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Slavery in China has taken various forms throughout history. Never as absolute as its Muslim or European models, Chinese slavery still often viewed its objects as "half-man, half-thing" (半人, 半物).[1] Slavery was repeatedly abolished as a legally-recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[2][1] fully enacted in 1910,[3] although the practice continued until at least 1949.[4]

Men punished with castration during the Han dynasty were also used as slave labor.[9

Slavery in the ancient world, specifically, in Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoners of war.[1]

hard lives. In some of the city-states of Greece and in the Roman Empire, slaves formed a very large part of the economy, and the Roman Empire built a large part of its wealth on slaves acquired through conquest.

The difficulty of distinguishing between slaves and levied peasant labour has bedevilled the study of this subject. Private ownership of slaves, captured in war and given by the king to their captor, certainly occurred at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550 - 1295 BCE). Sales of slaves occurred in the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (732 - 656 BCE), and contracts of servitude survive from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (ca 672 - 525 BCE) and from the reign of Darius: apparently such a contract then required the consent of the slave.

  Slavery, or involuntary subjection to another or others, existed in every ancient civilization, such as Sumer, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, parts of the Roman Empire, and so on. People were enslaved for various reasons, including slave raiding, sale of insolvent debtors and capture in war; slaves commonly were recognized as property, assets that could be bought and sold. In the Chinese empire (c. 211 BCE - 1912 CE), slavery existed throughout all dynasties, although numerous aspects of slavery did not remain the same. The word "slave" itself changed many times, nubi () in the Han period, yinke () in Jin, booi aha () under Manchu rule, and so on. The function and position of slaves in Chinese economy shifted several times as well.             This paper will briefly describe the initiation of slavery before Imperial China, and proceed to analyze several aspects about slavery in each dynasty of the Chinese Empire; I will discuss the changing definition of a slave, how slaves became slaves, abolition of slavery and ways to gain freedom, and the degree of dependence or power slaves held in society. The paper is organized in chronological order, but details of slavery in several dynasties existing before Ming and Qing can be scarce due to the lack of attention slaves received prior to Manchu rule.

Christianity was founded in the 1st century by the followers of Jesus of Nazareth who they believed to be the Christ or chosen one of God.

Peter, Matthew, James and John,

influenced by accounts of his teachings such as the Gospel writers Mark and Luke,

The prevailing academic consensus is that gunpowder was discovered in the 9th century by Chinese alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality.[16] By the time the Song Dynasty treatise, Wujing Zongyao (武经总要), was written by Zeng Gongliang and Yang Weide in AD 1044, the various Chinese formulas for gunpowder held levels of nitrate in the range of 27% to 50%.[17] By the end of the 12th century, Chinese formulas of gunpowder had a level of nitrate capable of bursting through cast iron metal containers, in the form of the earliest hollow, gunpowder-filled grenade bombs.