Lecture 10: Money and virtue
Introduction: the alignment of state and literati interests?
 Reminder: what were the main issues discussed last time? (symbiotic, endemic)

What is the significance to the Ming (1368-1644) of a change that happened in the Yuan
(1260-1368)? (ideology, lineages, manpower, standard histories, inheritance, levirate, dowry)
Jennifer Holmgren, ‘Observations on marriage and inheritance practices in early Mongol and
Yüan society, with particular reference to the levirate’, Journal of Asian History, 20:2
(1986), 127-92.
Bettine Birge, Women, property and Confucian reaction in Sung and Yüan China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Three aspects of the background situation
 What is the significance of ideology, lineages and manpower? (widow chastity, Song shi
(Sung shih), agnates, communal fams, corvée, occupational categories)
Chinese widows and inheritance
 How did the rules and practices of Chinese family life affect widows of different social
classes? (natal)
Mongol widows and inheritance
Naomi Standen
HIS 2033 Imperial China
7 March 2016
1

How did the rules and practices of Mongol family life affect widows of different social
classes? (polygamous, patrimony, residual)

Who chose what? (outside remarriage, widow-chastity, levirate)

Why did the Yuan rulers change the law? (1272, 1276, 1303)

What was the impact on Chinese women?
Naomi Standen
HIS 2033 Imperial China
7 March 2016
2