Lightening bonds: servile resistance in early imperial China

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.