China
Chinese society was unique because it was shaped by the actions of the state. It was significant in the political power and social prestige of Chinese state officials - all males. Acting in the name of the emperor, bureaucrats represented the cultural and social elite of Chinese civilization for 2,000 years.
Confucius advocated selecting officials such as administrators based on merit and personal mortality rather than birth or well.
When the Han dynasty was established and its authority arose around 200 B.C.E., its rulers had each province send men of promise to the capital where they were examined and chosen for official positions based on their performances.
Emperor Wu Di - in 124 B.C.E., established an imperial academy where potential officials could be trained as scholars and learned about history, literature, art, and math with emphasis on Confucian teachings. It enrolled around 30,000 students by the end of the Han dynasty. This favored families who were wealthy enough to provide the years of education required. The ones who made it into the bureaucracy entered the realm of high privilege and great prestige.
Senior officials: moved around in carriages, had robes, ribbons, seals, and headdresses appropriate for their rank.
Lower officials: distinguished by speech, cultural sophistication, urban manners, and political authority.
Most officials came from wealthy families meaning they had land. By the 1st century B.C.E., growing populations, taxation, and debt generated many more landowners as impoverished peasants were forced to sell their lands to more prosperous neighbors.
Throughout the course of China's civilization, peasants accumulated the vast majority of the population. Nature, the state, and landlords combined made the peasants' lives more vulnerable. Peasants were oppressed in China and exploited; but they were also honored and celebrated in the official ideology of the state.
India
Caste system: "race" or "purity of blood"
-Evolved from a racially defined encounter between light-skinned Aryan invaders and the darker-hued native peoples.
-the top: Brahmins: priests whose rituals and sacrifices alone could ensure the proper functioning of the world.
-Kshatriya: warriors and rulers charged with protecting and governing society.
-Vaisya: commoners who cultivated the land. the first three classes came to be regarded as pure Aryans and were called the "twice-born."
-The Untouchables
Far below...
-Sudras: native peoples incorporated into the margins of Aryan society in subordinate positions.
-Jatis: occupationally-based groups.
India's caste system showed the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy and powerful.
Rome
Slavery: ownership by a master, possibility of being sold, working without pay, and status of "outsider" at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
In the Greco-Roman world, society was based on slavery.
Aristotle developed the notion that some people were "slaves by nature."
-By the time of Christ, the Italian heartland of the Roman Empire had 2-3 million slaves - 33-40% o the population.
-The vast majority of slaves had been prisoners who were captured in many wars that accompanied the creation of the empire. Thousands of people were enslaved with pirates also capturing them to sell them to Roman slave traders on the island of Delos. Some slaves also came from slave reproduction where slave mothers were regarded as slaves themselves.
*Romans regarded their slaves as "barbarians" - lazy, unreliable, immoral, prone to thieving, etc. They often worked chained together and worked as skilled artisans, teachers, doctors, business agents, entertainers, and actors.
*If a slave murdered his master, Roman law demands the lives of all of the victim's slaves. When one Roman official was killed by a slave in 61 C.E., every 1 of his 400 slaves was condemned to death. Brutal owners made their slaves' lives a living hell. Benevolent owners made life tolerable and sometimes granted slaves their freedom or allow them to buy their freedom.
Buddha and Solomon
"What has been will be again... there is nothing new under the sun" attributed to King Solomon and it was a despairing and sad view of changelessness and futility of human life. Buddhist teachings on the other hand, has the concept of impermanence - "everything changes, nothing remains without change."
Patriarchy which has assumptions of male superiority and dominance has not been challenged until the recent centuries and even then, it has continued to shape the lives and and the ways of thinking of the vast majority of humankind.
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