Purrcy in autumn sun; Blogcomment: Chinese textile taxes
Sep. 30th, 2025 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mecurtinPurrcy was loving being petted while being as close to outside in the lovely fall sunshine and smells as he could get. Even though we're in NJ, we have *coyotes* as well as foxes, Great Horned Owls, & motor vehicles--it's much safer to be indoor-only, as well as better for the birds.
This week (well, last week) Bret Devereaux continued his series on "Life, Work, Death and the Peasant" with Part IVd: Spinning Plates, about women's traditional work: household textile production. Devereaux's expertise is on Rome, broadening to the Meditteranean and premodern European more generally. I commented:
I also pointed out that although, unlike in the west, Chinese women's labor was a crucial & explicit part of the state's tax system, and the marriage system relied on bride prices, not dowries (which are supposed to be better, maybe?, for women's rights)--yet neither factor gave women rights, respect or control.
I also got to tell someone about how Iceland used to use cloth as currency.
This week (well, last week) Bret Devereaux continued his series on "Life, Work, Death and the Peasant" with Part IVd: Spinning Plates, about women's traditional work: household textile production. Devereaux's expertise is on Rome, broadening to the Meditteranean and premodern European more generally. I commented:
Women's textile production was *even more important* in China than in western Eurasia, believe it or not. The saying "Men till, women weave" was the classic expression of the gendered division of labor for more than 2000 years. Since the time of the Han dynasty at least both men and women were subject to taxation. Depending on the dynasty, either the household had to provide both grain and textiles, or each adult male was assessed an amount of grain, each adult female, textiles.I linked to my comment on Bluesky, and suggested that Chinese peasant households were probably more *efficient* at producing textiles than West Eurasian ones were, because they HAD to produce surplus to the household's needs: enough for the family, plus enough for taxes.
The cash value of the grain & textile taxes tended to be roughly equal (see, e.g. Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China, p. 186), but it's rare to see either primary sources or scholars admit it: the life-or-death significance of the grain tax, and the grain harvest, absolutely dominates everyone's thinking. But (as Bray shows) up until the Single-Whip Tax reform of the late 16thC (after which all taxes were rolled into one, to be payed in silver) women's textile production wasn't just a foundation of the home, it was a foundation of the *state*.
As is usual for premodern technology, most of the technical innovations Dr Devereaux mentions above were invented in China several centuries (at least) before they appeared further west. Originally, Chinese tax textiles were hemp in the north, silk in the south. Cotton became important starting around the time of the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, and spread rapidly. I don't know enough about the workflow for hemp and cotton textile production to know how much of it went to spinning. The workflow for silk production is very different: silk is "reeled", because it comes off the cocoons as long threads, several of which need to be twisted together to make a workable floss.
I also pointed out that although, unlike in the west, Chinese women's labor was a crucial & explicit part of the state's tax system, and the marriage system relied on bride prices, not dowries (which are supposed to be better, maybe?, for women's rights)--yet neither factor gave women rights, respect or control.
I also got to tell someone about how Iceland used to use cloth as currency.
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