INTL 190 - Haiti in a Transnational Context

Chinese Slavery System in Zhou Dynasty  Spring and Autumn Period time

“Zhou society showed aspects of both slaveholder and feudal society - the kings provided their followers with feudal land, and yet a large part of the population was enslaved, either as war captives or enslaved debtors sold on market.”(Kim, 1). In the last years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, social problems were exacerbated by the raid on the capital of Hao by the Injun minority, who killed King You of Zhou and destroyed the state of Xizhou. King You's son, King Ping of Zhou, took the throne and moved the capital to Luo Yi, which was called the Eastern Zhou Warring States.

The Eastern Zhou mainly included the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The Spring and Autumn period, which lasted from 771 B.C. to 476 B.C., was also a special time when Chinese slavery was converted to feudalism. Under this system, many nobles, in order to increase the agricultural capacity of their country, drove a large number of slaves to open up barren fields outside the well fields as private fields and employed the more corresponding laborers to cultivate the foundation in order to maximize their own profit in this way. In 594 B.C., the state of Lu started to implement the tax mu and began to recognize the right of private land owners to use their fields, but later, as the three great officials of the state of Qi, the Jisun, the Monsun and the Shusun, divided the king's well fields and slaves, they implemented a new method of feudal exploitation in order to expand their profits, and rented out most of the products of the labor of farming to the powerful and noble. In this way, a large number of serfs and nobles became the landlords of the feudal society, and the slaves who were working in the well fields at the beginning became farmers, so the method of feudal exploitation first appeared in the state of Qi. 

In the middle of Spring and Autumn Period, Duke Xiaoyao of Qin completed the system by changing the law through Shang Yang, which finally gave slaves the most basic civil rights. In the Han Dynasty, the main factor of slavery was the formation of private ownership due to land annexation. In the Han and Tang dynasties, the legislation became more specific and focused on the distinction between the good and the bad, for example, if a slave caused injury to a good citizen, he would be executed, and if a good citizen killed a slave, he could be redeemed with money to reduce the crime. (Wilbur, 58). In the late Spring and Autumn period, as more and more slaves rebelled, the slave owners of the vassal states had to choose this new method of slavery, and the well field system gradually died out. (History of china, The Early Eastern Zhou, Spring and Autumn, and Warring States Periods: Transition from Slavery to Feudalism).

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