Chinese Social History
* Family
- Patriarchal
-> patrilinear
-> three
generations ruled by oldest man
-> oldest
woman ruled over female side
=> only way
for a woman to rise was wait for oldest woman to die
- individual never
faces world alone
* Women’s roles
- subordinate in
family and public
- required a dowry
to unload
-> moved to husband’s family, contributed to them
- poor families
sold daughters
->
prostitution, slavery, service
- female
infanticide
-> can’t
afford a dowry
-> girls can’t
do proper religious sacrifices
-> a useless
mouth to feed
- By Han period,
emperors had harems
-> graded into
levels like bureaucracy
- female rulers
-> Empress Lü
as regent (195 - 180 BC)
-> only 1
official Empress, Wu, (683 to 705 AD)
* Class Structure
- 4 basic classes
(ranked in honorific order)
->
scholar-officials
=>
well-educated, respected
-> farmers
=> could
move up to scholar official
=> the salt
of the Earth
-> artisans
=> hard to
escape
=>
considered a bit leech-like
-> merchants
=> hard to
escape
=>
considered very leech-like
=>
Confucians hated the profit motive as anti-social
=> Legalists
thought merchants detracted from State power
=> a
necessary evil
=> highly
taxed
=>
government created national monopolies to compete with and weaken/destroy
=> perhaps a
reason why innovation fell behind Europe
- basically, a
conservative agrarian philosophy
* Population
- from Han on,
cylcing from 15 million to 60 million
-> peace and
prosperity brought growth
=> pressure
on land
=>
deforestation
=>
impoverishment of peasants
-> war and
disasters (flood/drought) brought decline
=> relieved
land pressure
=> social
mobility
=> effective
land distribution
-> early
urbanization (3 cities of 300K by 1 AD)
=> by T’ang
times, 600s AD, 26 large cities
=> Ch’ang-an
had over a million by 600s AD
- 100 million by
1100 AD
-> same growth
and decline, but at higher level
-> cities of 4
million
=> largest
European city had 50,000 (1/80)
- 200 million by
1600
- 300 million by
1750
- 400 million by
1800
-> in Europe
and the US of 1800, there were about 80 million
- 1 billion by
1980s