Slavery in medieval East Asia, much as in Europe of the same era, came to be defined chiefly in terms of legal status. Yet, despite their overtly shared and dehumanizingly essentialist premises, the legal principles of slavery as practiced in medieval East Asia and correspondingly in the West evinced several stark operative differences. Possibly most striking among these differences is that whereas legal statutes in medieval Europe functioned mostly toward the purpose of depriving the enslaved of rights, the legal provisions of medieval East Asia tended to confer upon slaves some basic protections, such as the right not to be capriciously killed by one’s master. This propensity for the laws pertaining to slavery in medieval East Asia, in contrast to those of Europe, to extend some modicum of standing before the law to the enslaved will be shown to have had consequential and far-reaching implications, not only for the modern sustainability of slavery as an institution but also for its eventual abolition. 

This talk is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided starting at 4:00 p.m.

About Don Wyatt

Don J. Wyatt (A.B. Beloit; A.M., Ph.D. Harvard), John M. McCardell, Jr. Distinguished Professor since 2010, has taught both history and philosophy at Middlebury College since 1986. He specializes in the intellectual history of China, with research most currently focused on the intersections between identity and violence and the nexuses between ethnicity and slavery. He is the author of The Blacks of Premodern China (2009) and Slavery in East Asia (2023), with the latter being a contribution to the Cambridge Elements Global Middle Ages series. He is editor for the forthcoming four-volume set on ethnicity and race in Bloomsbury Publishing’s The Medieval World series. He is a co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas, immediate past chair of the newly established Diversity and Equity Committee of the Association for Asian Studies, and an incoming member of the Inclusivity and Diversity Committee of the Medieval Academy of America. 

Special Thanks

Many thanks to Pomona College Professor Samuel Yamashita of the History Department and Coordinator of Asian Studies Program for co-organizing this special guest talk with the Asian Library of The Claremont Colleges Library.