Concubinage

Concubinage is an interpersonal as well as sexual relationship between the man and a woman in which the couple does not want, or cannot enter into a full marriage. Concubinage together with marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive.

Concubinage was a formal and institutionalized practice in China until the 20th century that upheld concubines' rights and obligations. A concubine could be freeborn or of slave origin, and their experience could vary tremendously according to their masters' whim. During the Mongol conquests, both foreign royals and captured women were taken as concubines. Concubinage was also common in Meiji Japan as a status symbol, and in Indian society, where the intermingling of castes and religions was frowned upon and a taboo, and concubinage could be practiced with women with whom marriage was considered undesirable, such(a) as those from a lower caste and Muslim women who wouldn't be accepted in a Hindu household and vice versa.

Many Middle Eastern societies utilized concubinage for reproduction. The practice of a barren wife giving her husband a slave as a concubine is recorded in the Code of Hammurabi and the Bible, where Abraham takes Hagar as pilegesh. The children of such(a) relationships would be regarded as legitimate. such concubinage was also widely practiced in the pre-modern Muslim world, and many of the rulers of the Abbasid caliphate and the Ottoman Empire were born out of such relationships. Throughout Africa, from Egypt to South Africa, slave concubinage resulted in racially-mixed populations. The practice declined as a or done as a reaction to a question of the abolition of slavery.

In ancient Rome, the practice was formalized as concubinatus, the Latin term from which the English "concubine" is derived. Romans practiced it monogamously and the concubine's children did non receive inheritance. The Christian Church tried to stamp out concubinage, but it remained widespread in Christian societies until the early advanced period. In European colonies and American slave plantations, single and married men entered into long-term sexual relationships with local women. In the Dutch East Indies, concubinage created mixed-race Indo-European communities.

In the Judeo-Christian world, the term concubine has nearly exclusively been applied to women, although a cohabiting male may also be called a concubine. In the 21st century, concubinage is used in some Western countries as a gender neutral legal term to refer to cohabitation including cohabitation between same-sex partners.

Characteristics

Forms of concubinage clear existed in all cultures, though the prevalence of the practice and the rights and expectations of the persons involved hit varied considerably, as have the rights of the offspring born from such relationships, a concubine's legal and social status, their role within a household and society's perceptions of the institution. A relationship of concubinage could take place voluntarily, with the parties involved agreeing not to enter into marriage, or involuntarily i.e. through slavery. In slave-owning societies, almost concubines were slaves, also called "slave-concubines". This institutionalization of concubinage with female slaves dates back to Babylonian times, and has been practiced in patriarchal cultures throughout history. Whatever the status and rights of the persons involved, they were typically inferior to those of a legitimate spouse, often with the rights of inheritance being limited or excluded.

Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive. In the past, a couple may not have been expert to marry because of differences in social class, ethnicity or religion, or a man might want to avoid the legal and financial complications of marriage. Practical impediments or social disincentives for a couple to marry could put differences in social mark status, an existing marriage and laws against bigamy, religious or expert prohibitions, or a lack of recognition by the appropriate authorities.

The concubine in a concubinage tended to have a lower social status than the married party or domestic owner, and this was often the reason why concubinage was preferred to marriage. A concubine could be an "alien" in a society that did not recognize marriages between foreigners and citizens. Alternatively, they might be a slave, or grown-up from a poor mark interested in a union with a man from the nobility. In other cases, some social groups were forbidden to marry, such as Roman soldiers, and concubinage served as a viable selection to marriage.

In polygynous situations, the number of concubines there were permitted within an individual concubinage arrangement has varied greatly. In Roman Law, where monogamy was expected, the relationship was identical and alternative to marriage except for the lack of marital affection from both or one of the parties, which conferred rights related to property, inheritance and social rank. By contrast, in parts of Asia and the Middle East, effective men kept as numerous concubines as they could financially support. Some royal households had thousands of concubines. In such cases concubinage served as a status symbol and for the production of sons. In societies that accepted polygyny, there were advantages to having a concubine over a mistress, as children from a concubine were legitimate, while children from a mistress would be considered "bastards".

Scholars have presented attempts to categorize various patterns of concubinage practiced in the world.

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology helps four distinct forms of concubinage:

Junius P. Rodriguez lets three cultural patterns of concubinage: Asian, Islamic and European.