East Asia and Pacific

Primary Sources On This Website

• Tang Figurine of Kunlun Youth (7th-8th century)
• Kunlun Slaves (8th-9th century)
• Bobali (9th century)
• Visit of a Persian Embassy (10th century)
• Foreign Slaves of Guangzhou (12th century)
• The Jingkang Incident (12th century)
• Khubilai Khan Hunting (13th century)
• Vestiges of Mongol Enslavement (14th century)
• Mibiki and Slavery in Medieval Japan (15th century)
• Portugal and the Japanese Slave Trade (16th century)
• The Law of Enslaving Starving Children (17th century and later)

Primary Sources Elsewhere

• Hirth, Friedrich, and W. W. Rockhill, trans. Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chï. St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911. Repr., New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., Arno Press, 1966. An updated and searchable translation with accompanying maps and commentary is available here: Shao-yun Yang, “A Chinese Gazetteer of Foreign Lands: A New Translation of Part 1 of the Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志 (1225).”
• Irwin, Graham W. Africans Abroad: A Documentary History of the Black Diaspora in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean During the Age of Slavery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
• Motomasa, Kanze. Sumida-Gawa. This is a noh play.
• Pires, Tomé. The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: an Account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, Written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515. Translated by Armando Cortesão. London: Hakluyt Society, 1944. Repr. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1990.

Selected Bibliography

• Abramson, Marc Samuel. “Deep Eyes and High Noses: Physiognomy and the Depiction of Barbarians in Tang China.” In Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo and Don J. Wyatt. London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, Taylor & Francis Books, 2003; paperback 2010.
• Abramson, Marc Samuel. Ethnic Identity in Tang China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
• Beemer, Bryce. “Southeast Asian Slavery and Slave Gathering Warfare as a Vector for Cultural Transmission: The Case of Burma and Thailand.” The Historian 71, no. 3 (2009): 481-506.
• Biran, Michal. “Forced Migrations and Slavery in the Mongol Empire (1206-1368).” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 76-99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• Boxer, Charles. Fidalgos in the Far East 1550–1770. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1948. Pp. 222–241.
• Chang Hsing-lang [Zhang Xinglang]. “The Importation of Negro Slaves to China under the T’ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907).” Bulletin of the Catholic University of Peking 7 (1930): 37-59.
• Chevaleyre, Claude. “Slavery in Late Ming China.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. This book is open-access.
• Cho, Bup-Jong. “Studies on the Kingship of Silla and System of Nobi” (신라왕권과노비제). The Research Institute For SILLA Culture: Dongguk University, 22 (2003). [In Korean]
• Crossley, Pamela Kyle. “Slavery in Early Modern China.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3, AD 1420 – AD 1804, edited by David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, 186-216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• De Sousa, Lúcio. The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan: Merchants, Jesuits and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Slaves. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
• Dikötter, Frank. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. 2nd edition. New York; London: Oxford University Press, 2015. 
• Duyvendak, J. J. L. China’s Discovery of Africa: Lectures Given at the University of London on January 22 and 23, 1947. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949.
• Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Women and the Family in Chinese History. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2002.
• Ebrey, Patricia Buckley and Maggie Bickford, eds. Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China: The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Emperor Huizong. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2014.
• Filesi, Teobaldo. China and Africa in the Middle Ages, tr. David L. Morison. London: Frank Cass, Central Asian Research Centre, 1972. 
• Hamilton, Scott. The Stolen Island: Searching for ‘Ata. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016.
• Hartman, Charles. The Making of Song Dynasty History Sources and Narratives, 960-1279, CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
• Hinsch, Bret. Women in Imperial China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.
• Hinsch, Bret. Women in Song and Yuan China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.
• Hirth, Friedrich. “Early Chinese Notices of East African Territories.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 30, no. 1 (1909): 46-47. 
• Hong, Sung-gi. Research on Koryo Nobis (고려시대의노비연구). (Sugang University Press, 1980). [In Korean]
• Horne, Gerald. The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.
• Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2017.
• Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the West, 1221-1410, 2^nd edn. London; New York: Routledge, 2018.
• Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Jean-Pierre Angenot, eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008.
• Junker, Laura L. “The Impact of Captured Women on Cultural Transmission in Contact-Period Philippine Slave-Raiding Chiefdoms.” In Invisible Citizens: Captives and Their Consequences, edited by Catherine M. Cameron, 110-37. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008.
• Kim, Bok-rae. “Nobi: A Korean System of Slavery.” In The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, ed. Gwyn Campbell, 153-165. London: Frank Cass, 2004.
• Kim, Bok-rae. “A Microhistorical Analysis of Korean Nobis through the Prism of the Lawsuit of Damulsari.” In What is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective, ed. Noel Lenski and Catherine Cameron, 403-429. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• Kim, Chong-sun. “The Slaves in the Silla Village Register.” (正倉院所藏新羅帳籍에나타난奴婢) The Korean Historical Review 123 (1989). [In Korean]
• Kim, Sun Joo. “My Own Flesh and Blood: Stratified Parental Compassion and Law in Korean Slavery.” Social History 44, no. 1 (2019): 1-25.
• Kim, Sun Joo. “Slavery in Chosǒn Korea.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. This book is open-access.
• Korean Historical Association (歷史學會). Nobi, Serf and Slave (노비·농노·노예). Seoul: Ilchogak, 1998. [In Korean]
• Kuhn, Dieter. The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China. Cambridge, MA; London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009; paperback 2011.
• Kye, Seung B. “Slavery in Medieval Korea.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 295-312. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• Lee, In-cheol. “Slave and the Role of Slave Labor in the Ancient Korea,” (한국 고대사회에서 노비와 노비노동의 역할) The Journal of Korean Ancient History 29 (2003). [In Korean]
• Lhim, Hak-Seong. “The Changes of the Nobi/奴婢 System and the Lives of Nobi in the Joseon Dynasty.” (조선시대 奴婢制의 推移와 노비의 존재 양태) Korea Historical Folklore Institute 41 (2013). [In Korean]
• Lim, Young-ae. “The ‘Lion and Kunlun Slave’ Image: A Motif of Buddhist Art Found in Unified Silla Funerary Sculpture.” Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 18, no. 2 (2018).
• Nelson, Thomas. “Slavery in Medieval Japan.” Monumenta Nipponica 59 (2004): 463-492.
• Petrie, Hazel. “Decoding the colours of rank in Maori society: what might they tell us about perceptions of war captives?” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 120, no. 3 (2011): 211-239.
• Petrie, Hazel. Outcasts of the Gods? The Struggle Over Slavery in Maori New Zealand. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2015.
• Pratt, Keith. Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea. London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2006.
• Reid, Anthony, ed. Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983.
• Tao, Jing-shen. The Jurchen in Twelfth-Century China: A Study of Sinicization. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
• Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland and Stephen H. West, eds. China under Jurchen Rule: Essays on Chin Intellectual and Cultural History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
• Ward, Kerry. “Slavery in Southeast Asia, 1420-1804.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3, AD 1420 – AD 1804, edited by David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, 163-185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• Whitfield, Susan. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 
• Wilensky, Julie. “The Magical Kunlun and ‘Devil Slaves’: Chinese Perceptions of Dark-skinned People and Africa before 1500.” Sino-Platonic Papers 122 (July 2002): 1-51.
• Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual, 4^th ed. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015. 
• Wyatt, Don J. The Blacks of Premodern China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
• Wyatt, Don J. “A Certain Whiteness of Being: Chinese Perceptions of Self by the Beginning of European Contact.” In Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions, edited by Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel. Modern East Asia in a Global Historical Perspective. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013; paperback 2014. 
• Wyatt, Don J. “The Image of the Black in Chinese Art.” In The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art, ed. David Bindman, Suzanne Preston Blier, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with Karen C. C. Dalton. Cambridge, MA; London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press/Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, 2017.
• Wyatt, Don J. “Cargoes Human and Otherwise: Chinese Commerce in East African Goods During the Middle Period.” In Early Global Interconnectivity Across the Indian Ocean World, Volume I: Commercial Structures and Exchanges, edited by Angela Schottenhammer. New York; Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 
• Wyatt, Don J. “Premodern Africans in China,” Oxford African American Studies Center (http://www.oxfordaasc.com/, 2020).
• Wyatt, Don J. “Slavery in Medieval China.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 271-294. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• Yang, Shao-yun. The Way of the Barbarians: Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019.

Contributors

Hannah Barker, Catherine Cameron, Lúcio de Sousa, Richard Eaton, Toby Harper, Frances Hisgen, Kim Bok-rae, Liam Nelson, Don Wyatt