What happened to coercion? Categories of work and preconceptions in early-modern Chinese labour history

This (review) essay is an invitation for historians of China to re-examine the field of coercion in early-modern Chinese history, not only as a means to revise the significance of bound labour but also as a way to revisit the social worlds of the Ming and Qing dynasties in a more comprehensive manner. Historians of China have paid a great deal of attention to work and labour relations. However, coercion seems to have somewhat evaporated in recent scholarship. This relative lack of attention results from a shift away from (over-)emphasising the working masses as victims of “feudal” exploitation. But it is also the result of vague terminology, of hasty translations and of unquestioned preconceptions. In particular, a consensus seems to have emerged that Chinese society, from the 18th century onwards, has been dominated by a free labour market. I argue that this assumption derives from unreflective transpositions of the analytical frameworks of the modern West and of a misrepresentation of the Qing policies targeting “mean people” and “hired workers”.