The Imperial Chinese Harem System persisted with only brief interruptions over almost all of China's dynasties (when there were splits, most or all of the factions had them) from 220 BCE to 1908 CE, about 2128 years!
This is a longer period of time, for example, than the entire history of Christianity, and the institution changed far more modestly during that time period than Christianity did.
During last days of China's final Qing Dynasty, which formally ended in 1912 with an Emperor's abdication (with a brief restoration that was not widely recognized later in the nineteen teens), however, it had already started to peter out:
The Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722) holds the record for having the most imperial consorts [in the Qing Dynasty] with 79, while the Guangxu Emperor (r. 1875–1908) holds the record for having the fewest, with one empress and two consorts—a total of just three imperial consorts.
Functionally, this system, somewhat like the Saudi Arabian monarchy's succession system, insured that the hereditary emperorship would not end for lack of an heir. It also provided a pool of potential heirs from which a worthy successor could be chosen, mitigating, although not entirely eliminating, the harm caused by the occasional "mad king".
3 comments:
Seems like one of those strange-but-true facts about unfamiliar cultures. But I guess China has had a lot of cultural continuity for thousands of years, this could just be a part of that...
I wonder if a bit of comparative haremology would put this in perspective. Did Hindu, Islamic, Christian civilization have anything like this? What about the ancient Middle East?
"I guess China has had a lot of cultural continuity for thousands of years"
Indeed, modern people literate in Chinese characters can read texts from this entire period with no more difficulty than a modern English speaker reading Shakespeare.
"Did Hindu, Islamic, Christian civilization have anything like this? What about the ancient Middle East?"
Many non-Christian ancient civilizations had such systems.
Re comparative examples see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem
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