Slavery

Discussion

1. Tom Mackaman:

"As a system of forced labor and subordinate social status, slavery was not at all unique to the 13 colonies. It reached back to antiquity—including Babylonia, Egypt, China, Greece and Rome—and rose also in the New World before Columbus in the Aztec, Mayan and other empires. Slavery was a source of surplus value in ancient agricultural societies, and, as a form of legal property, was closely associated with domesticated animals. It is noteworthy that the word chattel has a common origin with cattle and capital in the old Latin capitale.

In Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa, the slave networks developed in ancient times survived the fall of Rome. Long before the Atlantic slave trade, people were deported into slavery from among the many peoples and cultural groups of Central and Western Africa across the Sahara, and for a thousand years the African rim of the Indian Ocean bustled with slave ships. The captors of slaves in Africa were other Africans. They maintained slavery in their own societies, and sold their slaves to Arabs and Persians, and later to Europeans.

Slaves working in a mine in Laurium, Ancient Greece, 5th century B.C. Nor was slavery confined to Africans. The term “slave” is itself derived from the Latin word for “Slav,” sclavus. The word took on its modern meaning as the pagan Slavic populations of eastern Europe were subjected to servile labor after military defeat; the word’s “transferred sense is clearly evidenced in documents of the 9th century,” comments the Oxford English Dictionary.

What Americans would today call “white people” continued to be subjected to slavery right on up until the 1800s. Between about 1500 and 1700 some 2.5 million slaves from the Black Sea, overwhelmingly eastern Europeans, passed through Istanbul. Further west in the Mediterranean world, according to Ohio State University historian Robert Davis, as many as 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Arab corsairs and taken into slavery in North Africa between 1500 and 1800—precisely the same centuries as the rise of the Transatlantic African slave trade. Entire villages in locations as far away as Iceland were depopulated. Europeans themselves also enslaved people who today would be called “white.” Until 1453, the Italian city-states dominated the Black Sea slave trade, sending Bulgarians and others to labor on the sugar plantations of the Mediterranean.

2. Karl Marx

Thus, when the first European merchants made their way to Africa’s west coast and began purchasing slaves in significant numbers in the late 15th century, they tapped into longstanding networks of slavery that existed in both Africa and Europe. Gradually over the ensuing three centuries, the ancient system of slavery, transplanted to the New World, became bound up with the vast development of key agricultural commodities: tobacco, sugar, rice, indigo, and finally cotton.

In Capital Marx described this period as that of primitive capitalist accumulation:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre.... If money according to Augier, 'comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek', capital comes dripping from head to foot from every pore with blood and dirt.

As we stated in the World Socialist Web Site in our reply to the 1619 Project, far from being a phenomenon unique to the colonies that would become the United States,

Slavery was an international economic institution that stretched from the heart of Africa to the shipyards of Britain, the banking houses of Amsterdam, and the plantations of South Carolina, Brazil and the Caribbean. Every colonial power was involved, from the Dutch who operated slave trading posts in West Africa, to the Portuguese who imported millions of slaves to Brazil.

The mind reels at the horrors of the slave trade—the forced marches from villages in Africa; the dungeons where slaves awaited the “middle passage;” the slave ships in which an appalling number died; the auction block; and then a life of forced labor, degradation and the routine and at times horrific violence that entailed.

However, the 1619 Project’s assertion, put forward by both Hannah-Jones and Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, that the cruelty of slavery was unique to the 13 colonies does not survive even an elementary examination of the slave trade. The British North American colonies received only 6.5 percent of the 9 to 15 million slaves taken across the Atlantic, whereas the vast subtropical and tropical zone stretching from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to Brazil took some 90 percent. Yet by 1830 the American slave states accounted for roughly 30 percent of all people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere. The only way to explain this staggering statistical disparity is that, horrible as slavery in the American colonies (and then states) certainly was, the survival rate was much higher than in the massive plantations of the Caribbean and Brazil, where a great many were literally worked to death, to be replaced by a steady stream of new arrivals.

Because slavery in the New World ultimately became confined overwhelmingly to Africans and their descendants, it is a deceptively easy step to imagine, as the 1619 Project does, that it was a system of racial oppression and deny that it was first, and always foremost, a system of labor exploitation. As the great West Indian historian Eric Williams pointed out,

A racial twist has thereby been given to what is basically an economic phenomenon. Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery. Unfree labor in the New World was brown, white, black, and yellow; Catholic, Protestant and pagan.

In fact, historians have searched in vain for any sort of racial justification for slavery in colonial Virginia. They have found neither that, nor even an original legal justification. To the extent that there was any ideological rationale for slavery it was first religious, not racial. By custom of both Christian and Muslim societies, slavery was reserved for infidels. Muslims enslaved Christians, and Christians enslaved Muslims, and both enslaved those they viewed to be pagans, including the sub-Saharan Africans. In other words, slavery’s longstanding existence and its religious sanction appears to have been all that was needed to set it afoot in the Chesapeake."

(https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/01/amer-n01.html)

Comparison of the relative cruelty of slavery as a function of economic systems

Lipton Matthews:

"historical evidence suggests that the brutality of slavery was shaped by production systems and crop requirements, rather than solely by individual malice. In this article I examine how socio-economic factors influenced slave conditions in a range of societies, from Ancient Greece and East Africa to the sugar plantations of the British Caribbean. I conclude that while some forms of slavery were indeed marked by extreme violence, others were far less brutal, owing to the demands of specific agrarian economies.

In Ancient Greece, the brutality of slavery was clearly influenced by economic incentives – as George Tridimas demonstrated in his analysis of Athenian chattel slavery and Spartan helot servitude. Athenian slaves were used in a wide range of tasks, from agriculture and household labor to skilled trades. Skilled slaves, especially those involved in specialized crafts, were seen as valuable assets and were sometimes even allowed to earn wages or buy their freedom. Moreover, they were treated with comparative moderation, as Athenian slaveowners sought to protect their lucrative investments.

By contrast, the Spartan system relied on the total subjugation of helots – agrarian slaves who were essential to sustaining Sparta’s martial society. Helots worked the land to provide food for the Spartan citizens, who were engaged in military training. Due to their large numbers and the Spartans’ constant fear of rebellion, they were treated with immense brutality, including periodic state-sponsored purges aimed at limiting their population. Unlike the Athenians, Spartans relied on brute force to keep the helots in line.

Robert C. Allen’s study of slavery in East Africa during the 19th century provides insight into how specific crop types influenced the harshness of slave treatment. In regions where labor-intensive cash crops like cloves were produced, slaveholders subjected slaves to grueling conditions in order to maximize their productivity. Slaves in Zanzibar, for example, endured backbreaking labor under poor conditions, driven by the high profitability of the labor-intensive clove production.

Conversely, regions focused on the cultivation of less labor-intensive crops, such as dates or grains, required a more stable workforce, resulting in comparatively milder treatment. The economic rationale was straightforward: while the profitability of clove plantations was highly dependent on the input of labor, this was not the case for subsistence and low-yield crops. Allen’s work shows how crop type affected labor intensity, which in turn affected the degree of brutality slaves experienced. It suggests that profit-driven motives lay behind the differences in treatment of slaves in different regions.

In the Caribbean, sugar plantations stand out as an example of particularly harsh slave conditions. Why? Michael Craton has argued that brutality in sugar economies resulted from the high demand for labor and the immense profitability of sugar. Plantation owners viewed slaves as replaceable parts of the production process, leading to a brutal cycle of overwork and high mortality rates. Rather than investing in the long-term productivity of their slaves, sugar plantation owners found it economically advantageous to work them to exhaustion and then replace them with new laborers from the Atlantic slave trade.

Similarly, Michael J. Jarvis’s study of maritime slavery in Bermuda shows how the demand for labor in specific economic contexts led to less severe treatment of slaves. In Bermuda, maritime slaves performed skilled work essential for the operation of ships and, therefore, of the island’s broader economy. As a result, these slaves were often afforded relative autonomy. They enjoyed a level of trust that was largely unknown on Caribbean plantations. As in the case of ancient Athens, the skill demands of maritime labor moderated the degree of brutality to which slaves were subjected.

These skill demands also had a lasting legacy. The premium Bermuda’s slaveowners placed on skilled labor meant that slaves acquired various technical competencies, which they were able to use to their economic advantage after emancipation. The demand for skilled labor helped foster a culture of productivity and adaptability, which laid the foundations for the island’s relative success in modern times.

Barbados provides an additional example of how socio-economic factors during the era of slavery influenced post-slavery outcomes. As Robert Proctor and Olwyn M. Blouet’s studies demonstrate, Barbados implemented educational programs for slaves in the early 19th century, a policy that was practically unheard of in other slave societies. These early educational programs were driven partly by British colonial authorities’ efforts to stabilize the island and prepare it for eventual emancipation. The aim was to cultivate a more literate and disciplined labor force, thereby mitigating social tensions and ensuring slaves could work productively in a non-slave economy.

As a result, Barbados entered the post-emancipation period with a relatively high rate of literacy, setting the stage for further educational advancements. Blouet’s work reveals that, although limited, the programs had lasting impacts on the socio-economic landscape of Barbados, contributing to its high levels of education and relative economic stability today.

What’s more, these enduring impacts are evident in contemporary studies of cognitive and economic outcomes across former slave societies. Bermuda and Barbados, both of which developed distinct socio-economic structures favoring skilled labor and early education under slavery, exhibit higher average IQ scores than countries like Jamaica, where the slave economy prioritized labor-intensive crops over education or skill development. The correlation between historical labor demands and present-day cognitive outcomes underlines how the socio-economic foundations of slave societies continue to shape those societies in subtle but significant ways.

Many historical accounts portray slaveowners as inherently sadistic figures. Yet the brutality of slavery was profoundly influenced by the economic imperatives of the societies in which it occurred. From the skilled labor demands of ancient Athens to the extreme exploitation on Caribbean sugar plantations, economic factors shaped the degree of brutality slaves experienced, as well as the legacy of the systems themselves. Bermuda and Barbados provide notable examples where skilled labor requirements and early education policies contributed to the development of socio-economic advantages that endure today."

(https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/were-all-slave-societies-brutal)