So when did Europeans decide that it was no longer OK to enslave other Europeans. I assume it had something to do with the adoption of Christianity and Feudalism during the closing years of the Roman empire? When was “white” slavery finally abolished?
Enslaving non-Europeans presumably was not huge deal until the early colonial era, but there was always some contact with non-Europeans. Were they always just assumed to “non-people” who could be enslaved at will, or was there an actual point at which it was ruled OK by the religious/political authorities in Europe.
Not for the purposes of this question. I realize there is a grey area, and probably plenty of serfs in the dark ages had worse lives than some of their enslaved predecessors in the Roman Empire.
But this question I am talking about actual slaves, unambiguously owned as property, not exploited peasants with limited freedoms.
When did Europeans stop enslaving Europeans?
Generally in the 1600s-1800s, depending on which European country you consider. When did they start enslaving non-Europeans?
At least since the Ancient Greeks, probably much earlier, depending on where your “Europe” ends and your “Asia” begins.
Where do you get these dates? Not a sarcastic question, I’m genuinely interested, as I have always understood that slavery in Western Europe faded out after the fall of the Roman Empire and with the rise of Christianity (serfdom besides).
Well, in 1641, Cromwellshipped tens of thousands of Irish to the West Indies as slaves–it was not in any way “forced indentured servitude”. The fact that he could do such a thing suggests that the basic legal concept of slavery was still in play.
For a given value of “European”, Peter the Great abolished slaveryin Russia in 1720. Mind you, he turned them into serfs so he could better tax them, so it wasn’t quite as progressive as it sounds.
Again, for a given value of European, the Turks enslaved thousands of Christians as “Prisoners of War” up through the 18th C, and "Prisoner of War: didn’t always mean “hauled off a battlefield, having lost”–it could mean “living in a town in the Balkans and not having anyone to ransom you”.
One thing worth noting is that hereditary slavery is a lot less common than slavery. I’m honest to god not sure what happened to the children of Cromwell’s Irish slaves–it’s entirely possible that none really survived past a generation or two, and they’d have been stuck there–but I think it would have been a lot more problematic for Cromwell to have sentenced their line to perpetual slavery.
Forms of Serfdom existed in many parts of Europe until the beginning of the 19th century, in Russia even longer than that.
In Prussia for instance, the Leibeigene, as they were called, could not leave their village, they had to get permission by their master if they wanted to marry, they had to work and they were subject to a special form of jurisdiction.
Remember too, that since Roman times slavery also did not mean the same as what we think of in the US south. Slaves had certain rights, could have their own possessions and money, etc. They could buy their freedom. Many slaves in Rome were educated and elite and did trusted jobs in the household. The concept of slaves as a separate “subhuman” race treated like cattle was more of a concept dreamed up in the new world and especially the USA.
(There’s a Brazilian missionary who helped slaves in the gold mines there buy their freedom through the gold washed from the dust in their hair after a day in the mines, back in the 1800’s. )
The other wiki page describes them as being sent to “penal colonies”. Probably not a massive practical difference for the poor sods involved, but that is not the same thing as slavery.
So I guess that makes an somewhat more tractable question:
When did hereditary slavery of Europeans end in Christian, Western Europe? At what point after that did hereditary slavery of non-Euopeans begin ? (or was it only ever ended for Europeans).
Yeah, but it does get blurry at the edges. It is not the same thing as chattel slavery, but penal servitude could certainly skirt the edge. For example French “galley slaves” were typically a mixture of prisoners-of-war and criminals sentenced to terms of no less than ten years. They were branded ( with the letters GAL ) and in practice the difference between them and “actual slaves” wasn’t much - especially as most of them wouldn’t make it ten years or more on the galleys anyway. It was often functionally a death sentence.
Then again so was being forcibly conscripted into the Russian army in most of the 18th century, when the length of service was life and the conditions appalling ( quite deliberately, to save on the budget ). Nobody seems to count them as slaves per se, but the difference is pretty much semantics.
As to hereditary slavery in Western Europe, if you count Scandinavia as “western” thralldom seems to have lingered into the 12th-14th century ( depending on region, it was last abolished by Sweden in 1343 ) and that was hereditary through the mother ( i.e. a female thrall gave birth to little thralls even if the dad was a king ).
But you can find similar timelines for other countries, I’m sure. For example (ETA as Tamerlane said) - Huguenots were used as honest-to-Hastur galleyslaves in France in the 18th Century! You just can’t get much more slave-y than being a galley slave, IMO.
Picture the times: Newton’s done his best work already, in Florence they’re inventing the piano and in Weimar JS Bach is just starting up, the whole Enlightenment is in full swing, especially in France…and in that same France, people die chained to oars because they don’t kiss the Pope’s ring.:smack:
I certainly don’t want to defend antebellum slavery in the American South, but this overstates the case regarding the South’s legal and philosophical view of slaves.
A weird but quite common feature of pro-slavery propaganda was to claim that slavery was actually beneficial to the slaves. The secession declaration of Texas on the eve of the Civil War declared that the “beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery” was “mutually beneficial to both bond and free”. The slaves were referred to as “inferior” in so many words, but I don’t think many pro-slavery propagandists would have referred to the slaves as “subhuman”–claiming they were “child-like” was much more common.
Legally speaking, slaves in the pre-war South did have some rights. The 1798 Constitution of Georgia, 1845 Constitution of Texas, and 1861 Constitution of Alabama all provided that the penalty for murdering or dismembering a slave should be the same as that for murdering or dismembering a free person, although in all cases there was a loophole that killing or maiming slaves was permissible in the case of insurrection by the slave (the 1798 Georgia Constitution also providing you could get away with killing a slave “by accident in giving such slave moderate correction”). Texas and Alabama both also provided that slaves were entitled to a trial by jury in prosecutions of crimes “of a higher grade than petit larceny”–though that would, of course, have been an all-white jury. Alabama’s 1861 constitution also stated that “The humane treatment of slaves shall be secured by law”.