Editing Concubinage (section)

{{Short description|State of living together as spouses while unmarried}}
{{Redirect|Concubine|the modern legal term|Concubinage (law)|other uses}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2024}}
{{Close Relationships|types}}
'''Concubinage''' is an [[interpersonal relationship|interpersonal]] and [[Intimate relationship|sexual relationship]] between two people in which the couple does not want to, or cannot, enter into a full marriage.{{sfn|The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History|2008}} Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar, but mutually exclusive.{{sfn|The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History|2008|p=467}}

During the early stages of European colonialism, administrators often encouraged European men to practice concubinage to discourage them from paying prostitutes for sex (which could spread venereal disease) 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 require wives from the metropole, hence 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 at the same time contributing to domesticity and the separation of public and private spheres.<ref>Ann L. Stoler, 1989, "Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Colonial Cultures., ''American Ethnologist, 16(2): 634-660.''</ref>

In [[China]], until the 20th century, concubinage was a formal and institutionalized practice that upheld concubines' rights and obligations.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2011|p=203}} A concubine could be freeborn or of slave origin, and her experience could vary tremendously according to her master's whim.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2011|p=203}} During the [[Mongol conquests]], both foreign royals<ref name=":02"/> and captured women were taken as concubines.<ref>{{cite book|author=Peter Jackson|title=The Mongols and the West 1221–1410|date=May 2014|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kMCCBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT64|publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]]|isbn=9781317878988}}</ref> Concubinage was also common in [[Meiji Japan]] as a [[status symbol]].<ref name=a05/>

Many Middle Eastern societies used concubinage for reproduction.{{sfn|The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History|2008|p=469}} The practice of a barren wife giving her husband a slave as a concubine is recorded in the [[Code of Hammurabi]].{{sfn|The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History|2008|p=469}} The children of such relationships would be regarded as [[Legitimacy (family law)|legitimate]].{{sfn|The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History|2008|p=469}} Such concubinage was also widely practiced in the premodern Muslim world, and many of the rulers of the [[Abbasid Caliphate]] and the [[Ottoman Empire]] were born out of such relationships.{{sfn|Cortese|2013}} Throughout Africa, from Egypt to South Africa, slave concubinage resulted in [[Miscegenation|racially mixed]] populations.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=The Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations: S-Z|entry=slave labor/slavery|page=1530}}</ref> The practice declined as a result of the [[abolitionism|abolition]] of slavery.{{sfn|Cortese|2013}}

In [[ancient Rome]], the practice of ''[[concubinatus]]'' was a monogamous relationship that was an alternative to marriage, usually because of the woman's lesser 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 the concubine by granting concubines and their children the sorts of property and inheritance rights usually reserved for wives.{{sfn|The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History|2008|p=471}} In [[European colonies]] and American [[slave plantation]]s, single and married men entered into long-term sexual relationships with local women.{{sfn|Historical Dictionary of Slavery and Abolition|2014|p=122-123}} In the [[Dutch East Indies]], concubinage between Dutch men and local women created the mixed-race Eurasian [[Indo people|Indo]] community. In India, [[Anglo-Indian people|Anglo-Indians]] were a result of marriages and concubinage between European men and Indian women.{{sfn|Hagemann|Rose|Dudink|2020|p=320}}

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.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia
 |title = Concubinage
 |encyclopedia = Encyclopædia Britannica
 |url = https://www.britannica.com/topic/concubinage
 |access-date = 2021-10-25
}}</ref> 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).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Long |first1=Scott |title=Family, unvalued : discrimination, denial, and the fate of binational same-sex couples under U.S. law. |date=2006 |publisher=Human Rights Watch |location=New York |isbn=9781564323361 |url=https://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/us0506/10.htm#_Toc132691986 |access-date=29 November 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Halho |first1=H.R. |title=The Law of Concubinage |journal=South African Law Journal |date=1972 |volume=89 |pages=321–332}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Soles III |first1=Donald E. |title=Truisms & Tautologies: Ambivalent Conclusions regarding Same-Sex Marriage in Chapin v. France |journal=Global Justice & Public Policy |date=2016 |volume=3 |page=149}}</ref>