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Don J. Wyatt

Middlebury College

Exactly how and approximately when during the Tang dynasty (618-907) did the mainly seafaring merchant-visitors who the Chinese had already for centuries customarily referred to as the Kunlun come instead to be preyed upon for enslavement? What were the precipitating factors and influences that, within hardly more than a century, succeeded in permanently transforming the collective image of the Kunlun in Chinese consciousness from that of being regular rivals of the Persians, Arabs, 鈥淏rahmans鈥� (Indians), and others in the thriving coastal trade conducted especially at the great seaport of Guangzhou into one of basically indigents who, dispossessed of their wealth, were now targetable for also being stripped of their freedom? Crucially, regarding the central question of the humanness of the Kunlun as it was culturally perceived in the eyes of Tang Chinese, our careful interrogation of the relevant surviving sources will reveal enslavement paradoxically to have been an unexpectedly pernicious exacerbator rather than an attenuator of their marginalization.