Though that there was shock in Rome at the treatment of sacked “cultured” Greek cities like Corinth, that was never felt for similarly brutally treated barbarian cities. Not that it stopped Romans buying the resulting enslaved Greeks and their looted artwork. But there were some strongly worded laments spoken before doing so.
Those hairy barbarians also kept slaves, of course.
Was there anything in the ancient world similar to the industrial slavery of the modern age? Slavery of a whole ethnic group, with essentially no hope of ever being freed, no hope of ever rising in social status, seen as one step up from an animal (if that)? Not trying to gloss over the many horrifying practices of ancient days, but I can’t think of an example.
Yes absolutely (though it was never racially or ethnically based as discussed above). The huge influx of 100s of thousands of slaves that resulted from the the Roman conquests in the late Republic was very much comparable to the transatlantic slave trade IMO.
It radically altered the Roman economy, and had a lot to do with the ultimate collapse of the republic (as allow the creation of huge slave-run estates by a few rich Romans, rather a large number of small holding farmers)
I think a good analogy would be that owning a slave in ancient times was about the moral equivalent of owning a pet in modern times. People will generally think it’s morally wrong if you beat your dog or don’t feed it properly or work it to death. But very few people will think it’s morally wrong for you to own a dog.
And that’s the way society used to see owning slaves. You could be seen as immoral if you were abusing your slaves. But just owning them was not seen as immoral.
Who knows? Go forward a thousand years into the future and maybe they’ll look back at us in horror for owning animals. Maybe we’ll be seen as even worse than slave owners; nobody was raising slaves so they could kill and eat them.
I presume you mean America until your civil war? Of course. There were slave plantations in the ancient Roman empire. Slaves were exported en mass to the Ottomans from east Africa. Persians transported Romans to their eastern borders. Arab slavers raided UK coasts and as far as Norway and Iceland. Vikings raided the UK and traded slaves to Constantinople and as far as western China. Africans raided each other for internal use and for sale to Arab slavers. And so on. The list is worldwide and lamentable.
There were 6 - 7 million black slaves taken to America over a 250 year period; Wikipedia says there were estimated to be 2 - 3 million slaves in Italy alone in the 1st century AD.
You might also look at slavery in the Dutch East Indies:
Then, of course, there’s the whole feudal setup in medieval Europe and Japan.
And so on. It’s a long and lamentable list. And thankfully we have learned to be better. Ingeminating on the past serves little purpose save perpetuating hatred.
You might also read this Wikipedia article about slavery within Africa.
This is the thing. In the Good Old Days there was no welfare, there was no bankruptcy “orderly payment of debts”. There was no jail where people were sentenced to sit in a cell and do nothing. To avoid having huge groups of unemployed, unfed poor wandering the streets, people were sold as slaves if they could not support themselves. (Plus, of course, what to do with those barbarian tribes or combative cities to remove future threats).
So a slave was like a servant that did not get a wage. In the days before labour-saving mechanical devices, that was also a benefit for the owner - without washing machines, laundry could be a chore to occupy someone for much of a day. Ditto food preparation before mass market bakeries. Even shopping, including walking to market and back and carrying groceries, took a lot of time. And so on…
This was just a social convenience. It was a way to ensure everyone was taken care of without creating a massive bureaucracy of welfare or food distribution. Take note that the governments of the day were perpetually starved for funds just for the tasks they already performed; and before computers, more complex and invasive taxes were to complex to be managed. Indeed the tax collection system of the day was a giant pyramid scheme, so not too efficient.
Some societies, slaves were the equivalent of servants. For example they could own property, up to and including being able to buy their own freedom from their savings. (I don’t recall if this was the case for Rome) Educated Greeks who ended up slaves were in demand, as mentioned above, as tutors and sometimes to run the local owner’s business affairs.
You can still visit the Zanzibar slave market - now a church built over the site by missionaries, but the original slave cells are still preserved. Raiders and traders would bring convoys of slaves chained neck to neck and manacled, kept mixed so they could not communicate or conspire with neighbours; from the African interior they were brought to Zanzibar, where along with spices, slaves were traded to the Arabs and Persians and shipped north.
One of the dirty secrets that apologists don’t want to acknowledge was that many of the slaves brought from Africa to America were bought from the coastal Africans who raided and collected slaves to sell to the Europeans… In return for, among other things, the weapons to help capture more.
What do you mean “apologists don’t want to acknowledge”? That’s a strange thing to say.
There were the Jews in Egypt, if you believe the Old Testament version.
Another good example might be the helots. The Spartan system had Spartiates at the top, who included Gerard Butler and other guys in leather underpants. Then they had several ranks of Second-Class non-Spartiates, which included women, impoverished Spartans, and non-Spartan residents of Lacedaemonia. At the bottom of the pyramid were the helots.
The helots were somewhat analogous to black Americans in the antebellum South, in the sense that they were a permanent slave underclass. They very definitely perceived themselves as a nation, and constantly agitated for rebellion against their masters. The Spartans, meanwhile, had a powerful army but never really put it to use. All those mighty Spartans had to stand guard over the helots, and they were loathe to embark on military expeditions that would provide a chance for a domestic helot revolt.
The analogy is not perfect. The biggest difference is that while helots were very definitely a permanent non-Spartan slave caste, they were nonetheless still Hellenes. The racial categories (eg by skin color) we have today did not truly exist then. On the other hand, Greeks were highly provincial. Their divisions were between poleis. An Athenian visiting Sparta would be like an American flying to the Kremlin.
I once visited a slave fort in Ghana. :eek:
Yes, in the late Republic and Empire, most slaves were the result of losing a war. And since too often the other choice was lining them up and killing them, slavery wasnt all that horrible.
If you were a Citizen and resident of the city of Rome, there was welfare, a grain dole “bread and circuses”. First welfare I know of.
And yes, many Roman house slaves could buy their freedom- some were even quite rich. It was also quite normal for slaves to be freed in their master’s will.
The Spartan subjugation of the Helotsseems pretty close to me.
Sounds like a dog whistle.
But I recall Cicero going up-country to the estate to turn out old slaves who were to old to work.
That’s why I said “under the Empire”. Cicero lived at the end of the Republic. Laws for the protection of slaves began to be introduced from the middle of the first century AD onwards.
Interesting that the Empire had more “liberal” laws than the Republic. Thanks, Julius Caesar!
Also–I’ll take the contrarian position–Cicero was a dick.
Though that was a supply and demand issue. The huge conquests that resulted in the enslavment of 100,000s were mostly over by then. So there was no longer an inexhaustible supply of slaves.