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Slavery: Inequality and Conflict, Identity and Culture, Continuity and Change
Introduction
(1) Slavery existed in most world societies, when they became large, complex, and characterized by inequalities. At the extreme end
of a universal spectrum of human relations of inequality, the term slavery refers to the condition of a person who is owned by another
in the same manner as animals and inanimate objects might be owned. In later centuries, historians use the term chattel slave to
designate the condition that exists when slaves retain no right of human consideration. One could purchase, use, or dispose of chattel
slaves with no restrictions or penalties for mistreatment. The range of human subjugation extends seamlessly from absolute
ownership, wherein masters may make use of slaves in any manner they so desire, through many levels of control. The dehumanizing
aspects of slavery are generally so appalling that we often fail to realize that it is but one form of coerced or "unfree" labor. Other
types of coerced (forced) labor include forced convict labor, some forms of serfdom 1, and some forms of indentured servitude (people
who agree to work to pay off a debt).
(2) Slavery probably first arose shortly after the Neolithic transition to agricultural cultivation, and is generally associated with
agricultural societies, but there are rare cases of hunter-gatherers using slave labor. Some historians, notably Karl Jacoby, have argued
that the domestication of animals during the Neolithic transition served as a model for human slavery. He notes that the methods used
in the control of livestock--chains, whips, prods, brands, etc.--were similar to those used for the control of human captives.
(3) In the ancient world, we find little moral concern about slavery, but Aristotle hints that some sort of anti-slavery sentiment existed
in Greece for a while. We learn of opposition to slavery in The Politics, where Aristotle writes, "Others say that it is contrary to nature
to rule as a master over a slave, because the distinction between slave and free is one of convention only, and in nature there is no
difference, so that this form of rule is based on force and is therefore not just" (The Politics). We have no information as to the identity
of those early abolitionists, but Aristotle's complex argument supporting the practice reappeared repeatedly in the centuries following
resulting in the objection to slavery disappearing for centuries. Christians and Muslims alike found ways in which the practice could
be made morally justifiable, generally with the caveat that one's fellow believers should not be enslaved. Moral and ethical questions
rarely troubled people much before the late seventeenth century.
(4) The irony has not escaped historians that slavery thrived for a long period in ancient Greece, Rome, and the South of the United
States--societies that were deeply concerned with individuality and civic freedom. We also note that the idea of free labor grew in
Europe even as Europeans and their American progeny (descendants) were accruing (collecting) vast wealth based on the labor of
slaves in far away places. Would the concept of freedom have arisen without the presence of slavery?
(5) The legacy of slavery and the forced migration of millions can be experienced in the contemporary world. Comparative studies
about attitudes toward coerced labor and slavery are essential to an understanding of societies' intellectual and economic
transitions. The subject is also of great interest to those who focus on the development of ethical systems and concepts of human
rights. Labor systems, including slavery and other forms of coerced labor, must be considered as we build our understanding of the
development of modern production systems. Some historians have argued that the industrialization that gave rise to the modern global
economic systems grew from the exploitation of slaves and others who were locked, to varying degrees, into coerced labor systems.
Understanding today's world requires an understanding of the circumstances of the laborers who built the infrastructure
(roads, bridges, communication systems, etc).
Slavery Viewed Through Inequality and Conflict
(6) Fundamental human inequalities emerge as systems of slavery around the world; these systems were fueled by both internal and
external sources of slaves.
(7) Slavery--a condition of servitude in which persons retain no control over the use of their own bodies or labor--represents the most
extreme form of inequality. Historians and anthropologists theorize about the beginnings of slavery, but the practice predates historical
records. The idea may have arisen following the domestication of animals, although of course, one must admit that the sequence of the
two events could have been reversed, or in fact, simultaneous. Some scholars have proposed that slavery evolved when some groups
of humans became sufficiently powerful to spare the lives of their enemies.
(8) The argument that it was a relatively benevolent development is not entirely convincing; slavery carries such enticing economic
benefits to the captor that one must dismiss pure altruism 2 as a motive. Societies (even into the twentieth century) have also sought to
1
Serfdom refers to the legal and economic status of some peasants under feudalism, specifically in the manorial economic system. A serf is a laborer who is bound to
the land. Serfs formed the lowest social class of the feudal society. Serfs differed from slaves in that serfs were not property themselves and could not be sold apart from
the land which they worked. Serfdom is the forced labour of serfs, on the fields of the privileged land owners, in return for protection and the right to work on their
leased fields.
2
being helpful to other people with little or no interest in being rewarded for one's efforts
1
compensate themselves for the damages done by criminals through forced labor. Enslavement is generally involuntary, although there
have been tragic circumstances (such as famines) when selling oneself or one's children into bondage was the best hope of survival.
Sometimes conditions of involuntary servitude are tantamount (equal, as good as) to slavery, but are disguised by other names, such as
serfdom or indentured labor, which are normally used to designate a degree of control which falls somewhat short of absolute
subjugation.
(9) Slaves clearly occupy the lowest rung in their social hierarchy. The argument that slaves docilely accepted their lot is belied
(contradicted) by the frequency of slave rebellions, such as the one led by Spartacus in the first century BCE, or the insurrection in
ninth-century Iraq where several thousand Africans mounted a rebellion lasting from 866 until 883, or the Haitian Revolution in which
slaves successfully overthrew their masters and formed a new government. The history of slavery is a study of inequality and conflict.
Ancient Forms of Slavery
(10) Slavery existed in ancient China and the Americas, just as it did in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In some places, including Egypt and
Mesopotamia, slavery never seems to have been an essential element in their production systems. Female household slavery was a
common feature, and other slaves--primarily war captives--engaged in labor-intensive activities like clearing fields or working on
large construction projects.
(11) During the Shang dynasty (1776-1122 BCE), slavery took on a more sinister aspect as hundreds of them were sacrificed during
ritual observances. That practice disappeared, but relatively small-scale slavery persisted until modern time despite occasional efforts
to end the practice. The Qin dynasty's efforts to end slavery and serfdom grew from their desire to limit the power of the aristocracy,
but it is doubtful whether slaves--probably never more than 2 percent of the population--were ever a major source of labor in China.
Reading: Slavery and Abolition in China
(12) The large estates of the aristocracy had been worked by slaves and by a serf class of peasants who turned over to the landlord a
substantial partion of what they grew. The Qin abolished slavery and took steps to bring into being a free peasantry. The members of
this group were numerous small landholders who could not evade the government's demands for taxes and who could serve in the
army and devote a portion of their labor each year to state projects.
Slavery in Ancient Greece
(13) Many of the successes of Greek civilization were attained through the use of slave labor. Perpetuating their way of life depended
on the continued acquisition of slaves, a matter of concern to many Greeks. They resorted to warfare, slave-raiding expeditions, and
piracy to acquire slaves, on the grounds that it was to the advantage of the captured barbarians to associate with the civilized Greeks
and learn from them (Aristotle, The Politics). Greek slaves were a part of everyday life and normally functioned within the established
family units.
(14) The notion of large-scale capital-intensive agricultural production does not seem to have become well established before the
Romans.
Reading: Conflicts between Slavery and Democracy
(15) It is important to keep in mind that Athenian democracy, the inspiration for the concept of democracy in the Western tradition,
was a democracy only for the relatively small percentage of the inhabitants of Attica who were truly citizens--free, adult males of pure
Athenian ancestry. Excluding women, children, slaves, and foreigners, this group amounted to 30,000 or 40,000 people out of a total
population of approximately 300,000--only 10 or 15 percent. Other democratic Greek city-states, less well known to us than Athens,
probably were equally exclusive.
(16) Slaves, mostly of foreign origin, constituted perhaps one-third of the population of Attica in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.,
and the average Athenian family owned one or more. Slaves were needed to run the shop or work on the farm while the master was
attending meetings of the Assembly or serving on one of the boards that oversaw the day-to-day activities of the state. The slave was a
"living piece of property," required to do any work, submit to any sexual acts, and receive any punishments that the owner ordained.
Some communities prohibited the arbitrary killing of a slave, and, for the most part, slaves in Greece were not subjected to the
extremes of cruelty in abuse suffered by slaves in other places and times.
(17) In the absence of huge estates there were no rural slave gangs, and most Greek slaves were treated like favored domestic servants,
often working together with the master or mistress on the same tasks. Close daily contact between owners and slaves meant, in many
cases, that a relationship developed, making it hard for the Greek owners to deny the essential humanity of their slaves. Still, Greek
thinkers rationalized the institution of slavery by arguing that barbaroi (non-Greeks) lacked the capacity to reason and thus were better
off under the direction of the rational Greek thinkers. The social stigma attached to slavery was so great that most Athenians refused to
work as wage laborers for another individual because following orders of an employer was akin to being his slave.
2
Source: Richard W. Bulliet, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, Lyman L. Johnson, David Northrup, The
Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, 2nd Edition. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 134.
Roman Slavery
(18) The percentage of slaves in the population was probably as great in Greece as in Rome, but Romans extended the use of slaves to
plantation work-gangs and organized economic production activities. The Romans were interested in slavery more for the economic
benefits than from a sense of civic dignity.
(19) The use of slave labor to produce cheaper agricultural commodities forced small independent farmers off their land and into the
cities, where they became a source from which to recruit soldiers as well as a threat to civic tranquility.
Reading 1: Slaves’ Integration in Families
(20) The Roman familia (family) was a conjugal (marital) unit, consisting of parents and children, plus their non-kin dependents,
including slaves, freedmen servants, and foster children. Roman society had three basic legal categories of status: freeborn citizens,
freedmen (ex-slaves), and slaves. Though slaves were not legally free to marry, they often did form unions within the familia; freed
slaves also tended to marry within the familia and took the family name (nomen) of their former owners.
Reading 2: Origins of Slaves in Conflict
(21) In the Mediterranean world and northwestern Europe, the social and ideological distinction between masters and slaves was a
legacy of slavery in the Roman world. The majority of Roman slaves were prisoners of war. They were legally defined as people who
were owned by someone else, "contrary to the natural order." The word the Romans used for enslaved peoples was servi, from the
verb "to save" (servare), because P.O.W.'s had been saved from an expected death as an enemy combatant, and given a life of
servitude instead. Rome's "inexorable spread over the Mediterranean basin and its hinterland (surroundings) provided an almost
inexhaustible supply of captives." Slaves were used on the imperial estates, on privately-owned latifundia (plantations), and in homes
and shops in urban areas, where ownership included families of middle classes as well as the elite. Those enslaved were not associated
with a particular ethnic group (or "race"). Their status was determined by having been on the losing side of a conflict, or their illegal
behaviors, or their poverty. Slavery was hereditary; it was also a legal punishment, most often for debt; and one could sell oneself or
one's children into slavery, although the Romans discouraged this. Roman citizens could not be enslaved: if one was a citizen, one was
free.
Slavery in the Ancient World
(22) Aristotle and others have argued that it was natural that some humans be slaves and others, masters. To Aristotle, labor diverted
superior people from their primary task of intellectual and political development. Those unsuited to such endeavors should serve those
who were.
(23) The Roman attitude toward slavery echoed that of the Greeks. The term slave calls to mind images of people who perform the
hard drudgery that keeps societies functioning: the miners, field hands, oarsmen, quarrymen, etc. Slaves did fill those niches, but the
duties of other slaves extended over a wide spectrum. There were slaves who were business managers, artists, entertainers and
teachers. Enslaved people were sometimes able to secure a more comfortable life for themselves through talent and ability. Their
somewhat elevated status was at the discretion of the owner, however. No matter their duties, their existence was subject to the whims
of a master.
Reading 1: Roman Slave Culture
(24) Roman society made extensive use of slave labor: by the second century C.E., slaves may have represented as much as one-third
of the population of the Roman empire. In the countryside they worked mostly on latifundia, though many labored in state quarries
and mines. Rural slaves worked under extremely harsh conditions, often chained together in teams. Discontent among rural slaves led
to several massive revolts, especially during the second and first centuries B.C.E. During the most serious uprising, in 73 B.C.E., the
escaped slave Spartacus assembled an army of seventy thousand rebellious slaves. The Roman army dispatched eight legions,
comprising more than forty thousand well-equipped, veteran troops, to quell (suppress, put down) the revolt.
(25) In the cities, conditions were much less difficult than in the countryside. Female slaves commonly worked as domestic servants
while males toiled as servants, laborers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, or business agents for their owners. Slaves who had an education or
possessed some particular talent had the potential to lead comfortable lives. The first-century Anatolian slave Epictetus even became a
priminent Stoic philosopher. He spent much of his life studying with Rome's leading intellectuals, and he lectured to large audiences
that included high Roman officials and perhaps even emperors.
(26) More than their counterparts in rural areas, urban slaves could hope for manumission (freedom) as a reward for a long term of
loyal service: it was common, though not mandatory, for masters to free urban slaves about the time they reached thirty years of age.
Until freed, however, slaves remained under the strict authority of their masters, who had the right to sell them, arrange their family
affairs, punish them, and even execute them for serious offenses.
3
Source: Jerry H. Bentley and Herbert F. Ziegler, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, 2nd Edition. (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 286-287
Image: The Roman Empire
Slave Culture in China
(27) China may have instituted some laws or customs that acted as a check on an owner's authority over slaves. In other words,
Chinese slaves were in some way protected by law from the complete subjugation common in other areas. The notion of legal rights
and contractual obligations makes it appear that slaves were integrated into the political system of China to some degree.
Reading: Contracts between Slave and Master
(28) Slavery was far less prominent in ancient China (than in Greece or Rome). During the Warring States Period, dependent peasants
as well as slaves worked the large holdings of the landowning aristocracy. The Qin government sought to abolish slavery, but the
institution persisted into the Han period, although it was not a central component of the economy. The relatives of criminals could be
seized and enslaved, and poor families sometimes sold unwanted children in slavery. In China, slaves generally performed domestic
tasks, whether they belonged to the state or individuals.
(29) Wang Ziyuan of Shu Commandery went to the Jian River on business, and went up to the home of the widow Yang Hui, who had
a male slave named Bianliao. Wang Ziyuan requested him to go and buy some wine. Picking up a big stick, Bianliao climbed to the
top of the grave mound and said: "When my master bought me, Bianliao, he only contracted for me to care for the grave and did not
contract for me to buy wine for some other gentleman."
(30) Wang Ziyuan was furious and said to the widow: "Wouldn't you prefer to sell this slave?"...Wang Ziyuan immediately settled the
sale contract....
(31) The slave again said: "Enter in the contract everything you wish to order me to do. I, Banliao, will not do anything not in the
contract."
(32) Wang Ziyuan said: "Agreed."
(33) The text of the contract said...The slave shall obey orders about all kinds of work and may not argue. He shall rise at dawn and do
an early sweeping. After eating he shall wash up. Ordinarily he should pound the grain mortar, tie up broom straws, carve bowls and
bore wells, scoop out dishes, tie up fallen fences, hoe the garden, trim up paths and dike up plots of land, cut big flails, bend bamboos
to make rakes, and scrape and fix the well pulley...[the list of tasks continues for two-and-a-half pages]....
(34) The reading of the text of the contract came to an end. The slave was speechless and his lips were tied. Wildly he beat his head on
the ground, and beat himself with his hands. He said: "If it is to be exactly as master Wang says, I would rather return soon along the
yellow-soil road, with the grave worms boring through my head. Had I known before I would have bought wine for master Wang."
(Wang Bao, first century B.C.E.)
4
(35) This story shows that Chinese slaves could be forced to work hard and engaged in many of the same menial tasks as their Roman
counterparts. However, it is hard to imagine a Roman slave daring to refuse a request and argue publicly with a nobleman, for fear of
severe physical punishment. It also appears that slaves in China had some legal protections provided by contracts specifying and
limiting what could be demanded of them.
Source: Richard W. Bulliet, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, Lyman L. Johnson, David Northrup, The
Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, 2nd Edition. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 153.
Slave Economies
(36) Unlike China and the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the economies of Greece and Rome were dependent on
slave labor. The Greek slave population included captured enemy warriors, Greeks who were enslaved for debts, and a large number
were acquired from foreign slave markets in the course of normal Greek commercial activities. In the early Roman empire, most
slaves were war captives. Neither Greeks nor Romans deluded themselves that all slaves were content. Philosophers in both societies
constructed elaborate rationales supporting the practice. Plato held that the division between master and slave reflected the difference
between the physical body and the rational spirit. Aristotle believed that slaves should be responsible for all physical work, so that free
men could devote themselves to civic business. He wrote that "a slave is a sort of living piece of property," considering them simply
tools in charge of other tools (The Politics). Roman law affirmed the place of the slave as property, and guaranteed the rights of
owners to buy, sell, or manage such property in whatever manner they wished. Historians vary in their estimates of the number of
slaves in classical Greece or Rome, but many believe the population of each was approximately one-third slave.
(37) European slavery declined with the contraction of the Roman Empire and the slave of the large latifundia (the slave-worked
plantations) was gradually replaced by the manorial serf 3. Some historians speculate that this came about because there was
insufficient political organization remaining to control a slave population. Conditions of serfdom varied through time and place, but in
even the most lenient circumstances, they were bound to the fiefdom in which they had been born, obligated to provide labor or
military support to their seigneur, and required to pay certain dues and fees.
Russian Serfdom:
(38) As the practice of plantation-style slavery was spreading across the Americas, another form of involuntary servitude was
developing in Russia.
(39) Russian serfdom developed just as the practice was disappearing from Western Europe. Beginning in the late sixteenth century,
many peasants pledged future labor in return for financial assistance during a period of multiple crop failures. Serfdom did not
become widespread in Russia until the early seventeenth century. During the famine of 1601, lords required longer periods of service,
which soon extended through several generations. By the mid-sixteenth century, the tsar eliminated the right of redemption
(forgiveness of financial debts by serf masters), binding families in perpetuity (forever). At the end of the century, Peter the Great tried
to win support by converting serfdom into chattel ownership. About 70 percent of the population of Russia became personal property
and could be freely bought and sold by a tiny ruling elite. By the mid-seventeenth century, there was slight difference in the condition
of a Russian serf and that of an American slave.
(40) The identity of slaves and the practices of slavery cover a wide spectrum, which becomes even wider when we eliminate from the
category of "free labor" anyone who cannot chose to leave their work whenever they wish.
Reading: Escaping Serfdom
(41) Narratives of serfs are rare, but like those of slaves elsewhere, suggest the longings for passage from their state of bondage. Here
are the words of Nikolai Shipov, who eventually escaped serfdom:
(42) "What is going on in my dear native land--where the abundant Volga flows, where the Ural steppe stretches wide and free? And
where am I dragging myself off to now? To the mountains of the Caucasus, where I'm in danger from bandits, anticipating death any
minute--O freedom, freedom! Where are those happy people who have never known persecution, never known constraint--under what
star were they born? They live as they want to, by their own free will, and fear nothing--but I? Whether asleep or awake, it always
seems that I'm being followed. They put me in a dungeon, take away my money, separate me from my wife and son and daughter, rule
inside my home and give orders as they please; they send me away from my dear native place, and forbid me from shedding tears on
the dust of my parents."
3
A serf that worked on a manor which consisted of a large piece of land (a fief) along with the central housing unit --especially : such a unit in the Middle Ages
consisting of an estate under a lord enjoying a variety of rights over land and tenants including the right to hold court. This system (feudal system) was established
following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to re-establish order.
5
Source: Excerpted from original materials created for Bridging World History (Portland, OR: Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2004).
Sex, Gender, and Slaves
(43) As one would suspect, sex and gender played an important role in slavery.
(44) In most societies, the far greater numbers of slaves were women. They worked as household servants, in the fields, and served as
courtesans 4. As an additional benefit, they were capable of reproducing and adding to the resources of the society. The term eunuch
refers to emasculated males who are usually incapable of sexual relations and reproduction. They were generally thought of as "bed
guards," entrusted to guard the harems or women's quarters, but many rose to high administrative positions in India, the Islamic world,
and China. Ownership and control of female slaves was a marker of status in much of the pre-modern world. Eunuchs were often
tasked with controlling women as well as others who were subordinate to their masters.
Reading: Muslim and Indian Slaves
(45) In all wealthy households there was a tremendous demand for slaves to be employed as servants. Ibn Battuta 5observed large
numbers at the sultan of Mali's palace. Some servants were males, including the eunuchs who guarded the harems 6 of wealthy
Muslims, but most households slaves were females. Female slaves were also in great demand as entertainers and concubines
(courtesan). Having a concubine from every part of the world was a rich man's ambition in some Muslim circles. One of Firuz Shah's
nobles was said to have two thousand harem slaves, including women from Turkey and China.
(46) Sultan Ala ud-Din's campaigns against Gujarat (western India) at the end of the thirteenth century yielded a booty of twenty
thousand maidens in addition to innumerable younger children of both sexes. The supply of captives became so great that the lowest
grade of horse sold for five times as much as an ordinary female slave destined for service, although beautiful young virgins destined
for the harems of powerful nobles commanded far higher prices. Some decades later when Ibn Battuta was given ten girls captured
from among "infidels," he commented: "Female captives [in Delhi] are very cheap because they are dirty and do not know civilized
ways. Even the educated ones are cheap." It would seem fairer to say that such slaves were cheap because the large numbers offered
for sale had made them so.
Source: Richard W. Bulliet, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, Lyman L. Johnson, David Northrup, The
Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, 2nd Edition. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 390.
Spectrum of Inequality: Africa
(47) Some forms of servitude are hard to characterize. Occasionally, the prevailing system of duty and obligation inherent in a
society's political system exerts control over production behavior rather than specifically over land areas. Many people in such
hierarchies occupy a position that cannot be neatly categorized as "free" or "unfree" labor. Clientage systems (a system whereby one is
put under the protection of another) tend to exist in politically unstable times.
Reading: African Clientage
(48) In other African societies, reliance on clientage, a relationship of dependence not necessarily based on kinship, was the essential
cement for political systems. It was commonly said in the oral traditions of West and Central Africa that a king was his people. For
example, in Dahomey, the metaphor of a perforated pot was used to describe the state: the king was like the pot's water, which
everyone had to help keep inside. In other words, authority figures were necessary and existed to serve the essential needs of members
of the social group, including protection and the extraction of labor for large social enterprises. Membership in such societies was
based not on blood ties or genealogy but on service to the king, a dependency relationship in which the king was the patron and the
people his clients.
(49) The presence of clientage relationships in African societies reveals the social and political inequalities that brought them into
being. Whereas in some parts of the world clientage involved landowners providing land to the landless, these relationships in Africa
rarely involved land. They did sometimes involve the transfer of other forms of property, such as human beings and the value of their
labor. For example, around 1000 the king at Ife (Yoruba, Nigeria) did not own the land surrounding the city, but he controlled the
available labor and assigned persons to work the land surrounding the royal city. His counterpart to the north of Nigeria, the ruler of
Kanem in the eleventh century, was celebrated in a song that commemorates his ability to capture and control labor:
"The best you took (and sent home) as the first fruits of battle,
The children crying on their mothers you snatched away from their mothers,
4
A prostitute with a courtly, wealthy, or upper-class clientele.
5
c. 1304-1377, a Sunni Islamic scholar best known as an extensive traveller whose accounts documents his travels over a period of almost thirty years covering some
73,000 miles throughout the known Islamic world at the time (India-Southeast Asia, and China).
6
A usually secluded house or part of a house allotted to women in a Muslim household and/or the wives, concubines, female relatives, and servants occupying a
harem.
6
You took the slave wife from a slave, and set them in lands far removed from one another."
(50) In sub-Saharan Africa, where the population density remained low and land was valued less than people, authority was frequently
expressed in personal rather than territorial terms. This was especially true in herding societies. In Rwanda, clientage was initiated by
a cattle transaction between the owner of the cattle and the client herder: "Give milk, make me rich, be my father." In the Sena society
of Mozambique, a pre-European system of clientage was the result of economic motives often arising during times of drought and
famine, when a desperate lineage group could temporarily pawn a member's labor to a larger, wealthier household. It also frequently
indicated the need for protection and was initiated by the ritual act of "breaking the mitate," literally walking into the potential patron's
household and smashing a clay pot, an act that created obligations and resulted in a period of servitude by the "offender."
(51) The various means of establishing reciprocal relationships resulted in the accumulation of human resources by the larger and
wealthier groups, which in turn derived greater political importance. The political and social order of the nearby fifteenth-century
Mwenemutapa Empire in southern Africa was built on relationships of personal dependency that successfully expanded over a large
territory. Individuals owed allegiance, service, and agricultural labor to the ruler, who in turn provided protection and other benefits.
(52) As elsewhere around the globe, in Africa the presence of clientage resulted in ties of obedience on the part of the client and
obligation on the part of the patron. Reliance on clientage relations appears to occur when states are emerging or disappearing. The
clientage system could be part of either the devolution of power (as in the breakup of polities) or of the evolution of highly centralized
states (such as empires). The African examples indicate a variety of flexible polities in which inequalities based on inherited positions
with differing access to wealth and influence were integrated in such a way as to enable all parties—both the more powerful and the
less powerful—to sustain their common social fabric in the face of external threats. These various systems were temporary and
indigenous solutions to the central problem of holding hierarchical power relations together amid great social inequality.
Source: Candice L. Goucher, Charles A. LeGuin, and Linda A. Walton, In the Balance: Themes in Global History. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1998), 272-273.
Image: King of Congo Receiving Dutch Ambassadors (1642).
Source: Library of Congress
Image: West African and Trade, 1500-1800
7
Spectrum of Inequality: New World
(53) Very few Iberians (people from Spain and Portugal) of the 16th and 17th centuries objected to the use of African slaves, but
enslavement of indigenous Americans was hotly contested in Spain. The Iberian colonists responded by instituting systems of forced
labor through which they could satisfy their production requirements while avoiding the appearance of outright slave-taking. Thus,
labor requirements were satisfied through conscription and coercion, establishing the relationships of inequity that have continued to
plague the social structures of Spanish America.
Reading: Inca Labor System
(54) Found in 1545, Potosi's mountain of silver funded the Spanish empire until about the middle of the seventeenth century. More
than 15,000 foot high in the Andes Mountains, two and one-half months' journey from Lima, was the richest silver mine in the history
of the world. Potosi became a magnet, attracting tens of thousands of people from around the world. The Incas had worked the rich
deposits with flint picks. Europeans applied their knowledge of extraction and processing. In addition to the rich vein silver, the mines
yielded, through a technologically complex "patio-process of mercury-amalgam," the world's lowest cost sources of silver. In this
process, a furnace was utilized in conjunction with small amounts of mercury to melt off impurities associated with lower quality
silver ores. Other processes relied on the application of water technology for crushing the ore. Indians worked in the mines and refined
the ore, dangerous occupations assumed by those whose labor was forced or by the few workers desperate to earn the wages in the
"mouth of hell." The Spanish eventually designed the mita system (using coercion and tribute labor obligations of the Inca elite's
system, but without reciprocity) to solve the labor problem. This system required villages to supply labor (one out of every seven
males) on an ongoing basis. As many as 40,000 Indians lived on the edge of the city, with more than 14,000 men in the mines at any
time. Comprising the largest city in the Americas in the seventeenth century, Potosi's population may have exceeded 160,000 and
rivaled the great cities of Europe.
Source: Excerpted from original materials created for Bridging World History (Portland, OR: Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2004).
Image: San Francisco Solano with an Incan (1588)
Source: World Art Kiosk
European Slave Trade
(55) The trade of enslaved Africans was an extreme example of coerced labor. Survival in the hostile environments, from which there
was rarely escape, depended on the determination and ingenuity of the men and women who made the journey. Transported slaves
were able to provide mutual support and develop sustaining relationships. The communities they formed provided a cultural context
for individual survival and often extended support to other slave communities, including the communities formed by escaped slaves.
Reading: Middle Passage Conditions
(56) The journey of the slave ships across the Atlantic was known as the Middle Passage. Survival was by no means certain. Slaves
were placed in iron shackles below deck, and ships were inhumanly packed with bodies. Foods of the Americas, which had been
grown by slave labor, were fed to cargoes of slaves out of animal troughs. Provisions were minimal, and the trip could last from six to
ten weeks. Only about half of those enslaved in Africa and traded by European merchants reached destinations in the Americas.
Africans who arrived in Brazilian, Caribbean, or North American ports had left their homeland without material possessions, but their
languages, skills, memories, beliefs, and cultures could not be left behind or easily forgotten.
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(57) The creation of an African diaspora (literally, "dispersal") across the Atlantic world relied on the survival of individuals and their
ability to piece together a life in the Caribbean or Americas that owed much to their African heritage. There were obstacles to African
cultural continuity. For example, slave masters outlawed drumming and separated persons speaking the same language in order to
discourage communication and solidarity among slaves. Such conditions made African family life difficult and sometimes impossible.
Yet the vitality of the hundreds of distinct African languages and cultures, together with the courage and resistance of African peoples
in the Americas, ensured their continuity in the face of slavery and oppression even as they negotiated a new identity.
(58) Resistance to the conditions brought about by merchant capitalism was immediate and continuous. The success of resistance
helped keep alive African cultures, while providing an ongoing source of African identity that promoted survival against great odds.
Within both the societies of escaped freedom fighters and those of the plantations from which they came, African continuities in
dance, language, food, informal economic systems, technology, music, dress, pottery, family organization, religion, and other areas are
well documented in Caribbean and American life. They attest to the processes of transformation, in which both continuities and
discontinuities create the patterns of historical change and determine its direction and scope.
Source: Candice L. Goucher, Charles A. LeGuin, and Linda A. Walton, In the Balance: Themes in Global History. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1998), 497.
African Slaves in the Global Economy
(59) After the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, the areas to the north and east of the Black Sea were primary source of
slaves for Christian Europe.
(60) There was little market for African slaves among Europeans until the development of the sugar plantations on the Mediterranean
islands and in the southern parts of the Iberian Peninsula. The demand for slave labor escalated with the discovery of the Americas.
Native Americans were the first choice as a labor source, but the pathogens of the Old World reduced their number alarmingly. They
were also able to run away and blend into the countryside. The owners of the mines and plantations of the Americas tapped into the
existing African slave markets in an attempt to meet their labor needs.
(61) Historians differ about whether or not racism preceded the Atlantic slave trade. Whether or not one sees precursors in the
Renaissance, most agree that the development of modern racism grew as a justification for the exploitation of blacks in the mines and
plantations of the New World.
Reading: Racism and Slavery
(62) The shift in favor of African slaves was a product of many factors. Recent scholarship had cast doubt on the once-common
assertion that Africans were more suited than Europeans to field labor, since newly arrived Africans and Europeans both died in large
numbers in the American tropics. Africans' slightly higher survival rate was not decisive because mortality was about the same among
later generations of blacks and whites born in the West Indies and acclimated to its diseases.
(63) The West Indian historian Eric Williams also refuted the idea that the rise of African slave labor was primarily motivated by
prejudice. Citing the West Indian colonies' prior use of enslaved Amerindians and indentured Europeans, along with European
convicts and prisoners of war, he argues, "Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery." Williams
suggested the shift was due to the lower cost of African labor.
Source: Richard W. Bulliet, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, Lyman L. Johnson, David Northrup, The
Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, 2nd Edition. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 499
Impact on African Societies
(64) The era of the Atlantic slave trade disrupted the organization and relationships of African states. In addition to the loss of people,
many states faced an imbalanced sex ratio because slavers preferred young adult males. Violence and wars between African states
escalated after the late seventeenth century. The disruptions growing out of the slave trade left African societies more vulnerable to the
imperialism of the nineteenth century.
Reading: Conflict Perpetuated Enslavement
(65) A vicious cycle of slaves and guns developed gradually. Europeans supplied guns selectively to African states that became
trading partners. The use of guns altered the patterns of rivalries between Africans and made warfare increasingly violent. Originating
as war prisoners, African slaves were sold to European traders in exchange for guns and other manufactured goods. Guns created
slaves which were traded for more guns, which would be used to "make" more slaves. This exchange sometimes made independent
African states dependent appendages to European capitalist expansion. Slaves were exchanged for such imported goods as cloth,
metal, and guns, which were prestige goods used by African elites to enhance status. African elites also kept slaves, especially
females, who contributed to productivity and furthered prestige. African slavery, conceived in social and political terms, eventually
gave way to economic slavery, states relying on a slave mode of production, in which the production of wealth was dependent on
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slave labor. The Atlantic era resulted in the transformation of many Africans into dependent consumers of cheap European products
living in increasingly violent slave societies.
Source: Candice L. Goucher, Charles A. LeGuin, and Linda A. Walton, In the Balance: Themes in Global History. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1998), 496
Image: African Merchant Selling Slaves to a European (far left)
[left] Image: Slavers Revening Their Losses
from the Last Journals of David Livingston,
in Central Africa, from 1865 to his Death
(1875). Source: Library of Congress
African Slavery and Resistance
(66) In traditional African societies, the enslaved were generally acquired for the purpose of increasing the size of the receiving group
in order to gain prestige and military power. It was expected that such persons would be absorbed into the society. There was no such
expectation in the form of slavery that developed in the Americas. People who had endured the rigors of the "Middle Passage"
developed a distinctive identity. They formed a new group identity where none had previously existed. African cultural practices
became a source of resistance and identity. Adversity and common interest forged an "African" identity and sense of community
between people from various Western African societies who had been enslaved. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, slaves
were often wrongly depicted by racist European writers as childlike and irresponsible beings, who recognized the superiority of their
masters. The frequency and effectiveness of rebellions in Spanish America dispels any such illusions.
Reading: Tacky’s Rebellion
(67) Such high mortality greatly added to the volume of the Atlantic slave trade, since plantations had to purchase new slaves every
year or two just to replace those who died. The additional imports of slaves to permit the expansion of the sugar plantations meant that
the majority of slaves were African-born on most West Indian plantations. As a result, African religious beliefs, patterns of speech,
styles of dress and adornment, and music were prominent parts of life in the West Indies.
(68) Given the harsh conditions of their lives, it is not surprising that slaves in the West Indies often sought to regain the freedom into
which most had been born. Individual slaves often ran away, hoping to elude the men and dogs who would attack them. Sometimes
large groups of plantation slaves rose in rebellion against their bondage and abuse. For example, a large rebellion in Jamaica in 1760
was led by a slave named Tacky, who had been a chief on the Gold Coast of Africa. One night his followers broke into a fort and
armed themselves. Joined by slaves from other nearby plantations, they stormed several plantations, setting them on fire and killing
the planter families. Tacky died in the fighting that followed, and three other rebel leaders stoically endured cruel deaths by torture
that were meant to deter others from rebellion.
(69) Because they believed rebellions were usually led by slaves with the strongest African heritage, European planters tried to curtail
African cultural traditions. They required slaves to learn the colonial language and discouraged the use of African languages by
deliberately mixing slaves from different parts of Africa. In French and Portuguese colonies, slaves were encouraged to adopt Catholic
religious practices, though African dieties and beliefs also survived.
Source: Richard W. Bulliet, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, Lyman L. Johnson, David Northrup, The
Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, 2nd Edition. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 504.
Conclusion
(70) The origins of slavery can be found in profound inequalities within increasingly complex human societies around the world. It is
difficult to pinpoint causal relationships because of the intertwined nature of inequality and conflict. Certainly, ancient societies and
global societies after 1500 shared in common the fact that war and conflict increased where labor was valued as a commodity and
human rights were restricted.
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