at that time, and it is clearly recorded in the Book of Jin that Sima Yan used Xiguan slaves to grow rice instead of soldiers, and Emperor Hui of Jin used slaves as military service. In order to appease the family, the Sima family could not send all the slaves back to their home, so the Sima family had to turn a blind eye to the family's move to hide the population. "Book of Jin": Going out to fight and enter farming, although it has been common since ancient times, but things have not stopped, and it is not possible not to think of warriors. Now, with the Yi Xi officials and slaves in the new city, the daitian soldiers grow rice, the slaves and slaves each have a tun for fifty people, and the tun is placed as a sima, so that they are all like the Tun Tian law. Book of Jin. Emperor Hui's Chronicle: "The princess of Naifa gave his hand to the soldiers, and those who had been ordered to be conscripted and men over thirteen were all in service." He also sent slaves to assist the soldiers, and was called the Four Sima Commandery. ”
A source of many slaves during the Western Jin Dynasty
The composition of the "sinners" and their descendants who were assigned slaves to slaves was composed of prisoners of the army and descendants of people who were "guilty" relative to those in power, which can be seen from the many phenomena in the Qin and Han Dynasties period: Han Gaozu, in order to win the hearts and minds of the people, on the one hand, had the measure of "being a slave-free person", but on the other hand, there was a measure of "making the people sell their children" as slaves; on the one hand, Emperor Weiwu exempted slaves from slaves as good people, and on the other hand stubbornly adhered to the backward system of "sinners' wives are not slaves".
These measures were also inherited intact by the western Jin rulers, and the two sons of the Shu Han general Fu You, who had sworn to die in the Battle of Wei and Shu, were put into the imperial palace and became concubines of Xi officials, until they were later exempted from being shuren by Emperor Wu of Jin.
The phenomenon of the son of a sinner as a slave can be clearly seen in all dynasties and dynasties, and is undoubtedly a shadow of the slave society under the feudal era.
Before the phenomenon of the Western Jin Dynasty driving the yi to subordinate, we said that the "Five Hu Internal Migration" was a long and continuous process, and a large-scale migration wave had been formed since the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and by the early years of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Hu people had formed a scale in various parts of Guanzhong. The Western Jin Dynasty court also had a headache for these Hu people: on the one hand, the internal migration of the Hu people made up for the lack of productivity caused by years of war; on the other hand, due to the contempt for the Hu people, the Contradictions between Hu and Han often broke out. However, on the whole, for the Western Jin Dynasty, this was more beneficial than harmful, and as for the "Five Hu Chaohua" after this, it was another matter.
For the family, the inward migration of the Hu people also completely exposed their greedy and tyrannical side, and their collusion with the tribal leaders of Wuhu at that time made many Hu people become slaves of the Western Jin Dynasty Gate Valve, and at the same time, some unscrupulous schemists often abducted the Hu people to become the slaves of the Door Valve. This was the case in Shi Le's early years, but he can also say that "stealing chickens does not become erosion of rice", and eventually he was sold.
Exorcism was a very common phenomenon at that time, which brought many economic conveniences to the family but fueled their greed.
Combined with Jiang Tong's "Theory of Migration," it is not difficult to see why there are so many voices of opposition. Because once the burden of migration to the state increased, it was also a huge loss for the Western Jin bureaucracy, which had a large number of slaves.
Because the "TunTian system" in the Cao Wei period had been seriously damaged in the late Cao Wei period, sima Yan, the Emperor wu of Jin, promulgated the "Zhantian system" after succeeding to the throne. The land-based system regulates the number of fields that an adult man can occupy and the number of fields occupied by the family, and also recognizes the legalization of dependents, who are now commonly referred to as "tenants". In the end, the Western Jin Dynasty presented a situation of Taikang prosperity.
However, in fact, the land occupation system also has many drawbacks, and the family does not need to bear these drawbacks, and it is the people who finally pay the bill:
The family did not have to bear the tax, resulting in excessive taxation on the occupiers. The occupiers often do not receive a prescribed amount of land to occupy, but they also have to pay high taxes. Therefore, although there was no large-scale phenomenon of land annexation by the western Jin Dynasty, there was a phenomenon of occupying the land and relying on the family to become its "tenants".
Why did slavery exist in the Western Jin Dynasty?
Since the Three Kingdoms of the Qin and Han Dynasties, hundreds of years have passed since the Warring States Period to the Western Jin Dynasty, and slavery should have passed a long time ago, but why was it still presented in the Western Jin Dynasty?
The continuation of the slave system in the two Han and three kingdoms period The two Han and three kingdoms period was the early stage of the development of feudalism, but it was also the era when slavery was running at the same time. During these two periods, due to the rapid development of the feudal mode of production, the peasants constantly rebelled against the obsolete slave system, so this environment forced the rulers to constantly release slaves to stabilize the situation. However, as mentioned above, while dismantling the slave system, no one of the most talented kings could completely abolish slavery, such as Liu Bang and Cao Cao mentioned above.
During the Two Han Dynasties and the Three Kingdoms period, there were many changes in political power, which also led to the destruction of the original slave owners' families, and to a large extent, the slave owners suffered a major blow, but they also produced another group of new slave owners, making them the basis of the new regime's rule.
Among them, Mi Zhu, Cao Hong, Li Yan and others became a group of new slave owners in the Three Kingdoms of Wei Shu and Wu after the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The Western Jin Dynasty Wei transformed many of the original Officials of Cao Wei into slave owners in the Western Jin Dynasty.
Nomadic and farming cultures influenced by ethnic minorities have always been natural enemies in the era of cold weapons, and because of the different lifestyles of the two sides, cultural customs are also quite different, so the contradiction between the two has been created.
On the one hand, the feudal social methods of the agrarian peoples also affected the nomadic peoples, and also played a positive role in the subsequent great integration and the development of the nomadic peoples; However, the inward migration of nomads also greatly affected the way of life of the farming peoples, and the slavery system of the nomadic peoples also influenced the Western Jin Dynasty.
The Xianbei practiced a slave system, and as early as the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Xiongnu had the phenomenon of plundering Han people as slaves. The slave nobles of the Xianbei tribe wantonly plundered the people of the Central Plains as slaves in order to expand the interests of their slave owners, and at the same time, they also plundered other nationalities as slaves. These phenomena of the Xianbei ethnic group undoubtedly also affected the Western Jin Dynasty at that time, so the phenomenon of the slave system of "expelling the people into subordination" appeared in the Western Jin Dynasty, which had become a feudal society, which undoubtedly deepened the slave system in the Han areas.
The influence of slavery
Since the slave system has become obsolete in feudal society, the wanton humiliation of slaves by slave owners in the Western Jin Dynasty has undoubtedly increased the contradiction between the two parties, and this phenomenon has laid the foundation for the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty, and the wave of large-scale uprisings in the last years of the Western Jin Dynasty is more against the slavery system of the Western Jin Dynasty.