The "servants" and related problems seen in the Book of Han

The "Book of Han and the Biography of Wang Mang" says: "Mang is a great recruit of ding men and death row prisoners and slaves, known as pig suddenly, and thought that he was a sharp pawn. This is the term "official slave" first appeared in historical records, which is a synonym for a type of person with a certain identity. We know that the officials are also the people who are compiled into the households, the civilians who are compiled in the household registration, and their status is higher than that of the slaves, and the "servants' slaves" here do not refer to the slaves among the officials, but to the people who become the slaves of the officials.

The Book of Han and the Chronicle of the Emperor of Sorrows reads: "There are 200 princes and slaves, 100 princes and princesses, and 30 marquises and officials of Guannei." As Shi Dan described as the state of people's livelihood in the Han Dynasty when Emperor Wu ascended the throne: "The people were enriched at the beginning, but there was no harm to both, so it was not limited to the people's land and slaves." In the present generations, the rich and the rich have tens of thousands of people, while the poor and the weak are poor. "In the time of the emperor's mourning, the rich and the rich annexed a large number of land properties and raised slaves, which had made the gap between the rich and the poor to the point where they could no longer be allowed to be allowed and ignored.

In fact, during the time of Emperor Yuan, such a situation had already become prominent, and Gong Yu pointed out: "The wives and concubines of the princes may be up to hundreds, and the number of rich officials and folk singers is up to dozens. It can be seen that at this time, the rich people among the nobles and commoners had raised a large number of wives and concubines and singers, and had already stripped a considerable amount of labor power from the land, and these labor forces were no longer the direct providers of state taxation and labor, but were widely reduced to the private property of the nobles and rich officials.

Although the political identity of the officials seems to be equal, the gap in economic strength has forced some people to sell themselves to the rich as slaves to make a living, and Liu Banggang ordered that "those who sell themselves as slaves by hunger are exempted from being commoners." "There are slaves who have to be slaves after inheriting the status of their predecessors, and there are also civilians who constantly sell themselves to others because they cannot survive. Although at this time Liu Bang ordered that these people who sold themselves as slaves and slaves because of the difficulty of survival could be restored to civilian status, it was still impossible to stop some of the officials from becoming slaves of others, and this situation continued from the beginning of the Han Dynasty to the end of the Han Dynasty, but when the crisis of rule was not manifested, such a problem was not so prominent.

The bureaucracy seems to be a relatively stable class, but in the final analysis it is still fragile, and the rich are a minority after all. For example, the border officials often faced the invasion of foreign enemies, and the history books often recorded in the Xiongnu "killing the officials", "killing more officials", and "killing the officials" in the border areas, and even if they moved to the inner counties because of the war, they often had no place to stand, and when Wang Mang was in, "the border people flowed into the inner counties, and they were slaves, but it was forbidden for the officials to dare to blackmail the border people to abandon the city." It can be seen that it is not uncommon for border people to enter the inner county to sell themselves as slaves, and it has become a social phenomenon that Wang Mang has to pay close attention to.

The slaves were often the targets of military conscription, and this situation also continued to later generations, such as the "Jin Shu He Chong Biography": "First, Yi Xi Fa Jiang and Jing Er Zhou formed household slaves to fill military service, and the soldiers were in a hurry. He wanted to send Yangzhou slaves to all his slander. Later, ZTE has already developed three Wu, and it is not appropriate to stop now. The group referred to by this household slave is also equivalent to the "official slave" in the "Biography of Wang Mang", and the hardships of their lives and the unpredictability of their fate can be seen.

In addition to the servants, there were also officials and slaves who served under the various governments. For example, when Emperor Wen was "exempted from official slaves as shuren", but the official government could not dismiss all slaves and wives and return home, which would affect the daily operation of the official government, so such a release of slaves should also be conditional, and the "Records of the Emperor of Sorrow" contains that "officials and slaves are more than fifty years old, exempted from being shuren." "Although it is far away from Emperor Wen, such an age discount should not change much." The number of officials and slaves is very large, such as the Chun quote "Notes on Han Yi" said: "There are thirty-six servant priests in the garden, distributed in the north and west. With Gao as the court supervisor, 30,000 officials and slaves", the "Gongyu Biography" has "more than 100,000 officials and slaves", the overall scale should be larger, but the social status and living standards are still far lower than the commoners, and only when the imperial court orders them to be exempted from being a commoner, they can obtain the promotion of status.