Geographies of Coercion in Late Imperial China, 1400-1900- Dr Christoph Hess (King's College, University of Cambridge)

Why did slave and serf-like bondservant labour persist in the densely populated regions of eastern China until the early twentieth century? A common set of explanations links labour coercion to factor endowments: where labour was scarce relative to land, market wages were high, and landowners therefore relied on coercive arrangements such as serfdom to secure labour at below-market prices. 

China, however, which had the largest population of indentured labourers in the early modern world, is largely absent from these theories of labour coercion. Bringing China into the debate is not merely a matter of historical completeness. Contrary to many prevailing views, serf-like bondservitude persisted in the densely populated regions of eastern China until the seventeenth century and, in some areas, even into the twentieth, despite an apparent abundance of labour. 

The empirical challenges that China poses to existing theories of labour coercion are therefore substantial. This paper contributes not only to the growing literature on the origins of labour coercion, but also to the Great Divergence debate, within which the historical prevalence of labour coercion in Ming–Qing China has received scant attention.