外国网友讨论：亚洲历史上存在合法奴隶制度吗？

grey fox
What is the difference between chattel slavery and non-chattel slavery?
I'm mostly interested in the Far East. I knew that there was slavery in the Middle East. IIRC, Saudi Arabia did not abolish legal slavery until the 1960s. I'm sure that there are still enslaved ... workers in Saudi Arabia to this day though.
When did China have slavery? When did Japan have slavery?

动产奴隶制和非动产奴隶制的区别是什么？
我主要对远东地区感兴趣。我知道中东有奴隶制。印象里，沙特直到 1960 年代才废除合法奴隶制度。虽然我敢肯定沙特今天仍然有被奴役的工人。
中国是什么时候有奴隶制的？日本是什么时候有奴隶制的？

Naomasa298
For example, some slaves were in service to the state, and could not be sold. In that sense, they were not private property and could not be sold as goods. Also, slavery as a punishment, particularly for a fixed term.
China had it in multiple dynasties, from the Qin through to the Qing. War captives could become slaves, and children could be sold to the Imperial household to become eunuchs. You could also argue that corvee was a form of slavery, as you didn't really get a choice as to whether you could do it, and thousands were conscxted to build the Great Wall and the Grand Canal (and died doing so).
Japanese slavery in a more traditional sense existed earlier on in its history, during the Heian and subsequent eras but it persisted throughout the Edo period, the most visible probably being those children who were sold into sexual slavery as oiran, i.e. prostitutes. They had to remain working in the brothel until they were able to buy their freedom (or have someone, such as a rich client) buy it for them. Prisoners could also be subject to slavery as punishment.

有些奴隶是为国家服务，不能被出售。从这个意义上讲，他们并非私有财产，不能作为商品买卖。此外，奴隶制也是一种惩罚手段，尤其是在固定期限被降为奴隶。
中国在多个朝代都有奴隶制，从秦一直到清。战争俘虏可能成为奴隶，小孩也可能被卖进皇室成为太监。你也可以认为徭役是一种奴役形式，因为人并没有选择权，成千上万的人被征发去修筑长城和大运河（并死在那里）。
日本奴隶制一直延续到江户时期，最显著的例子可能是那些女子被卖去做花魁，也就是妓女。她们必须在妓院工作，直到她们可以买回自己的自由（或者有人，比如富有的客人替她们买自由）。囚犯也可能作为惩罚被奴役。

Robto
The short answer: yes, it did exist.
The long answer goes like this:
Slavery did exist in premodern China, and they were treated like chattel. They were deprived of all liberty and could be sold, bought, or given. Nonetheless, slavery in those societies was unlike the early modern Atlantic/New World slavery in the sense that a plantation-centred economic system relying on slave labor did not exist.
Premodern China can serve as a good example of how the rest of the East Asian kingdoms and polities also treated slavery, as China was largely regarded as a model of civilization that its neighbors sought to emulate.
Slavery in China has existed since, as archaeological evidence tells us, the Shang period, as slaves were usually sacrificed en masse when their aristocratic lord died (Lai 2015: 43-46).

简短回答：是的，的确存在。
比较长的回答如下：
在古代中国确实存在奴隶制度，并且他们被当作动产对待。他们被剥夺全部自由，可以被买卖、转让或赠予。然而，这种奴隶制度并不像近代大西洋/新大陆的奴隶制度那样，形成以奴隶劳动为核心的种植园经济体系。
以古代中国为例，可以很好地说明东亚其他王国和政体是如何看待奴隶制的，因为中国在很大程度上被视为文明典范，邻国大多效仿它的模式。
根据考古证据，奴隶制自中国商代就已经存在，因为当贵族领主死去时，奴隶常常会被成规模集体献祭。

Nonetheless, it is during the Tang Period that we see the first legal document - The Tang Code (唐律) - that details the various statuses of the population within society, as well as the nature of servitude and slavery. The Code served as a sort of template for all such subsequent codes of traditional law, not only in China in particular but throughout East Asia in general, although each East Asian society also had its particularities (Wyatt 2023: 13).

In it, we determine that slavery had, for the most part, a punitive genesis, and it was only hereditary to the first generation that was born a slave. In that, most slaves were either (in fact mostly) prisoners of war and rebels, individuals who committed a serious crime, or, in certain rare cases, individuals who sold themselves or their daughters into slavery to pay a debt. Slavery in those societies had a very endogenous origin, although exogenous slaves were indeed common, particularly in Japan - the Ainu and Emishi - or in premodern Vietnam, as many ethnic Cham served as slaves (ibidem: 5-8).

不过，直到唐代，我们才看到第一部详细描述社会身份等级、役属关系以及奴隶性质的法律文献 ——《唐律》。这部法典可视为之后中国历代（乃至整个东亚）传统法律的模板，虽然每个东亚国家都有各自的特色法律。
从法典可知，奴隶大多数起源于刑罚性质，并且奴籍只会世袭到第一代奴隶子女。换句话说，大多数奴隶是（事实上主要是）战争俘虏与叛乱者、犯下重罪者，或在少数情况下，为偿还债务而自卖（或卖女儿）为奴的人。奴隶制在这些社会中多属于内源型，但外源奴隶也确实存在，尤其在日本，如阿伊努与蝦夷人，或在古代越南，许多占族人曾作为奴隶。

As stipulated in the Code, two large categories of people were seen as static broadly social castes: the "good" people (liang 良), and the "base/untouchable" people (jian 賤). Within those two categories, subdivisions of classes existed, such as the "good" people were then subdivided within the aristocrat/scholar-official/farmer/artisan/merchant categories, and the "untouchables" were then subdivided between the lower categories of barbers/prostitutes/butchers/cleaners/slaves (Lewis 2009: 52-3).

Slaves were the lowest of the low; they were treated as property, and a master could do almost anything he wanted to the slave, and in case of murdering someone, he received a very light sentence (Benn 2002: 40).
There were then two categories of slaves: public/government slaves and private slaves. Public slaves were mostly used for public works and were generally not tradeable, but could be given to private hands as rewards and gifts. Private slaves usually did anything the master wanted and were generally bought and sold, although slave markets were subjected to very strict state control and their transactions were highly regulated (Wyatt 2023: 11-12).

如《唐律》所规定，社会大体分为两个相对固定的阶层：良（liang 良，“良民”）与 贱（jian 贱，“贱民/不可接触者”）。在这两类之下又进一步细分，例如“良”又细分为贵族/士大夫/农/工/商，而“贱”则包括理发匠、妓女、屠户、清洁工、奴隶等更低阶层。
奴隶是最低阶层中的最低者 ， 被视为财产；主人几乎可以对他们做任何事情，而如果杀了某个奴隶，只会受到非常轻的处罚。
奴隶分为两大类：公共/官奴与私奴。公奴主要用于公共工程，通常不可买卖，但可以作为奖赏或礼物被赐予私人。私奴则一般做主人要求的任何事，通常可买卖，尽管奴隶市场受到严格的国家控制，交易高度规范化。

Since the Song dynasty, the nature of slavery in China has transformed. The effective abolition of the hereditary aristocratic class, which gave more equality to society, and the massive urbanization, led to a change in the occupational characteristics of the slaves. Instead of being associated with tilling the land or in the construction of public infrastructure, the slave was becoming increasingly associated with domesticity. Ever since that period, they formed a defined subclass of household servants (ibidem: 21)

Having said that, the Chinese civilization at no stage in its history (at least since the Tang period) relied on a slave class or its labor as the dominant mode of production. According to Mote, the estimated average representative percentage, at any given point in time in premodern China, of the "untouchables" (jian 賤), to have been between 3 to 5 percent of the total population (Mote 1999: 366). Considering that slaves were a smaller subdivision of that category, then slaves were probably just less than 2 percent throughout Chinese history.

Therefore, premodern China could be described as a "society with slaves" instead of a "slave society".

自宋代以来，中国的奴隶制度性质发生了变化。世袭贵族阶层的衰落（这在一定程度上增加了社会平等），以及大规模的城市化，导致奴隶的职业特征发生改变。奴隶不再主要与耕种土地或参与公共基础设施建设联系在一起，而越来越与“家庭劳役”相联系。从那一时期开始，他们形成了家庭仆役阶层。
话虽如此，中国文明在其历史上的任何阶段（至少自唐代以来）都没有依靠奴隶阶层或奴隶劳动作为主要生产方式。根据历史学家估计，在古代中国，贱民大约占总人口的 3% 至 5%。考虑到奴隶只是这一阶层中的更小的细分群体，那么奴隶可能在中国历史上的比例一直都不到 2%。
因此，古代中国应被描述为一个“有奴隶的社会”，而不是一个“奴隶社会”。

Hairesis
Fascinating. The translation to "untouchable" is eerily similar to the translation of Dalits in India. So both ancient China and India had a concept for a group of people they labelled the lowest of the low.

太有意思了。中国贱民（不可接触者）这个译法跟印度达利特（贱民）这个词的译法几乎一样。所以，中国和印度都有一个将某一群人贴上“最低贱阶层”标签的概念。

songtsen said:
China had "Nulis". India had "Devdasis". Mongols has "Bogols". Manchus had "Aha". Korea had "Nobi". In some cases like China and Korea it lasted till 1900s with Koreans having the longest period of non stop slavery for 1500 years.

中国有“奴隶”。印度有“Devdasis”。蒙古有“Bogols”。满洲人有“Aha”。韩国有“Nobi”。有些国家像中国和朝鲜，这种制度一直持续到 1900 年代，而朝鲜则是持续时间最长，拥有连续 1500 年的奴隶制。

Robto
Although the institution of slavery in countries such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam tended to be modeled by China, Koryŏ, and Chosŏn Korea, was probably where the practice of slavery reached a very unique magnitude and level within the East Asian Cultural Sphere.
Particularly during the Chosŏn period, slavery was ubiquitous throughout the kingdom, reaching more than thirty percent of the entire population, making it one of the few examples of a "slave society" in premodern East Asia (Kim 2023: 319-21).
The status of slavery in Korea - labeled as nobi - was completely determined by heredity, and it formed by itself a very rigid caste-like status in which bondage had to be endured for generations of the enslaved family (Patterson 1982: 143).
Despite that, contrary to slavery in China or the enslavement of Africans to the New World, the nobi enjoyed considerably more familial cohesion and integrity, and unlike China, their enslavement wasn't "overwhelmingly predicated on the destruction of the bonds of kinship of those enslaved" (Wyatt 2023: 30-31).

虽然日本、韩国、越南等国家的奴隶制度一般是以中国为参照，但在整个东亚文化圈中，高丽与朝鲜时期，可能是东亚奴隶制度发展最独特的地方。
尤其是在朝鲜王朝时期，奴隶几乎遍布整个王国，总人口中超过 30% 都是奴隶，这使得它成为东亚古代罕见的“奴隶社会”案例之一。
朝鲜的奴隶阶层完全由血统决定，而且形成了一种极其僵硬、近似种姓制度的身份体系，奴隶家庭一代代承受奴役。
尽管如此，与中国或非洲奴隶制不同，朝鲜奴隶在家庭完整性方面反而保存得较好，他们的奴役制度并不会摧毁被奴役者的亲族纽带。

Wyatt (2023) also said that, contrary to other types of slavery, many nobi "possessed property and civil rights and held legal entities," which raises the question if they should be considered "slaves" at all and likening them instead to European-style serfs (p. 7). Nonetheless, Kim (2023) still considers that they should be regarded as slaves since they were legally regarded as property that could be bought, sold, and gifted (p. 319). Many nobi certainly had the right that bore a close semblance to the situation of Korean commoners in the sense that they "were permitted their own houses, families, land, and fortunes, and were registered officially as independent family units" (Kim 2004: 155).
Chosŏn Korea followed the same Chinese binary and broadly social stratification of "good" people vs. "base" people, and slaves could also be partitioned between public/government slaves or private slaves, but contrary to China, Korean slaves were the bedrock of agricultural production. Korean Elites were completely dependent on slave labor for agricultural production as well as the expansion of their land estates (Kim 2023: 321-25).

与其他地区的奴隶制不同，朝鲜奴隶很多拥有财产、民事权利，并具有法律权利，这就产生了一个问题：他们究竟是否应该被称为“奴隶”，还是更类似欧洲的农奴。
不过有的历史学家仍然认为他们应被视为奴隶，因为在法律上他们确实是可以被买卖和赠与的财产。很多朝鲜奴隶的权利与平民非常接近，他们被允许有自己的房屋、家庭、土地与财产，并被登记为独立户籍”。
朝鲜沿用了中国那种“良 vs 贱”的二元社会划分，也同样存在官奴与私奴的区分。但与中国不同的是，朝鲜的农业生产就是以奴隶为基础进行的。
朝鲜的精英阶层完全依靠奴隶劳动来进行农业生产以及扩张他们的土地庄园。

Aupmanyav
In India, some castes did not mind their women to be concubines of kings for financial benefits. Entertainers, musicians, singers, snake charmers and acrobats (Kalbelia, Nat). Some such women were very influential in their states. Kings made palaces and lakes for them.

在印度，有些种姓并不介意让他们的女人成为国王的妾，以换取经济利益。表演者、音乐家、歌手、耍蛇人和杂技演员等人便如此。其中一些女人在她们的邦国中非常有影响力。国王为她们建造宫殿和湖泊景观。

Chornedsnorkack
Ah yes.
And that ties to one issue about delimiting "slavery"... how do you draw a line between "wife" and "slave"?

啊，是的。
而这就涉及到关于“奴隶”的界定问题了……你怎么区分“妻子”和“奴隶”呢？

Aupmanyav
Well, men too are slaves of their wives. I would not think of transgressing what my wife orders. We have been together for nearly 59 years. Celebrate our diamond marriage anniversary in February 2027 (God permitting). Hope we survive till that time.

嗯，男人也同样是妻子的奴隶。我绝不会违背我妻子的命令。我们一起生活了将近59年了。如果神允许的话，2027年2月我们将庆祝我们的钻石婚。希望我们能活到那时。

songtsen said:
I am not talking about royal concubines. Women did not have many rights in medi India .. arguably muslim women had more rights than Hindus and Sikh women had most rights of all.

不要拿王室这种特殊例子举例。中世纪的印度女性权利并不多……可以说穆斯林女性都比印度教女性拥有的权利多，而锡克女性的权利最多。

Aupmanyav
Depends on the family. No one would think of transgressing what Nonna says in many families. Marriages took place as they said, some of them were absolute dictators and a scare to their daughter-in-laws. My mother's grandma was one such.
I would not know about Koreans and Chinese. I described what it was where I was born and raised up - Rajasthan. Now, if a king has chosen a woman from, where it was (sort of) permitted (lower castes), then there was no escape. You may term it as slavery.

在很多印度家庭里，没有人会违背祖母说的话。婚姻就是按她们说的来办，其中有些祖母简直就是独裁者，让儿媳妇们都害怕。我母亲的外祖母就是这样的人。
我只是描述我出生和成长的地方——拉贾斯坦邦的情况。话说回来，如果一个印度国王选择了某个女人，而且是在允许（较低种姓）的范围内，那这位女子就完全没得逃。你也可以称之为奴隶制。

robto said:
In the 16th century, there was indeed an attempt by the Portuguese and their Asian Maritime Empire to establish a slave trade center around the East Asian Sea, but that was largely unsuccessful. But that's another story for another time.

16世纪，称霸海洋的葡萄牙人确实尝试在东亚海域建立一个奴隶贸易中心，但总体上并不成功。不过这是另一个话题了。

At Each Kilometer
During Imjin War, lots of Koreans were enslaved, brought to Japan, where they were sold, including to Portuguese merchants in Nagasaki; because of their numbers they were cheap. I read that Portuguese themselves banned Korean and Japanese slave trading after this war, is it true and if it is, what were their motives for the ban?

壬辰倭乱期间，许多朝鲜人被奴役，被带到日本，在那里被出售，包括卖给长崎的葡萄牙商人，因为数量太多所以很便宜。我读到说葡萄牙人在这场战争之后禁止了朝鲜人和日本人的奴隶贸易，这是真的吗？如果是真的，他们禁止的动机是什么？

robto
The history of the banning of the slave trade in Portuguese maritime Asian empire is complex. The Portuguese colonial administrators and merchants always wanted to expand the slave trade in the Asian seas, but the Church had always been somewhat opposed to it ever since the late 1560s, or so. Since that period the Bishopric of Goa, as well as the Jesuits, Dominicans, and the Franciscans promulgated laws throughout the maritime empire to regulate the enslaving of Asians, albeit those decrees were difficult to enforce, considering that the Portuguese maritime trade had slavery as one of their most important activities, and members of the clergy themselves, including many Jesuits, had slaves of their own, and even actively participated in the trade.

葡萄牙禁止奴隶贸易的历史非常复杂。葡萄牙的殖民管理者和商人一直希望扩展亚洲海域的奴隶贸易，但自1560年起，教会就一直在一定程度上反对这一行为。从那个时期起，果阿主教区，以及耶稣会、道明会和方济各会推动颁布法律来规范对亚洲人的奴役，尽管这些法令很难执行。原因在于葡萄牙本身将奴隶贸易视为海上贸易的核心活动之一，而且许多神职人员，包括许多耶稣会士，自己也拥有奴隶，甚至积极参与贸易。

There was indeed a phenomenal decree by the then King Sebastian I banning the slave trade in Japan in 1570, and in 1571 extending that ban to Bengal, China, and the Molucca Islands who belonged to the Portuguese. According to Lúcio de Sousa (2019), the reasons for that ban was the pressure that the leading Jesuits put on the Portuguese King in that the prohibition of slavery sought essentially to avoid friction between the Japanese and the Portuguese, as this could hinder evangelization and trade, in which the Society of Jesus took part (p. 495).

1570年，葡萄牙国王塞巴斯蒂昂一世颁布了一项重要法令，禁止在日本进行奴隶贸易；1571年，这一禁令扩展到孟加拉、中国和摩鹿加群岛。这项禁令的原因主要是受到耶稣会领袖的压力，禁止奴隶贸易本质上是为了避免日本人与葡萄牙人之间的摩擦，因为这种摩擦可能会阻碍传教和贸易，而耶稣会更希望开展传教和贸易。

That ban was also not successful. The government in Goa didn't want to enforce it, since it economically and socially depended too much on slavery, and merchants could always find loopholes, such as buying slaves from Muslims, or buying Korean captives from the hands of the Japanese. We can consider that the real ban of the Portuguese slave trade in Asia, happened when the local authorities: Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu in Japan; late Ming Dynasty in China - actively enforced a policy of preventing the Portuguese to buy slaves in the China seas.

然而，这项禁令同样没有真正成功。果阿政府不愿强制执行，因为当时的经济和社会在很大程度上依赖奴隶制度，而商人总能找到漏洞，比如从穆斯林手中购买奴隶，或者从日本人手中购买朝鲜俘虏。可以说，是东亚国家遏制了葡萄牙在亚洲的奴隶贸易。日本的丰臣秀吉和德川家康，以及中国明朝，这些国家有效阻止了葡萄牙人在东亚海域贸易奴隶。