The field of slavery studies has seen significant growth among China historians in recent decades, but it appears that authors and users of standard texts on world history have yet to incorporate the new findings, and that old stereotypes and fallacious claims still abound in their coverage of slavery in China. This roundtable intends to bridge the glaring information gap by bringing a group of China historians currently engaged in slavery studies into conversations with one another and with the broader community of historians and educators at the AHA. The surge of new scholarship on slavery in China derives from multiple sources. The gradual shift away from the orthodox, Marxist historiography and its presumed five-stage model of human history (primitive society, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, and communism) that bracketed the practice of slavery to the period from around 2200 to 500 BCE, has opened up other periods of Chinese history as proper subjects for slavery studies among Chinese scholars. Meanwhile, new analytical perspectives from critical theory, women and gender studies, ethnic studies, frontier studies, colonial studies, and global and comparative history, along with newly discovered archeological materials and non-traditional historical texts, have also greatly expanded the intellectual horizons and repertoires of scholars in the field. This emerging scholarship has begun to significantly revise and complicate our understanding of the ideas and practices of slavery in Chinese history.

The six of us on the roundtable work on different time periods and facets of Chinese history. Drawing on our original research and comprehensive review of current literature, we will attempt to provide a bird’s-eye-view of what major facts have been established about slavery in Chinese history, the state of current scholarship, and primary and secondary sources accessible to non-China specialists. Some questions we will explore are: What forms did slavery take in Chinese history? How did ideas about slavery and bondage, the institutions of slavery, and relevant administrative and legal regulations evolve over time in China? How did power structures of gender, ethnicity, and social class play a role in shaping this history? How was the practice of slavery in China unique when compared to that in other societies? How was slave trade in China connected to the global market? What attempts were made to abolish slavery in imperial China and what motivated them? How successful were they? What are some of the controversies and cutting-edge research questions and methodologies in this field? And finally, what sources are available in English for teaching slavery in Chinese history? This roundtable discussion will be an opportunity for the six of us to update each other, and for us to receive constructive feedback on our own work from the audience.