Concubinage
Concubinage is an interpersonal and sexual relationship between two people in which the couple does not want to, or cannot, enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar, but mutually exclusive.
During the early stages of European colonialism, administrators often encouraged European men to practice concubinage to discourage them from paying prostitutes for sex and from homosexuality. Colonial administrators also believed that having an intimate relationship with a native woman would enhance white men's understanding of native culture and would provide them with essential domestic labor. The latter was critical, as it meant white men did not need wives from the metropole, and thus did not require a family wage. Colonial administrators eventually discouraged the practice when these liaisons resulted in offspring who threatened colonial rule by producing a mixed-race class. This political threat eventually prompted colonial administrators to encourage white women to travel to the colonies, where they contributed to the colonial project while also reinforcing domesticity and the separation of public and private spheres.
In China, until the 20th century, concubinage was a formal and institutionalized practice that upheld concubines' rights and obligations. A concubine could be freeborn or of slave origin, and her experience could vary tremendously according to her master's 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.
Ancient Near Eastern societies used concubinage for reproduction. The practice of a barren wife giving her husband a slave as a concubine is recorded in the Code of Hammurabi. The children of such relationships would be regarded as legitimate. Such concubinage was also widely practiced in the Muslim world until the abolition of slavery in the mid 20th century, and many rulers of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire were born of such relationships. Throughout Africa, from Egypt to South Africa, slave concubinage resulted in racially mixed populations. The practice declined as a result of the abolition of slavery.
In ancient Rome, the practice of concubinatus was a monogamous relationship that served as an alternative to marriage, often because of the woman's lower social status. Widowed or divorced men often took a concubina, the Latin term from which the English "concubine" is derived, rather than remarrying, so as to avoid complications of inheritance. After the Christianization of the Roman Empire, Christian emperors improved the status of concubines by granting them and their children the sorts of property and inheritance rights usually reserved for wives.
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 between Dutch men and local women created the mixed-race Eurasian Indo community. In India, Anglo-Indians were a result of marriages and concubinage between European men and Indian women.
In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world, the term concubine has almost 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.
Etymology and usage
The English terms "concubine" and "concubinage" appeared in the 14th century, deriving from Latin terms in Roman society and law. The term concubine, meaning "a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him", comes from the Latin concubina and concubinus, terms that in Roman law meant "one who lives unmarried with a married man or woman". The Latin terms are derived from the verb from concumbere "to lie with, to lie together, to cohabit," an assimilation of "com", a prefix meaning "with, together" and "cubare", meaning "to lie down". Concubine is a term used widely in historical and academic literature, and which varies considerably depending on the context. In the twenty-first century, it typically refers explicitly to extramarital affection, "either to a mistress or to a sex slave", without the same emphasis on the cohabiting aspect of the original meaning.Concubinage emerged as an English term in the late 14th century to mean the "state of being a concubine; act or practice of cohabiting in intimacy without legal marriage", and was derived from Latin by means of Old French, where the term may in turn have been derived from the Latin concubinatus, an institution in ancient Rome that meant "a permanent cohabitation between persons to whose marriage there were no legal obstacles". It has also been described more plainly as a long-term sexual relationship between a man and a woman who are not legally married. In pre-modern to modern law, concubinage has been used in certain jurisdictions to describe cohabitation, and in France, was formalized in 1999 as the French equivalent of a civil union. The US legal system also used to use the term in reference to cohabitation, but the term never evolved further and is now considered outdated. In Switzerland, the term is still used as of 2025 for a legal status of cohabitation without marriage.
Characteristics
Forms of concubinage have existed in all cultures, though the prevalence of the practice and the rights and expectations of the persons involved have 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. In slave-owning societies, most 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 able 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 include differences in social rank status, an existing marriage and laws against bigamy, religious or professional 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 home 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 person from a poor family 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 alternative to marriage.
In polygynous situations, the number of concubines that were permitted within an individual concubinage arrangement has varied greatly. In Roman law, where monogamy was expected, the relationship was identical 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, powerful men kept as many 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".
Categorization
Scholars have made attempts to categorize patterns of concubinage practiced in the world.The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology gives four distinct forms of concubinage:
- Royal concubinage, where politics was connected to reproduction. Concubines became consorts to the ruler, fostered diplomatic relations, and perpetuated the royal bloodline. Imperial concubines could be selected from the general population or prisoners of war. Examples of this included imperial China, the Ottoman Empire and the Sultanate of Kano.
- Elite concubinage, which offered men the chance to increase social status and satisfy desires. Most such men already had wives. In East Asia this practice was justified by Confucianism. In the Muslim world, concubines were slaves.
- Concubinage could be a form of common-law relationship that allowed a couple who did not wish to marry to live together. This was prevalent in medieval Europe and colonial Asia. In Europe, some families discouraged younger sons from marriage to prevent division of family wealth among many heirs.
- Concubinage could also function as a form of sexual enslavement of women in a patriarchal system. In such cases the children of the concubine could become permanently inferior to the children of the wife. Examples include Mughal India and Joseon Korea.
Antiquity
Mesopotamia
In Mesopotamia, it was customary for a sterile wife to give her husband a slave as a concubine to bear children. The status of such concubines was ambiguous; they normally could not be sold but they remained the slave of the wife. However, in the late Babylonian period, there are reports that concubines could be sold.;Old Assyrian Period
In general, marriage was monogamous. "If after two or three years of marriage the wife had not given birth to any children, the husband was allowed to buy a slave in order to produce heirs. This woman, however, remained a slave and never gained the status of a second wife."
;Middle Assyrian Period
In the Middle Assyrian Period, the main wife wore a veil in the street, as could a concubine if she were accompanying the main wife, or if she were married. "If a man veils his concubine in public, by declaring 'she is my wife,' this woman shall be his wife." It was illegal for unmarried women, prostitutes and slave women to wear a veil in the street. "The children of a concubine were lower in rank than the descendants of a wife, but they could inherit if the marriage of the latter remained childless."