In ancient historical dramas, the maids in the court and the servants in the mansions of the powerful all call themselves slaves, and these people seem to be better off than the peasants who need to farm, after all, the peasants work hard all year round just for food and clothing, and these slaves and maids live in the palace, have food and shelter, as long as the master's family is not down, the slaves and maids can enjoy a life of food and clothing after serving the master.
Judging from the miserable standard of living of the common people in ancient times, these unfree slaves and maids seem to have more status than free peasants, but this is not necessarily the case.
Because most of the film and television dramas depict the history of emperors and generals, the treatment of high-level slaves and maids under these powerful people is of course good, and for most of the time in history, the lives of ordinary slaves and maids are miserable, not only have a low status, they have to work hard all day long, and even have to worry about their lives.
Today, let's explore how the slave and maid system developed in ancient times, and what are the similarities and differences in the status of slaves and maids in the Qin and Han dynasties?
1. The Collapse of Slavery and the Rise of Slavery
1. Slaves: Remnants of slavery
Before studying the slave system, it is necessary to first understand the slave system, there is only one word difference between slave and slave, but the difference is very large.
The slave class is a unique product of the initial social form of human civilization, in the earliest times, there was no class distinction in the primitive society of human beings, the group with the tribe as the unit pursued public ownership, the primitive people lived by gathering and fishing and hunting, and all the people of a tribe surrounded the leader, and everyone distributed the collected vegetables and fruits and the hunted animal meat.
When material abundance reached a certain level, private ownership began to emerge, and as the population grew, fishing, hunting, and gathering were no longer enough to feed everyone, and primitive tribes began to cultivate to obtain more food, while fighting each other to plunder the resources of other tribes.
Those tribes who were defeated in battle, whose inhabitants were either killed or taken as trophies by the victors, and those who lost everything and became spoils of war were the first slaves.
2. The transformation of slave owners into landlords
Slavery is the remnant of the slave system, the slave society is the earliest social form, the Xia and Shang dynasties of ancient China were slave society, the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, with the rise of the feudal system, slavery began to disintegrate, and the social production relations changed from slaves and slave owners to farmers and landlords.
Farming was the most important thing in feudal society, so a large number of slaves in the Qin and Han dynasties directly became slaves who undertook peasant obligations. Ostensibly slavery has disappeared, and society is still filled with a large number of underclasses who have lost their homes and land, and who have no personal freedom.
These people at the bottom are the remnants of slavery that did not completely disappear under the feudal system a few years ago, except that the identity of slaves and slave owners has changed to slaves and landlords. The status of slaves and maids was very low, only slightly better than the situation in the Xia, Shang and Zhou periods.
3. The source of slaves
At the end of the Warring States period, in addition to the slaves who were directly converted from the original slaves, there were also a large number of new slaves who became new slaves for various reasons.
For example, vagrants who lost their land and houses due to war were captured by traffickers and reduced to slaves who were bought and sold at will.
In the Qin Dynasty, the punishment was extremely harsh, many people were forced to become slaves for violating the laws of the Qin state, and if the bureaucrats and elites violated the Qin laws, the first offender would not only be severely punished by the death penalty, but also his family members would be affected and become slaves.
The Qin Dynasty had a great demand for slaves because of the large amount of labor required to build the Great Wall and the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, and in addition to criminals and bankrupt peasants, many captives who surrendered during the Qin War to unify the Six Kingdoms also became slaves. In addition to heavy farming or labor, these slaves were even martyred for their masters.
2. The tragic fate of the enslaved
1. Slaves are equal to goods
As mentioned above, the slaves of the Xia and Shang dynasties and the Qin dynasty were a class without any human rights, and their situation depended entirely on whether their masters were willing to treat slaves well. If a good master is not cruel to the slave and allows the slave to be fed and clothed, it is undoubtedly very lucky for the slave.
However, in a slave society, the vast majority of people did not regard slaves as living people, and the Xia and Shang dynasties all regarded slaves as objects with a certain price, which could be bought and sold, used at will, and even killed slaves without punishment. Even in the Zhou Dynasty, which was known for its benevolence, the attitude towards slaves was the same.
2. The absolute authority of the slave owner
The Qin Dynasty was a feudal system, and under the feudal system, the patriarch of a family was the supreme existence in the clan, and the patriarch had absolute authority over the wives and concubines and children in the family. For the private slaves of the Qin Dynasty, the members of the master's family were the "parents" of the slaves.
In feudal society, family law and state law coexisted, and on the premise of not violating national law, members of the feudal family or lynching court would not be punished by the government. Therefore, the slave owners of the Qin Dynasty had the power of life and death over their private slaves, and even the kinder slave owners did not torture the slaves in their daily lives, but still let the slaves be buried for themselves after death.
If you meet a slave owner who does not treat slaves as people, the life of a slave is worse than death, even if the master kills the slave, it does not violate the law of the Qin Dynasty - after all, the law is for citizens with human rights, and slaves do not even deserve to be treated as people, killing slaves is the same as killing pigs and dogs, and the misery of slaves can be seen from this.
3. Official slaves and private slaves
The situation of official slaves was slightly better than that of private slaves, and the government would not kill slaves at will, and would allow slaves to get enough rest, and even ensure the slaves' life and lodging.
However, the Qin Dynasty government raised official slaves entirely to allow slaves to serve as laborers, and allowing slaves to be fed and clothed was also to prolong the life of slaves and make slaves work for as long as possible. Official slaves often had to work until they died of old age, or they became ill and lost their ability to work because of too heavy labor, and then they were brutally executed by the government.
In addition, whether it is a private slave or an official slave, they can only marry the same class who are also slaves, and the remaining children are also slaves, and they must give everything for their slave owners until they die forever.
The Han Dynasty nominally completely abolished slavery, and there were only slaves and maids in society, but the Han Dynasty inherited the Qin system and still did not completely abolish slavery, and the slave system was the remnant of the slavery system, and the so-called law prohibiting slavery was equivalent to a dead letter.
However, the slaves of the Han Dynasty compared to the slaves of the Qin Dynasty, there is still a little bit of human rights, although the parents still have absolute authority over the slaves, but the laws of the Han Dynasty began to strictly prohibit the killing of slaves and maids, and the murderer pays for his life is the three chapters of the covenant set by Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Han Dynasty, and the descendants of later generations all abide by the rules of the ancestors, so even the feudal patriarch cannot kill the slave and the maid.
3. Changes in slavery in the Qin and Han dynasties
1. The complexity of slavery
The laws of the Qin Dynasty are famous all over the world for their coolness - as the saying goes, harsh government is fiercer than tigers, the people of the Qin Dynasty would rather live in the mountains at the risk of being eaten by tigers than live in the city and be oppressed by officials, from the perspective of our modern people, whether it is the slavery system of the Qin Dynasty or the slavery system of the Han Dynasty are backward, but if you look at the emergence of slavery from a more profound perspective, this is undoubtedly a kind of progress.
Engels believed that in the early form of human society, the emergence of slavery was also a kind of progress for those who became slaves, and those who became slaves had to work hard, but at least their lives were preserved, and before the emergence of slavery, the defeated captives were only executed or buried, and even eaten in earlier primitive societies.
2. The change of slavery
Compared with the Qin Dynasty, the social status of slaves and maids in the Han Dynasty has risen to a certain extent. The slaves of the Qin Dynasty could only marry with the same class, and the children born were also slaves, and the Han Dynasty allowed slaves and maids to marry freely and cross classes, which was a huge improvement compared to the Qin Dynasty.
In addition, the Han Dynasty also used various ways to restrict private ownership of too many slaves and maids, the feudal system focused on farming, and private slaves and maids only served private individuals, but did not engage in agricultural labor production, which was a serious waste of labor for the state.
Therefore, the rulers of the Han Dynasty were keen to emancipate slaves and slaves, and at the same time promote the human rights of the slave and slave classes, and ensure that the social status of slaves and slaves was similar to that of the common people.
3. The situation of slaves and maids in the Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty had a number of laws to restore the status of freedmen to slaves, so as to avoid too many private slaves and too little labor in society. For example, if the master burns and burns the slave and maid, then according to the Han law, the slave is a free man.
If the slave and maid are exhausted and die, it is also regarded as the master who has committed the crime of murder, and according to the Han law, he must pay for his life, and the remaining slaves and maids become free concubines.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the ban on the sale of private slaves changed from a dead letter to a strict law, and violators were severely punished and their sentences could not be commuted.
Under a variety of protection measures, although the slaves and maids of the Han Dynasty still have no personal freedom, and have to work for the masters without compensation, their status is basically no different from that of ordinary commoners, if the master is a rich and noble family, slaves and maids are even better than free commoners, but this situation is still a minority after all.
In fact, the vast majority of slaves and maids in the Han Dynasty thought that they were very satisfied that they were pariahs and could be close to the status of the common people, not to mention that they could redeem themselves through work, which was something they had never dared to think of before.
4. The continuation and disintegration of slavery
From the Qin Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, there has been a lot of progress, the Han Dynasty in addition to pardoning slaves and maids, allowing slaves and maids to marry across classes, but also allowing slaves and maids to go to the battlefield to make meritorious contributions to redeem themselves. But in the Tang Dynasty, slavery became as cruel as Qin, and the Tang Dynasty attached great importance to the distinction between respect and inferiority, so it basically did not treat slaves and maids as human beings.
In the Yuan Dynasty, the status of the Han people plummeted, and the status of Han slaves and maids fell off a cliff, and they returned to the situation where they could be tortured and killed at will.
The Manchu Qing Dynasty was the pinnacle of the feudal regime, the social productive forces reached the limit of the small peasant economy, and the social progress affected the slave and maid system of the Qing Dynasty to be more humane than that of the Mengyuan.
epilogue
Human civilization has experienced three social forms, the first is a slave society, the second is a feudal society, and the third is a capitalist society, among which slavery is the most cruel mode of exploitation.
Slavery and private ownership rose together, after the collapse of slavery, slaves replaced slaves and became the most miserable group under the feudal regime, the status of slaves in the Qin Dynasty was basically no different from the third dynasty of the Xia and Shang dynasties, the Han Dynasty began to protect slaves and maids, allowing slaves and maids to redeem themselves, but they were only a few free people after all.
In 1909, the millennium-old slavery was completely abolished, and slavery became a thing of the past, and society entered a new stage.
bibliography
1. "Qin and Han Dynasty "Shuren" Examination
2. "Between the Family and the State: Private Slaves and Maids in the Qin and Han Dynasties"
3. "Shuren: The Connection between the Identity of the Lordship and the Identity of the Apprentice in Qin and Han Societies"