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7/15/2025, 9:32:02 PM
>>40730716
In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery.
In 1953, the greater part of the rural population—some 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000—were serfs. Tied to the land, they were allotted only a small parcel to grow their own food. Serfs and other peasants generally went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for the monasteries and individual high-ranking lamas, or for a secular aristocracy that numbered not more than 200 wealthy families. In effect, they were owned by their masters who told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. A serf might easily be separated from his family should the owner send him to work in a distant location. Serfs could be sold by their masters, or subjected to torture and death.
A Tibetan lord would often take his pick of females in the serf population, if we are to believe one 22-year-old woman, herself a runaway serf: “All pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished.” They “were just slaves without rights.” Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture and forcibly bring back those who tried to flee. A 24-year-old runaway serf, interviewed by Anna Louise Strong, welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” During his time as a serf he claims he was not much different from a draft animal, subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold, unable to read or write, and knowing nothing at all.
In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery.
In 1953, the greater part of the rural population—some 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000—were serfs. Tied to the land, they were allotted only a small parcel to grow their own food. Serfs and other peasants generally went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for the monasteries and individual high-ranking lamas, or for a secular aristocracy that numbered not more than 200 wealthy families. In effect, they were owned by their masters who told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. A serf might easily be separated from his family should the owner send him to work in a distant location. Serfs could be sold by their masters, or subjected to torture and death.
A Tibetan lord would often take his pick of females in the serf population, if we are to believe one 22-year-old woman, herself a runaway serf: “All pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished.” They “were just slaves without rights.” Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture and forcibly bring back those who tried to flee. A 24-year-old runaway serf, interviewed by Anna Louise Strong, welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” During his time as a serf he claims he was not much different from a draft animal, subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold, unable to read or write, and knowing nothing at all.
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