User:Gimme danger/Sandbox/Serf

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Serfs

Prior to Communist takeover, Tibet was a feudal society[citation needed]. There were two main classes: the serfs and the aristocratic serf owners.[citation needed] The condition those serfs lived in varies based on location and land owners, some in extreme poverty[citation needed] and some can grow enough food to be immune to famine. Author Israel Epstein described in some worse cases serfs had to hand over children to the manor as household slaves or nangzan, because they were too poor to keep them alive. [1]But in some other areas, according other western travellers, many serfs were able to feed themselves.[2] Sources from many origins estimated the percentage of serfs of the population. However, discussion of this subject is handicapped by the lack of solid data.[3]

Goldstein argues that although serfdom was prevalent in Tibet, this did not mean that it was an entirely static society. There were several types of serf sub-status of which one of the most important was the "human lease" which enabled a serf to acquire a degree of personal freedom. This was because it offered an alternative in which, despite retaining the concept of lordship, the serfs were not bound to a landed estate. [4]

[edit] Slaves

Slavery has been documented in old Tibet.[5], and its severity and extent has been debated among historians. According to historian Michael Parenti, the offspring of slaves were born slaves. [6]

Slaves had fewer rights than serfs. They had no right to own or grow crops.[7][8] Like other slaves from other eras and countries, slaves were often starved, beaten, or even worked to death. The master of serfs had the right to turn a serf into a slave anytime he wanted.[citation needed] Children were routinely bought and sold in Lhasa.[citation needed]

The legal system prevented escape. Former serfs explained to writer Anna Louise Strong that before Chinese government took over, "You could not live in Tibet without a master. Anyone might pick you up as an outlaw unless you had a legal owner." [9]

Sir Charles Bell, a British colonial officer, also a renowned Tibet Scholar and a personal friend of the 13th Dalai Lama said:

"Slaves are sometimes stolen, when small children, from their parents. Or the father or mother being too poor to support their child would sell it to a man, who paid them "sho-ring," "price of mothers' milk," brought up the child and kept it or sold it as a slave ..."

"Two slaves I saw ... had been stolen from their parents when five years old, and sold in Lhasa for about seven pounds each."[10]

However he also remarked:

"The slavery in the Chumpi valley was of a very mild type. If a slave was not well treated, it was easy for him to escape into Sikkim and British India."[11]

[edit] End of Serfdom and Slavery

The CCP did not abolish serfdom immediately after 1951, because China promised that it would preserve the existing social order: the Seventeen-Point Agreement makes that clear. The CCP also made use of forcible corvée labor in order to build infrastructure and requisitioning supplies.[12]

After the relationship with communist government worsened, Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959, and communist government started to abandon serfdom. Many serfs were allowed to grow their own crops and vegetables, under communist system.[13] one serf said in Anna Louise Strong's report:

"In the past you didn't dare wash your face, for the overseer would think you were showing off, but now you wash your face several times a day. You even wash your hair and your dirty shirts. You sing out loud in the fields without worry. If you sang in the fields formerly, the boss would say: ' You'll attract the hail from the heaven. Will you take the responsibility for that"' But now you sing as much and as loud as you like. We put new words to the old songs. We even have dramas and dances at the rest period in the fields."[14]


On the other hand, the CCP policy to force Tibetan to form people's communes and to grow wheat instead of barley left a legacy of poverty in Tibet and the region was the poorest in China by 1979.[15]

[edit] Resources

The Making of Modern Tibet [1] by A. Tom Grunfeld

When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet [2] by Anna Louise Strong

A History of Modern Tibet [3] by Melvyn C. Goldstein

The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama [4] by Melvyn C. Goldstein

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth [5] by Michael Parenti

The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet By Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder[6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Tibet Transformed. by Israel Epstein Pg.46
  2. ^ The Story of Tibet by Tomas Laird, Pg 319
  3. ^ The Story of Tibet by Tomas Laird, Pg 318
  4. ^ Serfdom and mobility: an examination of the institution of "human lease" in traditional Tibetan society. By Melvyn C. Goldstein. Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 30, no. 3(May 1971) pg 521-34
  5. ^ Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain,: Travels in New Tibet (Monthly Review Press, 1964), page 110
  6. ^ Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth by Michael Parenti
  7. ^ Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25
  8. ^ Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth by Michael Parenti
  9. ^ When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet, by Anna Louise Strong
  10. ^ The Making of Modern Tibet by A. Tom Grunfeld page 15
  11. ^ Charles Bell, Tibet Past and Present, 79.
  12. ^ Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows, 134f
  13. ^ When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet, by Anna Louise Strong, page 265
  14. ^ When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet, by Anna Louise Strong, page 270
  15. ^ Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows, 371.