Date of Award
8-8-2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation studies one type of slavery called booi slavery (or household slavery in English) in early Qing China ruled by Manchus, who came from Northeast Asia and formed a socio-military organization called the Eight Banners. In the early seventeenth century, the Qing incorporated various ethnic groups, including Han Chinese people, as slaves under banner households. As an institution, booi slavery functioned as an essential part of the Eight Banners and supported the household economy of ordinary banner people. As a relationship, booi slavery maintained an interpersonal relationship of domination and dependency between bannermen-cum-masters and their slaves. As an experience, booi slavery carried several stages that involved banners slaves from enslavement to lifelong servitude, and occasional manumission. My research situates booi slavery in a mass migration, which entailed the movement of two million banner people and slaves from southern Manchuria to China after the Qing conquest of China in 1644. This mass migration brought banner slaves a range of migratory experiences, including the return, escape, remaining, and separation, each of which forms one chapter of this dissertation. By examining bondage through the lenses of various mobilities, I argue that the dynamics of geographical movement destabilized, transformed, and reformed servile relationships between masters and slaves. While banner masters attempted to exercise their power upon slaves, slaves were geographically savvy and employed new geopolitical conditions to challenge restrictions and negotiate their autonomy with their masters. Another goal of this dissertation is to document the formation of the Qing law and its legal practice from the perspective of slavery law. Though inheriting majority statutes from the Ming code, the Qing code did not adopt the Ming slavery regulations but revised it by adding new components. I describe a process of how the Qing state incorporated the Manchu and Han Chinese legal treatments of bonded laborers into its first codified law. Through examining legal archives written in Classical Chinese and understudied Manchu, I also show the social implications of these new statutes in both banner and Han civilian societies. The Qing legal system provided a common ground where various subjects participated when dealing with slavery-related disputes. Female banner slaves, male banner slaves, regular bannermen, bondservant bannermen, Han Chinese civilians, Qing officials engaged with the Qing legal system in various ways. Combined with the legislation of the Qing statutes, the formation of the Qing slavery law also transpired at the grassroots level. Finally, I tell individual experiences of slave women and men in booi slavery. The first two chapters focus on slave women living in the households of regular bannermen, while the last two chapters focus on slave men in the households of bondservant bannermen. I demonstrate various forms of resistance from banner slaves and highlight their individualized agency and piecemeal process. Instead of defining their agency as the achievement of total freedom, this research shows that banner slaves negotiated their relative autonomy during various stages of slavery starting from the entrance into the bondage, laboring stage, leading towards the exit from the servile relationship. Collectively, their stories provide a robust case study of the resourcefulness of the weak in the early modern world.
Language
English (en)
Chair and Committee
Steven Miles
Committee Members
Christine Johnson; Loretta Kim; Lori Watt; Zhao Ma
Recommended Citation
Luo, Chenxi, "Bondage in the Age of Mobility: Booi Slavery, Migration, and Law in Early Qing China" (2024). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3309.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/3309