On queues and contract-enforcement through hair in the Qing dynasty
The Qing Dynasty imposed a distinct hairstyle on its Han subjects—the queue (辮子). A queue is the iconic 19th century Chinese hairstyle. The front hemisphere of the head shaven, the rear grown into a long braided tail.
It goes like this: imagine an outlying village, somewhere outside the direct zone of Qing military and political control. Depending on a certain Brownian motion, some months of the year the town is occupied by bandits, others by the Qing.
How can the ruling power enforce loyalty? How can the ruling power retroactively discover who among the villagers betrayed them in their absence?
The solution was to grow a symbol on the top of each subject’s head, a symbol that takes years to fully develop, and suffuse that symbol with the significance of loyalty.
This is the mechanism of this technology of enforcement: when bandits invade the village, queues signify loyalty to the Qing. Any man allowing his queue to be shaved thereby breaks his symbolic allegiance to the Qing. When the Qing retake the town, they can readily identify who has betrayed them.
