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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> Considering that American-owned slaves were treated much crueler on average than Ancient slave populations

What?

Roman slaves at least had a path to freedom. Or a good portion of them did. Many (not majority) became citizens eventually (or their children did) and many in fact became quite prosperous. Their slavery wasn't based on racial status, but on class, and slavery wasn't considered genetically predetermined, but a product of status and conquest. "Graduation" out of slavery was actually possible.

American slavery being built on "race" and white supremacy offered no such path. Even "mixed race" descendants suffered. Even after slavery was abolished, former slaves were (and often are) still treated abhorrently.

> "Graduation" out of slavery was actually possible.

This is also true of American slaves.

> Their slavery wasn't based on racial status, but on class, and slavery wasn't considered genetically predetermined, but a product of status and conquest.

So is this. You think the child of a free black was enslaved?

> This is also true of American slaves.

Bullshit. By the 19th century (which is the century everybody talks about) it was almost legally impossible to free a slave in the American south (things like, say, a $200 tax in Florida... which was more money than most people saw in a year).

Even when possible it was essentially never done.

> So is this. You think the child of a free black was enslaved?

In many of the US slave states, if you were a free black person, regardless of who your parents were, you had to either leave the state within a fixed time, or you would be enslaved. So, yes.

enslaved to whom?

Caught by "slave catchers"/kidnappers and sold at slave auctions.

> By the 19th century (which is the century everybody talks about) it was almost legally impossible to free a slave in the American south (things like, say, a $200 tax in Florida... which was more money than most people saw in a year).

Believe it or not, most slaves were owned by fairly wealthy people.

Rome lasted for 2,100 years. I'm not sure you can generalize the quality of life of a free person, let alone a slave.

> Roman slaves at least had a path to freedom

You need to be specific. Are we comparing Connecticut in 1784 AD to Gaul in 50 BC? Or Connecticut in 1783 AD to Gaul in 59 BC? Because the two comparisons are very different.

I recall a single incident from Roman history where Crassus crucified 6,000 slaves on the Appian Way. Things like this make me think you can't easily quantify which slavery was the worst. Perhaps it was easier, in some contexts in Rome, to earn freedom, but perhaps you were more likely to be crucified too.

Slavery has always meant a kind of subjugationa and social death but slavery in continental North America was probably among the best ever in terms of material living conditions. Most slaves in agricultural societies were always agricultural, and were worked to death, like in the Caribbean. That's how plantation agriculture worked, from Roman latifundia onward. Black slaves in wht's now the US had enormous natural increase in their population, which is if not historically unprecedented, damn close. They were also taller and better nourished than all but the upper echeloons of European society. Obviously people prefer to be free but there are multiple axes of comparison and American and Roman slavery each look "better" on different axes.

In Sparta slaves were hunted as a rite of passage

OP speaks the truth. At least since the Roman empire, there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery. (not to exclude the East or the Arab world, I just don't know enough to comment on them)

In the Roman empire, selling oneself as a slave was even seen as a last resort when capital was urgently needed (like when a debt repayment was ordered by a magistrate and a person didn't have enough money and fungible possessions to pay it). Slaves could also buy their freedom, and were sometimes even given their freedom as a gift.

Of course, there were cruel masters as well as kind ones. But prior to the African slave trade, the institution itself wasn't remotely as brutal or morally abhorrent, because it wasn't built on a social commitment to racism.

American racism was fueled in part by the abhorrent belief that Africans were of a separate race (i.e. subspecies) that was inferior in a Darwinian sense, thus dehumanizing them in people's minds. This sentiment appears sometimes in 1800s American literature. (And if I may say so, I think it bears a remarkable resemblance to some Nazi antisemitic propaganda.)

> Slaves could also buy their freedom, and were sometimes even given their freedom as a gift.

Again, this is not a difference between ancient slavery and American slavery. Why do you mention it?

> Of course, there were cruel masters as well as kind ones. But prior to the African slave trade, the institution itself wasn't remotely as brutal or morally abhorrent, because it wasn't built on a social commitment to racism.

Now it seems like you're specifically trying not to respond to the claim that American slaves received crueler treatment than ancient slaves did.

You're arguing that exceptions and rare occurrences in American slavery are equivalent to the norms in Rome and for some reason trying to make American slavery seem like it really wasn't all that bad.

Your style of responding also makes it seem like you're arguing the point that slavery wasn't all that bad in the US from a very specific view point

They're rare occurrences in American slavery and they're also rare occurrences in Rome.

As some other people have pointed out, if you look at objective indices of quality of life, the United States generally comes out as possibly the best place in all of history you could have been enslaved.

>there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery

Absolutist statements like this rarely seem to hold true.[0] American slavery is European slavery as well. Europeans (both countries and individuals) benefited extremely handsomely from enslaving people in Africa and bringing them to their colonies in America. And even after they had finally outlawed slavery for themselves just a few scant decades before the US did, they kept buying that affordable slave-produced cotton and sugar and coffee and etc. from the Americas.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe

> ...At least since the Roman empire, there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery. (not to exclude the East or the Arab world, I just don't know enough to comment on them)

So, you launch a massive generalization, and attempt to walk it back by opting out most of the world (Asia, the middle east/Arab World, but making no mention of Africa, or Oceania). While we broadly view slavery as a despicable practice, please don't practice selective historical revisionism to minimize the barbaric suffering experienced to this day in some countries, and the astronomical death rates in the sugar plantations.

Examples from Historical Context: American Slavery in Comparative Perspective [1]

"Death rates among slaves in the Caribbean were one-third higher than in the South, and suicide appears to have been much more common. Unlike slaves in the South, West Indian slaves were expected to produce their own food in their "free time," and care for the elderly and the infirm."(

"The largest difference between slavery in the South and in Latin America was demographic. The slave population in Brazil and the West Indies had a lower proportion of female slaves, a much lower birthrate, and a higher proportion of recent arrivals from Africa. In striking contrast, southern slaves had an equal sex ratio, a high birthrate, and a predominantly American-born population".

"Slavery in the United States was especially distinctive in the ability of the slave population to increase its numbers by natural reproduction. In the Caribbean, Dutch Guiana, and Brazil, the slave death rate was so high and the birthrate so low that slaves could not sustain their population without imports from Africa. The average number of children born to an early nineteenth-century southern slave woman was 9.2—twice as many as in the West Indies."

Additionally, you have ignored that slavery is still active in a number of countries [2], [3], [4], [5]

Slavery is a practice worthy of contempt, still practiced, and modern.

[1] Historical Context: American Slavery in Comparative Perspective https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-res...

[2] https://www.mic.com/articles/82347/the-world-s-worst-countri...

[3] https://face2faceafrica.com/article/slavery-africa-today/3

[4] https://www.theclever.com/15-countries-where-slavery-is-stil...

[5] https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-oct-17-la-fg-wn-sl...

I have no disagreement with any of your points, though I don't think our statements otherwise conflict.

My knowledge of world history outside the West is scant. That's why I restricted my statements to the Western world.

Spain, Portugal, and Holland are all part of the Western world.

Roman slavery is one of the most romanticised things on the internet. The number of slaves who could buy their way free was miniscule. Most slaves were worked to death on the farms and mines, and had about a 5-year life expectancy after capture. Sure, life was better for a handful of slaves, particularly well-educated Greek slaves, but for most slaves life was brutal and short.

People seem obsessed with declaring the US south as having some sort of so-much-worse slavery, but they view the past with pretty rose-coloured glasses. 'But it's not racism!' is a meaningless moral alteration to the act of raiding other lands, dragging people back to your lands, and working them to death in under a decade.

As for Roman opinions on racism, no, they weren't racists in the sense of the modern term, but they were still intensely bigoted and committed more than a few genocides. Our friend Jules came home bragging of killing a million Gauls and enslaving a million more and got social cachet for that. They didn't see Gauls as a difference 'race' (that's a modern construct) but they definitely saw them as an outgroup that needed to be dominated.

Speaking specifically of Greeks and Romans. And in general, Ancient peoples did not consider slaves to be as animals, but American slave-owners often held the belief that they were sub-human and not more than talking beasts.

There was a class of Mycenaean slave that was close to a free man, who could own land and have status.

Greek slaves could be involved in every economic activity except politics. Slaves were bankers, craftsmen and tradespeople. Male slaves might be personal assistants, shield makers, cutlers, bedmakers, while female slaves would be textile weavers and bakers. Not only were slaves not seen as denegerate inferiors, they were expected to be able to take over their masters' business when needed. Some of the most famous and respected philosophers were slaves.

Slaves could earn wages, and use those wages to pay a fee to live and work alone, and even use their savings (or loans/gifts) to buy their freedom. Cretian slaves could own a house and livestock and pass it down to their family, which was also granted the same familial laws as freedmen.

Debt slavery was common until it was abolished; people basically could become serfs until they paid off their debts, and then become free again. Some slavery was limited to a period of time, and slaves had rights / could be involved in legal disputes, and so win freedom or other rewards.

Roman slaves perhaps were treated worse than Greek originally, and many more of them were used for agricultural labor, probably putting their experiences on par with American slaves. But as the Roman empire progressed, slaves gained many more rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome

Worth nothing also that a lot of Spartan "historical information" is more myth and bullshit than evidence-based. Spartans were masters of propaganda. Helots may have been treated like shit, but apparently a lot of the reputation was inflated or made up by later historical writers.

Helots could also be craftspeople, own land, raise crops, keep money, buy their freedom. They maintained family units and were less often dispersed than Greek slaves. Helot children born of Spartan citizen fathers would become members of the army as an intermediate rank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots

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