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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Technically this is post Rome but why didn't europeans make us of slaves in Europe after Rome fell? I know christians weren't allowed to be enslaved but surely the europeans could have raided muslims on the med just like the muslims did to them? I mean they did sometimes, eg Anglo Saxons had slavery, but if you have serfs you don't necessarily need chattel slavery for agriculture.
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Jul 29, 2020 22:56
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Based on what we know when/where was the best place to be a slave?
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Jul 30, 2020 01:19
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With the caveat that it's real hard to say being a slave was ever good for the slave, if I had to pick one I'd be an educated Roman slave. Something like a general's secretary or a doctor. That was not a bad life, all things considered. I think there were some types of Ottoman slaves that had a decent amount of power and respect too.
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Jul 30, 2020 01:46
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CongoJack posted:Based on what we know when/where was the best place to be a slave? In the sense of "what was the least bad situation to be a slave in, while still being a slave," the answer I figure is (depending on how you slice it) a society where "slaves" were more like "people who we are adopting into our tribe but we're hazing them first," or an educated/professional slave in the later Roman periods. Even better (or "less bad" at least) would be being in debt bondage, which retained a lot of your legal rights.
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Jul 30, 2020 01:47
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Grand Fromage posted:With the caveat that it's real hard to say being a slave was ever good for the slave, if I had to pick one I'd be an educated Roman slave. Something like a general's secretary or a doctor. That was not a bad life, all things considered. I think there were some types of Ottoman slaves that had a decent amount of power and respect too. I mean, does a Jannissary or Mamaluk count? If so, that
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Jul 30, 2020 01:51
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CongoJack posted:Based on what we know when/where was the best place to be a slave? How do you feel about castration
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Jul 30, 2020 02:04
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i'd have to concur with educated professional roman slave. especially if you were greek. your prospects for being manumitted (through good service or just buying it) were very good, so a reasonable portion of your life would be spent as a freedman, and freedmen essentially ran the empire's middle levels. at the same time tho, roman mine slave is maybe the worst. rome was a land of contrasts
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Jul 30, 2020 02:08
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Also, what was Portugal using them for that compelled them to bypass Morocco and kickstart colonization? Were they using slaves in mainland Portugal? If Don Quixote can be used as a source, galley slaves were still a thing.
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Jul 30, 2020 02:11
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Jazerus posted:i'd have to concur with educated professional roman slave. especially if you were greek. your prospects for being manumitted (through good service or just buying it) were very good, so a reasonable portion of your life would be spent as a freedman, and freedmen essentially ran the empire's middle levels. weren't there egyptian temple slaves which was a good enough respected position that you actually had to pay to get it?
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Jul 30, 2020 02:18
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Jazerus posted:i'd have to concur with educated professional roman slave. especially if you were greek. your prospects for being manumitted (through good service or just buying it) were very good, so a reasonable portion of your life would be spent as a freedman, and freedmen essentially ran the empire's middle levels. *urge to draw parallels with american middle class intensifying *
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Jul 30, 2020 02:18
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Stringent posted:*urge to draw parallels with american middle class intensifying * try to resist it
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Jul 30, 2020 02:20
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Tunicate posted:weren't there egyptian temple slaves which was a good enough respected position that you actually had to pay to get it?
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Jul 30, 2020 02:24
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Being a warrior slave is probably not that bad since you can just seize power and have warrior slaves somehow become the ruling class while still sorta kinda being slaves.
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Jul 30, 2020 02:45
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Sultan of Egypt and Syria seems like a pretty good get, if you have to be a slave.
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Jul 30, 2020 03:24
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Technically this is post Rome but why didn't europeans make us of slaves in Europe after Rome fell? I know christians weren't allowed to be enslaved but surely the europeans could have raided muslims on the med just like the muslims did to them? My understanding is that they did, though I guess it depends on your timeframe. I believe there was also a trade out of Europe into other areas though as well.
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Jul 30, 2020 04:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:How do you feel about castration You can actually find photographs of the genitals of castrated ottoman slaves. I'm not seeking them out again it almost made me vomit the first time I saw them.
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Jul 30, 2020 04:23
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The Norse had Gaelic slaves at least until Christianisation around the year 1000 and possibly well into the 12th century. Nothing large scale though mostly just house servants and concubines.
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Jul 30, 2020 04:23
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What would be the worst though? I think I would rather be pretty much anything other than a sugar slave in the Caribbean.
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Jul 30, 2020 05:10
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Gaius Marius posted:You can actually find photographs of the genitals of castrated ottoman slaves. I'm not seeking them out again it almost made me vomit the first time I saw them. You remember that movie the Last Emperor? The eunuchs are leaving the palace carrying jars, and wife #2 asks him "What are those" and he's like, "No matter their crimes, they still get to be buried whole."
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Jul 30, 2020 05:11
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Ola posted:What would be the worst though? I think I would rather be pretty much anything other than a sugar slave in the Caribbean. American slavery was probably the worst all around, yeah. At least as a Roman mine slave your suffering wasn't going to last for decades.
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Jul 30, 2020 05:13
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Ola posted:What would be the worst though? I think I would rather be pretty much anything other than a sugar slave in the Caribbean. Being in the roman mines ranks up there. Mining in the Spanish mines also involved using mercury, so not only was it back breaking it would start shutting down your neurological system.
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Jul 30, 2020 05:14
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sullat posted:You remember that movie the Last Emperor? The eunuchs are leaving the palace carrying jars, and wife #2 asks him "What are those" and he's like, "No matter their crimes, they still get to be buried whole." After seeing the effects I have redoubled my respect for Sima Qian for choosing castration to finish his history, what an absolute legend.
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Jul 30, 2020 05:16
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I think a more parsimonious way of thinking of it is that most relationships through history are governed by differing levels of hierarchy and submission, and being a slave was a state that could happen to anyone, wrong place in the wrong time. Something that would be avoided wherever possible, and if you inflict it on others, ah, sometimes that's just God's will. If you were a big man with high social standing that owns alot of land, it makes sense to force others to work and gather resources for your benefit. Now, chattel slavery of africans in the americas was a culmination of this trend, and was also especially egregious. Because it wasn't just a state of being, it was forever. Instead of the slave population being constantly imported from victimized populations and being gradually absorbed into the larger population through manumission, american slaves of african descent were bred like livestock and would form a distinct ethnic group, their black skin acting as a permanent mark on their existence and the existence of all their children and grandchildren. At the height of the antebellum, manumission was effectively impossible, and black freedmen could be re-enslaved (both within slave states, and kidnapped from free states).
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Jul 30, 2020 05:29
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Nobody mentioned these people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerialis A lot of people in this thread have watched HBO's Rome, imagine Posca with power and position but he's still a slave.
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Jul 30, 2020 06:18
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Imagine the CEO of a Fortune 500 company but he's a slave.
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Jul 30, 2020 06:21
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Grand Fromage posted:American slavery was probably the worst all around, yeah. At least as a Roman mine slave your suffering wasn't going to last for decades. most people don't consider "dying really fast" to be a positive, you know
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Jul 30, 2020 07:11
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Grand Fromage posted:American slavery was probably the worst all around, yeah. At least as a Roman mine slave your suffering wasn't going to last for decades. Sugar slaves don't usually last decades either. It's mainland America where you get long-term sustaining slave populations that were kept constantly suffering, although some slaveowners were definitely worse than others and a lot of how much suffering got induced, whether families could stick together, or whether there was any chance at freedom was up to individual preference and local laws. Although it'd probably also suck to be a fresh-caught slave getting shipped across the ocean in a tightly-condensed tube of human suffering. Or maybe a native american slave dying a slow death of mercury poisoning in the silver mines. Being made into a eunuch sounds like it really sucked a lot in some places, I heard something about burying them in burning sand to help deal with healing the wound? Or what about slaves getting buried alive as part of a funeral, I think I've heard both the Egyptians and the Mongols doing something like that. Is it worse to be made a slave after losing a war where your whole life is destroyed and you have to see everyone you once knew die, or is it worse to be sold into slavery by your parents and know that you didn't matter enough to keep. I feel like comparing the worst suffering in humanity never goes well because past a certain threshold it all just blurs together.
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Jul 30, 2020 07:38
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PittTheElder posted:But what drove Portuguese exploration was not really the quest for slaves. What drove it was finding ways around the Muslim control of the West African gold trade and the Italian controlled markets in the eastern Mediterranean. The slave trade is a "happy" accident that comes after they start acquiring territories suitable for sugar cultivation. I do not remember the source, but I have read argument that actual religious zeal played a major role. It seems strange to me, but plenty of people then (and now even) do sincerely believe to be chosen by heavens to spread the faith.
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Jul 30, 2020 08:20
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Gladi posted:I do not remember the source, but I have read argument that actual religious zeal played a major role. It seems strange to me, but plenty of people then (and now even) do sincerely believe to be chosen by heavens to spread the faith. Definitely. But if you were applying for royal funding for your get-rich-quick scheme, you would also put some very pious stuff in the "reason"-box. This also helps the king defend some fairly speculative allocations of state funds, which even a dictator needs to do.
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Jul 30, 2020 08:35
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Ola posted:Definitely. But if you were applying for royal funding for your get-rich-quick scheme, you would also put some very pious stuff in the "reason"-box. This also helps the king defend some fairly speculative allocations of state funds, which even a dictator needs to do. Always reminded of how Scotland lost so much money on a completely failed colonial venture they sold the country to England to pay off the debts.
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Jul 30, 2020 09:20
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Always reminded of how Scotland lost so much money on a completely failed colonial venture they sold the country to England to pay off the debts. A parcel o' rogues indeed.
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Jul 30, 2020 11:30
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By that time the king of Scotland had been king of England for over a century though they were still completely separate states with their own legislature.
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Jul 30, 2020 13:48
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:most people don't consider "dying really fast" to be a positive, you know If my choices are suffer for six months or 40 years, I know what I'm picking. Especially after I've spent the last two years watching my dad slowly suffering and dying. Dying fast is the way to go.
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Jul 30, 2020 16:22
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Slave Fast Die Young
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Jul 30, 2020 16:43
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Doing some research for a story~ I remember hearing somewhere, either from a game or a book (god I hope it wasn't a Dan Brown book, though that might've been it) that there was a period of time in early Vatican history -- like, either at the beginning or slightly before its formation...or maybe it was slightly after? I don't know -- where the overall Italian region became a huge hodgepodge of different religions jammed together in a big bazaar, with Christians, Muslims, southern pagans, northern pagans all milling around bumping shoulders and that was just how things were for a while before everyone went "oh wait we're at war?" and that sort of thing was more systematically frowned on. Can anyone talk about that a little, like did I just dream this information, or was that really a thing either in the short-term or long-term on some sort of small or large scale in like, Italy-ish or somewhere thereabouts? And yes I know that range is pretty broad 
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Jul 30, 2020 17:15
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FreudianSlippers posted:Slave Fast Become a beautiful return on someone's investment.
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Jul 30, 2020 17:23
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The thing with the Janissaries in particular (and the Mamluks post takeover, in a slightly less modern-state way) is that they weren't slaves of the Sultan, they were slaves of the Ottoman State. The state that the Janissaries largely/increasingly ran.
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Jul 30, 2020 17:38
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Grand Fromage posted:If my choices are suffer for six months or 40 years, I know what I'm picking. Especially after I've spent the last two years watching my dad slowly suffering and dying. Dying fast is the way to go. Cato agrees with you! Says it's better to work them as hard as possible for 2 years and then stop feeding them.
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Jul 30, 2020 17:55
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Read this bit on Anglo-Saxon slavery just now, think I just googled it when feedmegin posted and left the tab. Anyway, this phrasing https://octavia.net/slavery-in-anglo-saxon-england/ quote:Here it is made known in this gospel that Godwig the Buck has bought Leofgifu the dairymaid at North Stoke and her offspring from Abbot Ælfsige for half a pound, to eternal freedom, in the witness of all the community at Bath. Christ blind him who ever perverts this. I might start signing code commits at work with that.
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Jul 30, 2020 17:57
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BrianWilly posted:Doing some research for a story~ What do you mean by northern and southern pagans? It doesn't really line up with anything I can think of. By the time Islam comes out of Arabia, Italy had been thoroughly Christianized. There are scholars who argue that Western Christianity shouldn't be considered one thing until the Reformation (as there was huge amounts of local variation until the counter-Reformation cracked down on that), but I would bet nearly everyone living in Italy permanently would be at least nominally Christian. There is a Muslim state in Sicily from 831 to 1091, and the Ottomans occupied Otranto in 1480-1481, but those both were seen explicitly as religious conflicts. Islamic expansion into the Roman Empire was viewed as a religious conflict pretty much from the beginning.
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Jul 30, 2020 18:18
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.