I guess it depends on how you define slave. One could argue that women were for all intents and purposes slaves up until 150 years ago, depending on how you define the word slavery (they had few/no legal or property rights, their husbands were their masters, violence was acceptable, etc).
But historically what % of humans would have been slaves in 2000, or 1900, or 1800, 1500, 0, 1000 BC, 3000 BC, etc?
In 1850 in the US, about 15% of the population was enslaved. I wonder if that is lower or higher than most of human history.
“upwards of two to three million slaves in Italy by the end of the 1st century BCE, about 35% to 40% of Italy’s population”
There must be a tipping point where too high a percentage of slaves leads to unrest and rebellion in a society. Either this estimate is too high, or the definition of slaves in Italy is too broad.
And that wasn’t even all of it. The little episode that propelled Kirk Douglas to immortality is also known as the *Third *Servile War.
1st century BC was probably as bad as it got for slaves in Italy, both in terms of numbers and treatment. Yeah, I guess you could say that they ran into the tipping point.
I was going to make a similar point, but I don’t have anywhere GQ-level knowledge to do so.
IIRC, the term “slave” in Roman times meant something very different than it did on an 1820’s sugar plantation in the Caribbean or 1820s cotton plantation in Georgia.
Both kinds of “slaves” were less-than-first-class members of their society. But after that the differences were huge. Or at least that’s what I once read in a reasonably reliable source.
Hoping an expert can come along & enlighten us on Roman practice.
I’m not sure that Roman slavery was quite the same as perhaps US slavery. Many of them were high class and could be considered to be involuntary guests rather than menial workers.
There is even one Caesar Pertinax who was the son of a freedman
It’s also worth noting that not all slaves in ancient Rome were on chain gangs. They also included, say, highly educated Greeks that you might get to tutor your children. And everything in between.
Furthermore, you weren’t necessarily a slave for life. A slave in the Roman Empire could have a reasonable expectation of being freed (a practice known as manumission), which I suppose was a decent incentive not to rebel. Freedmen could go on to do as well for themselves as almost any other free born citizen. The Emperor Claudius famously employed several freedmen on his staff, as he preferred them to the backstabbing politicians of the Roman senatorial class. And he wasn’t the only one.
Edit: What **LSLGuy **and **jezzaOZ **said. (Note to self: remember to refresh thread before posting…)
Lets not have too rosy a view of Roman slavery. Manumission happened, but the majority of Roman slaves were agricultural or mining slaves, who had no real contact with their masters, and who could reasonably expect to die in slavery, and in the case of slaves in the mines, to die fairly quickly, Roman mining safety standards not being up to ours.
Even later in history, there is still somewhat of a blurry line between slaves and people who were not exactly considered first-class citizens.
We tend to think of slavery as American-style chattel slavery where slaves have almost no rights. This wasn’t true for a lot of history - slaves could have the right to own property, travel somewhat freely with the expectation that they would return to perform applicable duties, etc., do outside work for profit or a wage after the master’s work had been done, and perhaps even the right to buy their own freedom.
Get into Feudal Europe, and the difference between an enslaved fieldhand and a villein farmer who owes X bales of wheat a year to master as well as X days of labor becomes quite blurry indeed.
Good point about feudal Europe, and that does help show how blurry the categories are.
Roman style slavery in western Europe disappeared not because of an abolitionist movement or anything like that. Rather, after the Western Empire faded away, the elite’s power over the lower classes grew so much that there was not really any point in maintaining slavery as a separate institution – you could already treat poor people pretty much however you wanted, so why bother to distinguish between people who are technically free or not?
I’d like to echo several of the fine points already made about Roman slavery. Wide spectrum of types of slavery – white collar professions like medicine and education staffed by slaves, but the vast majority of slaves caught in the worst kind of chattel slavery on the big farming estates and mines. Decent amount of manumission for those lucky enough to be house/white collar slaves, freedmen get limited citizen rights and the guarantee that their children will have the full rights of free people.
Percentages are hard to figure, but a significant chunk of the population was slave, and there were lots of freed slaves around too. The Senate is supposed to have considered legislation that would require slaves to wear some kind of identifying badge, but killed the idea when it was pointed out that this would allow slaves to realize how vast and powerful their numbers were.
I’d ball park it at 25%, maybe go up to 35%. One thing about the evidence that drives us crazy is that the archaeology in Italy has not produced evidence of the vast slave population. Current thought is that they were there, but did not leave much of a trace in the archaeological record. Makes one wonder though, especially when the influx of enslaved people is supposed to be what leads to the demise of the Republic.
Further problems in categorization – slavery in the Ottoman Empire. Lots of civil servants, soldiers technically slaves owned by the Sultan, but able to have normal careers and even gain a great amount of power.
Anybody have a take on China? I believe they did a lot of forced labor as legal punishment. Would that count?
Really? Was that legally, so that slave X owned slaves Y and Z outright, but was owned by A himself? Or would the legal situation be that A owned them all and assigned Y and Z as personal attendants to X because X was his favorite/did the most important work/whatever?
This is true. On the other hand, you were usually a slave because your tribe revolted against Rome or as a punishment instead of prison. As opposed being a slave as your skin was the wrong color and you were a sub-human.
I have heard it said that “enlightened” societies deemed a persons background as irrelevant if they were able, the Ottomans deemed his free/slave status as irrelevant.
Roman slavery had a curious side, absolute overlordship on the one hand, but slaves treated as part of the family on another.
An interesting form existed amongst the soldiers in the Army. Until the third century AD they were not allowed to marry, and having concubinage with local women might be frowned upon as a way to avoid the letter of the law, so it was common for them to buy a slavewoman for the job. Surprisingly, some of these relationships seemed to have been quite happy for both parties, we have examples of Tombstones of soldiers dedicated by these women.
Or because your parents were slaves. But you’re right, Roman slavery wasn’t racial, they’d enslave anybody. In a way, American attitudes about slavery were more similar to Greek attitudes, in that the Greeks believed that there were some people who were naturally slaves and others naturally masters, whereas the Romans said that slavery was a simple matter of force. No one was naturally a slave or a master, but you were a slave because you were forced to be one.
Theoretically slaves could not own property so the owner was the legal owner of them all.
However in fact slaves could accumulate money which they could use to buy their own freedom so theory doesn’t seem to match practice too well.
You see vague echoes of this in English Stately homes years ago when the senior servants had personal servants of their own. e.g. The Butler’s parlourmaid. Bill Bryson describes this in one of his books. Again there is some ambiguity as to who the employer actually was.
Not that any of this makes Roman slavery a doddle. There were strict rules about slaves and so for instance if one slave killed his owner then all the household slaves would be publicly executed. See Tacitus Annals 14 Chapter 42-45
If you’re interested in slavery in ancient Rome, check out Jerry Toner’s “How to Manage Your Slaves, by Marcus Sidonius Falx” republished in the US with the boring title “The Roman Guide to Slave Management.”. Toner looks through Roman sources to see exactly how Romans dealt with their slaves, and even gives you a fun narrator to boot.