Abstract
This essay offers a new perspective on the evolution of a regime of labor management employed during the formative period of China’s first empires. It analyzes the convict-labor system as historically contingent upon the state’s effort to control manpower in general; and it argues that official policies that reduced the costs required to run a convict regime contributed to commodification of labor in the Qin and Han empires, in turn facilitating the transition to a market-based recruitment of labor. The essay also looks at the consequential impact that the regime had on the historical trajectory of slavery. The shift of state control of labor resources from direct mobilization of subjects to monetary taxation and employment of a paid workforce involved the legal recognition of slaves as household members who were targeted by the universal capitation tax. Coupled with a low rate of land taxation, these fiscal measures strongly discouraged large-scale employment of slave labor in the private economy, resulting in very low levels of slave ownership in the mature Han empire and the development of alternative forms of private dependency.
Keywords
convict labor, slavery, labor market, early Chinese empires, state control of labor resources
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