Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

The history of China, for instance, saw continual and largely unsuccessful government campaigns to eradicate both brideprice and debt slavery, and periodic scandals over the existence of “markets in daughters,” including the outright sale of girls as daughters, wives, concubines, or prostitutes (at the buyer’s discretion) continue to this day.54 In India, the caste system allowed what were elsewhere de facto differences between rich and poor to be made formal and explicit. Brahmins and other members of the upper castes jealously sequestered their daughters and married them off with lavish dowries, while the lower castes practiced brideprice, allowing members of the higher (“twice-born”) castes to scoff at them for selling their daughters. The twice-born were likewise largely protected from falling into debt bondage, while for much of the rural poor, debt dependency was institutionalized, with the daughters of poor debtors, predictably, often dispatched to brothels or to the kitchens or laundries of the rich.