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Comment by peter_retief | Hacker News Reader

The Vikings also captured and sold people into slavery, Dublin was a slave trading post setup by the Vikings. Also captured Slavic peoples from Europe from which the term slave comes. Christianity stopped slavery.

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A couple of centuries before that, the Roman Empire was disintegrating and Romano-Britons were regularly kidnapped by Gaelic Irish slavers. After a number of years, one of these slaves escaped but later returned to Ireland as a missionary and was successful in kick-starting the Christianisation of the Irish. In Christian Ireland, slaves gained more rights which eventually, as I understand it, lead to a decrease in slavery. Patrick is now our patron saint.

Considering that it was Christian nations that enslaved more people in recent history, and the longest, you might want to rethink your last sentence.

And you might read up on serfdom, a hallmark in European feudalism.

[citation needed]

This is total nonsense. In modern times it's Christian, largely European nations where slavery has not flourished. Check the data for yourself. Slavery is alive and well in many parts of the world. In many cultures it's hardly even controversial.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17...

https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/

Serfdom, which survived until the 18th century where I live, is rather different from chattel slavery. Serfs were tied to land, not to their masters. (It reminds you of the internal passport system of the USSR.) They therefore had local culture, uninterrupted traditions going back centuries, and families could not simply be torn apart by selling someone away. "Breeding" serfs for profit wasn't a thing either; everybody who was born in a certain village had to be sustained there. Young serfs could be recruited into the army and gain social status. And as a noble, you couldn't just import more serfs from abroad for money. You had to make do with what you had, which meant at least somewhat better treatment.

What serfdom has in common with slavery is the fact that industrialization killed off both of them. Industry required a large and moveable work force.

I am not insinuating that being a serf was enjoyable, but if I had to choose between serfdom and slavery, that would be no contest.

Read what I said in context, the vikings stopped trading in slaves after converting to Christianity https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistori... I also very much doubt your statement that Christian nations enslaved for the longest period and more people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave... Slavery was banned because it was declared as being against the laws of god and many of the early anti slavery activists were deeply religious. I am not a christian but am offended by the bigoted tone some people take with Christianity

Let's just exclude the ancient Romans anf Greeks, shall we? In modern history it was Christian nations and colonial empires that enslaved until the 19th century. Christianity did nothong in stoping that, and Viking culture in general changed dramatically once they were converted to Christianity, slavery was just one aspect of that.

Serfdom is, of course, different from slavery. Thr main difference being that serfs could be sold like other mobilr assets as they were attached to the land. When thr land was sold, the serfs eere sold along with it so. The common theme between slavery and servedom so is that in both cases people were property of sorts.

Abolitionists were Christians, because they tried to abolish slavery in Christian nations. As much as Abolitionists used religious arguments against slavery, slavery advocates used religious argments for it.

Modern day de-facto slavery, in the Arab world and illegal varieties affecting immigrants for example, are different from historical slavery. As much different as Roman and Greek slavery was from Barbary state slavery and Colonial slavery.

One hallmark of the modern variety of slavery, the one European nations used to build their colonial empires on, is the racist nature of it. In ancient times race didn't play much of a role in slavery. Nor did religion in pre-Christian Rome. These two things set the Colonial / Christian form slavery apart from those ancient forms.

Slavery was never about race. Often people would convert to Islam or Christianity so as not to be enslaved. Hence the Arab word for black Africans, Kefir or unbeliever.

The Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the US might have a word here

Was the Atlantic slave trade about race though? I don’t think that the tragedy that was the slave trade enslaved people because they were black, but because they were sub-Saharan Africans. I think it would have worked the same with any race that had been in those cultures.

There wasn’t a law or practice of enslaving people based on their skin color. As evidenced by the free blacks in other areas of the world that weren’t enslaved.

I think the racial stereotypes came about based on the race of the slaves, not the other way around.

People’s looks are often mentioned with slavery, though. For example, while Julius Caesar abducted about a million Gauls, the blondest slaves in Roman markets were Angles.

Hollywood, at least in the HBO production “Rome” did get this part right. The main character has blonde hair, which is a political liability.

As noted in another comment, Zanj is the Arab word for black. Kafir is the word for nonbeliever and use more broadly. I’ve not heard it used racially.

In modern history it was Christian nations and colonial empires that enslaved until the 19th century.

Just because that's all you know about doesn't mean that's all there was.

I jever said it was exclusively Christian nations, did I? The Barbary Coast pirates are just one example. This whole discussion started with a a claim that Christianity "ended" slavery by the Vikings. Christianity never had an issue with slavery if it was Christians doing the slaving. And it was Christian colonial super powers that used slavery all the way, in tremendous scales, all the way to the mid 19th century.

Depends a lot on how you define the "recent history" period and in what locations?

Slavery existed on all continents (except Australia I think?) long before the expansion of Christians started. Antic Mediterranean had slaves. Scandinavia nations had slaves. Mongolian and Chinese empires had slaves. North and South American native civilizations had slaves.

Also the Christian slave traders of 13th - 19th century cooperated heavily with Arabs and natives to run the slave raids for them. At the same time Ottoman Empire also used slaves, as well as kidnapping children to serve as soldiers, just it's far less known in the West as it didn't affect Westerners.

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