1052 NOTES TO CHAPTER 6
tion from cruel and arbitrary punishment were admitted into law; the Emperor Con-
stantine further liberalized the law by prohibiting conspiracy to murder slaves and divi-
sion of slave property upon the death of the master (ibid .. p. 901). Niida discusses the
nature of slavery in Korea in pp. 904-5, largely based on the work of Sudo Yoshiyuki,
to be cited later.
See also Niida Noboru, "Chugokuho ni okeru dorei no chii to shujinken: doreiho shoshi"
[The position of slaves and the rights of masters in Chinese law], in idem, Chugoku ho
seishi kenkyu: d()rei nonoho, kazoku sonrakuho [Studies in the legal history of China:
Slave and serf law, family and village law] (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1962),
pp. 5-19. Originally published in Chugoku ho seishi [A history of the Chinese legal sys-
tem] (Tokyo: Iwanami zensho. 1952). Nishijima raised the question of the half-
human/half-chattel thesis, but preferred to stress the importance of social status in the
Chinese system of slavery. Nishijima Sadao, "Chugoku kodai nuhisei no saikosatsu"
[Another investigation of the ancient slave system in China], in Kodaishi koza [A course
on ancient history] (Tokyo: Gakuseisha, 1963) 7: 162-73; Hamaguchi Shigekuni, Toocho
no senjin seido [The base person system of the Tang dynasty] (Kyoto: Toyoshi kenkyukai,
1966), pp. 18-6r. Wilbur simply discusses slaves as chattel, in C. Martin Wilbur, Slav-
ery in China During the Former Han Dynasty, 206 B. C. -A.D. 25 (New York: Russell
and Russell, 1943), pp. I 18-26.
Contrary to Niida's description of classical Western slavery, M. I. Finley has written
of the "ineradicable double aspect of the slave, that he was both a person and property,"
asserting that neither of the two theoretical extremes - of the slave as property or the
perfectly free man - has ever existed. "A person possesses or lacks rights, privileges,
claims and duties in many respects .... The combination of these rights, or lack of them,
determines a man's place in the spectrum, which is, of course, not to be understood as a
mathematical continuum, but as a more metaphorical, discontinuous spectrum, with gaps
here, heavier concentrations there." Finley, Ancient Economy, pp. 63, 67-68. Patterson
has also stated in similar fashion that, "As a legal fact, there has never existed a slave-
holding society, ancient or modern, that did not recognize the slave as a person in law."
Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1982), p. 22.
- Patterson, Slavery and Social Death.
- KRS 85Aob-4Ia.
- Kwanghaegun ilgi 80:13a, Kwanghaegun 6.7.pyong'in (1614). The Kwanghae-
gun ilgi is included in Kuksa p'yonch'an wiwonhoe [National Historical Compilation Com-
mittee] ed., Choson wangjo sillok [The veritable records of the kings of the Choson
dynasty] (Seoul: Tongguk munhwasa, 1955), vols. 26-32. See also the memorial of the
Saganwon in ibid. 87:la, Kwanghaegun 7.2.kimyo (1615); cited in Hiraki Makoto,
"Shipch'il segi e issoso ui nobi chongnyang" [The attainment of commoner status by
slaves in the seventeenth century], Han 'guksa yon 'gu 3 (March 1969): I09, 119.
- Sukchong sillok, 21A9b, Sukchong 15.12.urhaek (1689), cited in Yi Sangbaek,
"Ch'onja sumogo" [A study of the inheritance of the mother's status by slaves], Chin-
dan hakpo 25, no. 7 (December 1964): I75.
