Slaves or Relatives: Legal Disputes in Imperial Household Department during Early Qing China

This paper examines the legal disputes of inheritance and familial care among banner people under the Qing Imperial Household Department during the late seventeenth century. I problematizes a common assumption that views slaves as a fixed legal and administrative category. Instead, the paper reveals that a gray zone exists between slaves versus adopted sons, slaves versus stepmothers, and slaves versus half-brothers within banner households.

After the tumultuous dynastic transition of 1644, Manchuria and North China saw a great wave of labor shortage and a skewed sex ratio in local societies. The demand for human labor and wives was especially urgent for bannermen who served and provided their corvee labors for the Imperial Household. In order to solve this problem, they acquired human resources through markets and the customary practice of adoption. Adopted sons, wives, and female servants from the Han Chinese societies became members of banner households. Legal disputes of whether the externally obtained people could inherit property or should take the responsibility of caring for the elderly entered the dossiers of Manchu high officials stationed in Mukden and Beijing. Though the people without bloodlines claimed themselves as adopted sons or wives, their opposite parties at legal courts identified them as slaves (Ma: booi aha) when disclaiming their legal rights. By dealing with the disputes surrounding banner people’s legal statuses, the Manchu state came to terms with the problem that intersected institutional slavery with familial practice.