Research Articles

 

Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2017

 

Between “Small” and “Big”: Evolution of the Identification of Corvée Labor from the Warring States Period to the Western Jin

(Abstract)

 

Zhang Rongqiang

 

In the later Warring States period, Qin state used the criteria of both height and age to identify corvée labor. “Small” (xiao) and “big” (da) were labels for height, but they were only first level categories. Under “small” were the subcategories of “able” (nengzuo) and “unable” (wei nengzuo); under “big” were the subcategories of “getting old” (huanlao) and “old, eligible for exemption” (mianlao), distinguished by age. Not long after the sixteenth year of King Zheng of Qin (221 BCE), Qin began to adopt a new system for corvée labor identification, which was based totally on age criterion and allowed “old” (lao) and “small” to coexist. The Han Dynasty had two sets of systems for corvée labor identification. One comprised the categories of “small,” “small, not yet registered” (xiao weifu), “laborer” (ding), “getting old,” and “old, eligible for exemption,” in which “small, not yet registered” and “laborer” were not official categories. The other, inherited from the Warring States system, classified corvée labor as either “small” or “big.” The categories of “small” and “big” in the Han Dynasty system appear identical to those in the system of the Warring States period, but they differed considerably from the latter in terms of both their nature and the age range involved. The legally determined categories of “small,” “secondary laborer” (ciding), “laborer,” and “old” that emerged in the Western Jin Dynasty corresponded to the stages and titles in the Han Dynasty system.