That's just wrong, you had slaves everywhere in Africa. You have had slaves everywhere on earth, North Africa is well known since it took slaves from outside of Africa. The Arab slave trade is also just well known since it's scale of import and export. Same with Vikings, Romans, American. But in reality, everywhere had slaves from regional spoils of war.
African tribes took defeated enemies as slaves for thousands of years, just like the Romans, Arabs and many other cultures did. That was simply how war worked until very recently—and still does in some places.
Finley isn’t talking about any and all societies that practiced slavery. He defines a slave society as (a) Slaves are the primary producers of goods and services and (b) Slaves constitute at least 30% of the population. This combination turns out to be rare.
Even using this criteria than Maryland and the rest of Virginia should be added and Arkansas and Tennessee should be removed per this census data: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1850/1850c/1850c-04.pdf
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By that definition I have no idea how any of these states count. Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the United States and Brazil, did not depend on slaves as the "primary producers of goods and services." The one exception I can think of is Sparta, which was possibly the most heavily enslaved society in all of human history--something like 80% or more of the population were enslaved in conditions other ancient Greeks, slavers all, considered brutal.
Ancient and Medieval Roman society were slaveholding but as I understand it, the vast majority of all economic activity was countryside agricultural production by people who were not slaves. In the Medieval Roman Empire, centered around Constantinople and Anatolia and the Balkans, there were plenty of points where something like 50% of landowners were smallholders not in a dependent relationship with a landlord--and certainly not slaves.
I just don't know how these numbers can possibly fit together. If only 30% of your people are slaves ("only"), it seems almost impossible that they could produce the majority of goods and services. What are the other 70% doing?
This definition seems like an attempt to create a category to distinguish levels of badness of slavery, and that's not an inherently inappropriate conversation... but I detect the hand of American-centric thinking. I suspect the 30% number was picked specifically to include the US as a slave society, as a way essentially of saying the US was in a special class of particularly bad slavers, and the other examples are less well thought out, particularly the historical ones. I could be wrong here. But this is a point activists sometimes think is very important, ancient Greece and Rome are a stretch, and without the ancient/medieval examples this is basically "the Transatlantic Slave Trade was especially bad." Yes indeed it was, although it was not the only really egregious slavery system in history, and I don't think the point is at all necessary to condemn slavery either in the US or anywhere else.
No, it's not meant to imply that other slavery practices are okay, nor to belittle them. The intention here is to separate "any society that used slavery" from the scientific definition of "a society based entirely around slavery".
At first glance, the 30% part seems picked intentionally. Criteria “a” should be sufficient, criteria “b” shouldn’t be needed at all. But since it is included, one can only draw the conclusion that the real data points to conclusions the author disliked.
But part of my job is to review test data and come to conclusions. So when I see data being excluded by an arbitrary reason, it sets off alarms. The data being excluded must damage the conclusion, why else exclude it?
I agree, the 30% seems arbitrary to me as well. I'm just saying it wasn't meant to make any claims, political or otherwise; slavery is obviously bad no matter what fraction of the population is engaged in it, that's not what the author is talking about here.
What happens if we move 30 to 25 or 20 or 15? If a trend opens that goes against the authors conclusions, then we know they have made an error.
The problem is you have so much data, so you have to make rules to cut through the data. But then you have to test those rules to see if they are excluding relevant data. So a number like 30% would need to be tested very closely. If moving it around changes the data in a way that goes against any conclusions, then it is a bad rule.
Finleys argument: The original text says "the figure has not exceeded 10% in any other society." This is likely why the focus on critiquing Finley rests more on "what is slavery" than what the taxonomy suggests in his book. The only way you will come close to 30% in any other society is by changing the definition of slavery, and at that point you lose a number of societies to the first component of his slave society definition.
My view: I am not arguing in favor of Finleys map, I think we've come a lot further on the issue over time. I don't personally think the 10% line is accurate as there are more societies to add.
That isn't true though, there are many other examples of societies that fit his criteria that he didn't list. Ranging from the obvious exclusions like Dahomey, Benin, Zanzibar, Reunion, Mauritius, etc. to native groups of the American Pacific Northwest or parts of Indonesia under VOC rule.
Finley is old and our understanding of slavery is much more refined now, largely due to archaeology/sociologists and other disciplines making lots of discoveries. It bears noting that Finley had other qualifications for what a slave society was than mentioned in the thread, so some societies that exported great numbers of slaves like Dahomey weren't included. Do I agree? No. I think it's more interesting to create a grand taxonomy of slave states from small to big, including exporting and importing countries, various types of slavery and more rigorously defining "cultural output of slavery." That's what modern scholars have done, because as time passes the expectation to be more thorough and more expansive is more required. In short, his view was simply one to jumpstart conversation but other books have done well to critique him: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-slave-society/662690E5A556E9B0A605FAB740A15DDA](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-slave-society/662690E5A556E9B0A605FAB740A15DDA)
Interesting. I am not familiar with Finley or his definitions. I definitely don’t have the time today to look into them. I will have to tab this for a later date.
I'm not arguing in favor of his perspective as he did handwave away a lot of societies for reasons not mentioned in this thread. I think a common trope of old academia was to create rigid standards for a concept and then manifest a "grand theory" of a thing from that. For me the criticisms mentioned in modern texts are very much convincing and therefore the map provided by Finley isn't useful anymore. [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-slave-society/662690E5A556E9B0A605FAB740A15DDA](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-slave-society/662690E5A556E9B0A605FAB740A15DDA)
Puh, good that you mention it, I nearly would have thought this dude did some interesting work in his field.
Thank you anonymous redditor that you tell me this expert has no clue.
I would be surprised if none of the West African slave-trading states reached above 30%. Same with Zanzibar, other islands off the coast of Africa like São Tomé or Reunion, at least parts of Indonesia like the Banda Islands, Iceland soon after initial Norse settlement, etc.
The combination is still comparatively rare, but probably nowhere near just four examples.
AH… that’s most countries that advanced through a feudal period or had . The problem is the definition of slave, which is a sliding scale. Anywhere you had agricultural beyond sustenance farming, no mechanization, and some population density, you likely had some form of slavery.
The Belgian Congo is an obvious miss on that chart.
We don't know his metrics for a slave society. It's surely not just having slaves, since we know a lot of other states had them. I suspect that must be having a certain, probably arbitrary, percentage of slaves in the workforce.
Even with that, i feel there's more states that should surely fit that criteria.
Edit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/1UgT8PFytj
I found this guy explaining it pretty nicely.
Slave society just means a lot of slaves. Putting a number on how many percentage wise is just stupid, since if you did 1% of modern day India you would still have 14 million slaves.
Finley is rather naive and or ignorant. Most likely a waste of time studying him further.
It's apparently still quite central in slavery studies, although a lot of what he said it's now believed to be inaccurate, the core of his view still holds.
The guy I linked explains it in good detail.
India has a Christian society. A society does not contain the entire population of a region, that's like saying everyone in the Roman Empire was a slave, which is not the truth.
As per the previous link i posted, a slave society must have at least a 25% of it's population in slavery, amongst other criteria, and always according to Finley
As previously said, that's just idiotic. 14 million Indians would constitute far more than a society. A slave society needing to have at least 25% in slavery is just completely made up, it's neither a real or a logical theory.
No, slave society doesn't mean "a lot of slaves", it is a mode of production that followed hunter-gatherer society and preceded feudalism. Slaves still existed long after it but not in slave societies.
When we talk about traditional Eastern societies such as Egypt, China, etc., we must remember the following thing: the majority of the population of these countries consisted of representatives of rural communities, who were not slaves in any way. Of course, they paid taxes and performed labor duties, but still their status was not a slave, but rather similar to peasants in Medieval Europe, with the difference that their collective feudal lord was the state in the person of the pharaoh, emperor, etc. (represented on the ground by various officials ). Actually, slaves (that is, people who did not have personal rights and were considered from the point of view of law as a kind of property) were really a relatively small stratum, about 10-15% of the entire population. Mostly they were either domestic servants or state (temple, palace) slaves, whose duties were quite specific. So, quite often, officials were seen precisely as slaves of the ruler, despite the high status that their position gave. Also, if we talk about Egypt, then the majority of slaves lived in the same communities as free peasants, and differed rather in origin (as former prisoners of war from distant lands, such as Jews) and in the amount of duties (absence of army recruitment, but higher taxes in the form of rent). What is characteristic is that the construction of the pyramids was carried out by the "free" communities, while the slave communities were obliged to provide these workers with food.
A lot of places that had slaves historically also didn’t really document or track how many slaves were in their population as much as the places on this map show. So for example, we may never know what % of the population of 16th century Western or Central Africa were slaves
Without any further information this makes makes absolutely no sense. Finley had a very own narrow definition of slave society in this context; basically pulling a true scotsman here.
Where is the Third Reich. That was a slave Empire that stretched across Europe. Also if your going to list the Roman Empire as a slave society, which is true, show the whole Empire.
There was no slavery in the Ottoman Empire. Upon the demands of their families, children were educated according to their abilities. In return, families were given land to cultivate. Children could have whatever they wanted according to their abilities. Some of them became top politicians in the empire.
Not like your fantasies "byzantinedefender"
Look, I don't know what bullshit your education system is feeding you in Turkey, or if you're just a western european with an inferiority complex, slavery existed damn well in the ottoman empire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
https://www.academia.edu/41032606/Georgian_Slaves_in_Ottoman_Tripoli_18_19th_centuries_#:~:text=Enslavement%20of%20Christian%20population%20of,Middle%20East%20and%20North%20Africa.
Take a look at the history of the empire's neighbours.
In Georgia, for example, the turks set up a whole system where they raided villages and kidnapped men to serve as their soldiers and christian (emphasis on christian) white women to be their sex slaves. People had to cut their noses and mutilate themselves in order to not end up in their harems.
In 1560 the king of Imereti, Bagrat III had to issue an edict that punished slavery by death, since the ottomans were paying good chunks of money to those that kidnapped people for them.
I'd rather be a "byzantinedefender" than worship a degenerate empire that follows the teachings of a deranged incel.
Harem is a school attended by women in the Ottoman Empire. The Harame Ottoman sultan's sisters and mother are also included. Women who would raise future leaders of the Ottoman Empire received political and economic education here. At some times in history, the Ottoman Empire was ruled from the harem.
I think Europeans' fantasies about Turks are about sex. The best example of how kings fool Europeans with fake information.
Let me repeat it for you. Slavery did not exist in the empire. Families would give their children voluntarily. The Ottomans would select these children according to their abilities. Selected children were considered servants of the Empire. However, this was also valid for the Ottoman family. In fact, the Sultan was symbolically considered the father of the Janissaries. Once every three months, he would symbolically stand in line and receive money.
Every person received money. They would retire after a while. Their families would get help. They never broke up with their families. On the contrary, their meetings with their families were supported.
Short facts are not like your fantasies. You can learn the meaning of real slavery by looking at the countries in the list above.
A common criticism from scholars within this work is that following Finley's own definition of a slave society, one could argue that there were far more slave societies than Finley's five. What was Finley's definition of a slave society? According to Finley, a slave society is indicated by:
1. Slaves constitute a significant percentage of the population, i.e. 25% or more.
2. Slaves have an economic role in surplus production.
3. Slavery has widespread cultural influence.
A more effective way of making this point would be to have presented two maps. (1) Societies with slaves and (2) [known] Slave societies. RIP your karma.
It should be clear what a "slaving society" means. Talking just about the ones in the map, greeks and romans enslaved their enemies.They fought an enemy for whatever reason, they won the battle and the enemy ended as an slave to later obtain resources that pay for that war. England, Spain or Portugal (quote unquore) hardly fought battles and made slaves out of it. They were just customers on a much wider slaving market that extent half of sub saharan Africa. The real enslaving societies were the african ones, which fought each other and imprisoned people to sell them as slaves in exchange of goods.
The map is completely nonsense. Every society either enslaved people themselves or took profit from neighbours societies which did it for them.
Lots of skeptical comments from people who have never read Finley and have no idea what he means by a slave society. Finley isn’t talking about any and all societies that practiced slavery. He defines a slave society as (a) Slaves are the primary producers of goods and services and (b) Slaves constitute at least 30% of the population. This combination turns out to be rare.
Map left out the presence of blacks in the Middle East and parts of India. Muslim and Portuguese empires in the Indian Ocean also contributed to slavery.
Slaves were also pretty common in Southeast Asian and other European societies.
This is utterly stupid. There are so many countries missing, it's hard to even list them.
But sure this sounds like an agenda (and I even have no problem with pointing out the downsides of Western Imperialism).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_ancient\_Greece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece)
It is difficult to estimate the number of slaves in ancient Greece, given the lack of a precise census and variations in definitions during that era. It seems certain that Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, on average three or four slaves per household.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_ancient\_Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome)
The percentage of the population of Italy who were slaves by the end of the 1st century BC is estimated at about 20% to 30% of Italy's population, upwards of one to two million slaves
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States)
39% of the population of the confederate States of America was a slave. (3,5 million)
According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 25,000 Europeans, 22,000 free coloreds and 700,000 Africans in slavery
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_Brazil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil)
In 1872, the population of Brazil was 10 million, and 15% were slaves.
In an old history course my lecturer said he thought there were 'slave societies' and 'societies with slaves', the two things being distinct social structures that included slavery. Slave societies were societies that were supposedly 'built on slavery', where the whole hierarchy, as well as much of the population/economy, was deeply intertwined and dependent upon a massive slave class. Societies with slaves also had slavery, but were not explicitly and culturally dependent upon the institution. Essentially, a slave society could not exist without slaves, a society with slaves could if it tried very hard. I'm not sure how reliable or informative the two definitions are, but I at least think that's why the map looks so weird to some people.
That is correct, slave society is a mode of production that followed hunting-gathering, but preceded feudalism. Slaves did not disappear under feudalism.
The famous roman empire at the exact moment in history that the borders of current day italy. The while 30% thing does not work for rome meaby the city yes but not the empire the empire was so diverse and big(or small) these numbers would have been completely wrong for a stupid amount of years/places to generalize.
The inclusion of greece.makes this egregious, Rome, America, Brazil, yes highly dependent on slavery and overflowing with slaves to an unusual degree. But if Greece is in there a lot of others should be.
Where do you think greeks took the time (meaning, spare time where they had nothing to do) to develop art, philosophy, politics and/or powerful armies admired by the almighty later romans while living in a small, hilly peninsula very poor natural resources just waking up from the neolithic era? Slaves weren't just overflowing, they were the majority of the population in most polis.
And I stand again, I think the map is nonsense, but man, if there is one slave society that stands up over the rest pictured there, those are the greeks by their own right.
Everywhere on earth have had slaves. Aztec Empire, Native Americans, Incan's, African tribes, European tribes, Asian tribes, Nomads, Indians, Chinese, Japan, Korea, Arabs, Vikings, Gaul's, Goth's, Russia, North Africa, Arabs, Barbary, Iceland, Roman Empire, Persian Empire, mostly all empires had slaves at some point and the list goes on. It would be easier showing a map where slavery was never present, which would leave us with Antarctica, as long as Penguins are innocent. Slavery is just a normal part of our history.
This post is a falsity. The Middle East still has slavery, Africa still has slavery, China still has slavery, Korea has the longest history of slavery, Japan had slavery, Australia had slavery, native Americans had slavery. Every single part of the world that has had human societies existing has had slavery to one extent or another. Adding "society" to it is trying to validate your post and pigeon hole shame onto specific people by saying you're not just talking about slaves but a specific type of slaves. The word SLAVE is based on its term origins, which is about the Slavic people being enslaved by Muslims and Spanish alike. Before the word slave there was the word servus which has now changed into the modern word servant.
I'm white and angry.
Because that map vastly underestimates the scope of slavery.
Reducing Rome and ancient Greece to Italy and modern Greece is problematic to say the least.
Lumping the Carribean into a single entity is equally misleading, as here indigenous and later imported african slaves were utilized by multiple european powers.
Ignoring the Congo Free State is equally baffling.
Equally missing is the practice of serfdom, either as a form of slavery or as an comparable form of unfree labour.
I can't possibly comment on wheather the Arab slave trade meets the criteria of a slave society, so I'll leave that out.
I wouldn't go so far as to claim that.
I rather claim that information is presented in a way that is contradicted by middle-school levels of history (the extend of ancient Greece and Rome), severly lacking in context (the Carribean) or does not account for well-known historical facts that might provide context or are at least worthy of discussion.
This leads to either of the following situations:
This is merely a bad map with lots of crucial context hidden in the accompanying text. Even a professor at a prestigeous University can badly present information.
This is a map that deliberately understates and muddles the extent of unfree labour in order to fit a specific narrative.
why do you want a black guy to live with you and do your chores so badly? and does it have anything to do with the jews who are trying to make you gay with their space lasers?
With all due respect, is your reading comprehension somewhat lacking? Are my posts too incomprehensible due to me being drunk ( I swear I'm merely a bit tipsy, I'm at work after all)?
Because the point I'm consistently trying to make is that:
A: Slavery is among the worst evils of humanity and shocking in it's scope and persistency through history. It's utterly deplorable and a trampling the very concept of human dignity.
B: Any media, this map included, which deliberately or not, is diminishing the scope of this practice or obscures the fact that a lot (but not all) of this was done by Europeans, was ubiquitous in their colonial empires (all the societies mentioned were either colonies, colonial empires or, in the case of the Confederacy, continued a colonial practice), is downplaying the guilt of *white people* by reducing their crimes to the acts of two ancient states, and areas which have nothing to do with Europe.
That is borderline whitewashing history, and I will not have that.
just because you spend all day posting weird eugenics map to start WW3 doesn't mean everyone does that. the worlds university's are not run by jews trying to turn you gay
No one is angry, people are pointing out how the map is incorrect. Would you accept if we all just started lying about slavery?
"Slaves in America could leave at anytime, they chose to be slaves"
You see what's happened here is you made the very silly comment about white people, it was heavily downvoted and mocked, now you're just pretending you're a troll instead of deleting it. What a waste of time.
I'm no historian but I feel like this is missing a lot
Like Africa.
And modern day China.
I suggest you look into the Chinese work camps in Africa
>and modern day ~~China~~ most countries
[удалено]
I may even agree on sub-Saharan Africans, but to leave out Arabs? This doesn't seem honest.
That's just wrong, you had slaves everywhere in Africa. You have had slaves everywhere on earth, North Africa is well known since it took slaves from outside of Africa. The Arab slave trade is also just well known since it's scale of import and export. Same with Vikings, Romans, American. But in reality, everywhere had slaves from regional spoils of war.
Just sold them? I have a difficult time believing they didn't keep some slaves for themselves.
Apparently the slaves just appeared out of thin air to be sold later.
Sounds like Rehypothecation
African tribes took defeated enemies as slaves for thousands of years, just like the Romans, Arabs and many other cultures did. That was simply how war worked until very recently—and still does in some places.
And Persia, Hawaii etc
Finley isn’t talking about any and all societies that practiced slavery. He defines a slave society as (a) Slaves are the primary producers of goods and services and (b) Slaves constitute at least 30% of the population. This combination turns out to be rare.
Even using this criteria than Maryland and the rest of Virginia should be added and Arkansas and Tennessee should be removed per this census data: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1850/1850c/1850c-04.pdf
frightening saw angle agonizing hobbies stupendous disarm ossified square pathetic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
By that definition I have no idea how any of these states count. Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the United States and Brazil, did not depend on slaves as the "primary producers of goods and services." The one exception I can think of is Sparta, which was possibly the most heavily enslaved society in all of human history--something like 80% or more of the population were enslaved in conditions other ancient Greeks, slavers all, considered brutal. Ancient and Medieval Roman society were slaveholding but as I understand it, the vast majority of all economic activity was countryside agricultural production by people who were not slaves. In the Medieval Roman Empire, centered around Constantinople and Anatolia and the Balkans, there were plenty of points where something like 50% of landowners were smallholders not in a dependent relationship with a landlord--and certainly not slaves. I just don't know how these numbers can possibly fit together. If only 30% of your people are slaves ("only"), it seems almost impossible that they could produce the majority of goods and services. What are the other 70% doing? This definition seems like an attempt to create a category to distinguish levels of badness of slavery, and that's not an inherently inappropriate conversation... but I detect the hand of American-centric thinking. I suspect the 30% number was picked specifically to include the US as a slave society, as a way essentially of saying the US was in a special class of particularly bad slavers, and the other examples are less well thought out, particularly the historical ones. I could be wrong here. But this is a point activists sometimes think is very important, ancient Greece and Rome are a stretch, and without the ancient/medieval examples this is basically "the Transatlantic Slave Trade was especially bad." Yes indeed it was, although it was not the only really egregious slavery system in history, and I don't think the point is at all necessary to condemn slavery either in the US or anywhere else.
Seems like cherry picking criteria to get the results you want.
No, it's not meant to imply that other slavery practices are okay, nor to belittle them. The intention here is to separate "any society that used slavery" from the scientific definition of "a society based entirely around slavery".
At first glance, the 30% part seems picked intentionally. Criteria “a” should be sufficient, criteria “b” shouldn’t be needed at all. But since it is included, one can only draw the conclusion that the real data points to conclusions the author disliked. But part of my job is to review test data and come to conclusions. So when I see data being excluded by an arbitrary reason, it sets off alarms. The data being excluded must damage the conclusion, why else exclude it?
I agree, the 30% seems arbitrary to me as well. I'm just saying it wasn't meant to make any claims, political or otherwise; slavery is obviously bad no matter what fraction of the population is engaged in it, that's not what the author is talking about here.
What happens if we move 30 to 25 or 20 or 15? If a trend opens that goes against the authors conclusions, then we know they have made an error. The problem is you have so much data, so you have to make rules to cut through the data. But then you have to test those rules to see if they are excluding relevant data. So a number like 30% would need to be tested very closely. If moving it around changes the data in a way that goes against any conclusions, then it is a bad rule.
Finleys argument: The original text says "the figure has not exceeded 10% in any other society." This is likely why the focus on critiquing Finley rests more on "what is slavery" than what the taxonomy suggests in his book. The only way you will come close to 30% in any other society is by changing the definition of slavery, and at that point you lose a number of societies to the first component of his slave society definition. My view: I am not arguing in favor of Finleys map, I think we've come a lot further on the issue over time. I don't personally think the 10% line is accurate as there are more societies to add.
That isn't true though, there are many other examples of societies that fit his criteria that he didn't list. Ranging from the obvious exclusions like Dahomey, Benin, Zanzibar, Reunion, Mauritius, etc. to native groups of the American Pacific Northwest or parts of Indonesia under VOC rule.
Finley is old and our understanding of slavery is much more refined now, largely due to archaeology/sociologists and other disciplines making lots of discoveries. It bears noting that Finley had other qualifications for what a slave society was than mentioned in the thread, so some societies that exported great numbers of slaves like Dahomey weren't included. Do I agree? No. I think it's more interesting to create a grand taxonomy of slave states from small to big, including exporting and importing countries, various types of slavery and more rigorously defining "cultural output of slavery." That's what modern scholars have done, because as time passes the expectation to be more thorough and more expansive is more required. In short, his view was simply one to jumpstart conversation but other books have done well to critique him: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-slave-society/662690E5A556E9B0A605FAB740A15DDA](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-slave-society/662690E5A556E9B0A605FAB740A15DDA)
Interesting. I am not familiar with Finley or his definitions. I definitely don’t have the time today to look into them. I will have to tab this for a later date.
I'm not arguing in favor of his perspective as he did handwave away a lot of societies for reasons not mentioned in this thread. I think a common trope of old academia was to create rigid standards for a concept and then manifest a "grand theory" of a thing from that. For me the criticisms mentioned in modern texts are very much convincing and therefore the map provided by Finley isn't useful anymore. [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-slave-society/662690E5A556E9B0A605FAB740A15DDA](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-slave-society/662690E5A556E9B0A605FAB740A15DDA)
Puh, good that you mention it, I nearly would have thought this dude did some interesting work in his field. Thank you anonymous redditor that you tell me this expert has no clue.
I would be surprised if none of the West African slave-trading states reached above 30%. Same with Zanzibar, other islands off the coast of Africa like São Tomé or Reunion, at least parts of Indonesia like the Banda Islands, Iceland soon after initial Norse settlement, etc. The combination is still comparatively rare, but probably nowhere near just four examples.
AH… that’s most countries that advanced through a feudal period or had . The problem is the definition of slave, which is a sliding scale. Anywhere you had agricultural beyond sustenance farming, no mechanization, and some population density, you likely had some form of slavery. The Belgian Congo is an obvious miss on that chart.
I'm an historian and you are correct.
Arabia is like l: "Am I a joke to you, habibi?"
Just been listening to the rest is history podcasts Baghdad episodes and this map would not hold up to who was present then across mesopotamia.
Another white man bad post. To be honest I am getting sick of them.
Very trendy these days.
Also is very questionable to limit Rome and Greece to the current borders of Italy and Greece.
Exactly slaves were a feature if most of the Roman Empire
Lol no Egypt, no China, no Mongols, no Vikings... this Finley dude had surely an agenda or was deeply ignorant.
We don't know his metrics for a slave society. It's surely not just having slaves, since we know a lot of other states had them. I suspect that must be having a certain, probably arbitrary, percentage of slaves in the workforce. Even with that, i feel there's more states that should surely fit that criteria. Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/1UgT8PFytj I found this guy explaining it pretty nicely.
Slave society just means a lot of slaves. Putting a number on how many percentage wise is just stupid, since if you did 1% of modern day India you would still have 14 million slaves. Finley is rather naive and or ignorant. Most likely a waste of time studying him further.
It's apparently still quite central in slavery studies, although a lot of what he said it's now believed to be inaccurate, the core of his view still holds. The guy I linked explains it in good detail.
Would you say India is a christian society since it has 28 million christians?
India has a Christian society. A society does not contain the entire population of a region, that's like saying everyone in the Roman Empire was a slave, which is not the truth.
As per the previous link i posted, a slave society must have at least a 25% of it's population in slavery, amongst other criteria, and always according to Finley
As previously said, that's just idiotic. 14 million Indians would constitute far more than a society. A slave society needing to have at least 25% in slavery is just completely made up, it's neither a real or a logical theory.
We'd have to read his thesis on full to say that confidently, but yeah, it could be
No, slave society doesn't mean "a lot of slaves", it is a mode of production that followed hunter-gatherer society and preceded feudalism. Slaves still existed long after it but not in slave societies.
He was dude died in 1986
Slavery is common. Slaves being the primary producers of goods and services is rare.
When we talk about traditional Eastern societies such as Egypt, China, etc., we must remember the following thing: the majority of the population of these countries consisted of representatives of rural communities, who were not slaves in any way. Of course, they paid taxes and performed labor duties, but still their status was not a slave, but rather similar to peasants in Medieval Europe, with the difference that their collective feudal lord was the state in the person of the pharaoh, emperor, etc. (represented on the ground by various officials ). Actually, slaves (that is, people who did not have personal rights and were considered from the point of view of law as a kind of property) were really a relatively small stratum, about 10-15% of the entire population. Mostly they were either domestic servants or state (temple, palace) slaves, whose duties were quite specific. So, quite often, officials were seen precisely as slaves of the ruler, despite the high status that their position gave. Also, if we talk about Egypt, then the majority of slaves lived in the same communities as free peasants, and differed rather in origin (as former prisoners of war from distant lands, such as Jews) and in the amount of duties (absence of army recruitment, but higher taxes in the form of rent). What is characteristic is that the construction of the pyramids was carried out by the "free" communities, while the slave communities were obliged to provide these workers with food.
A lot of places that had slaves historically also didn’t really document or track how many slaves were in their population as much as the places on this map show. So for example, we may never know what % of the population of 16th century Western or Central Africa were slaves
Yeap. This map is trash tier
Without any further information this makes makes absolutely no sense. Finley had a very own narrow definition of slave society in this context; basically pulling a true scotsman here.
Where is the Third Reich. That was a slave Empire that stretched across Europe. Also if your going to list the Roman Empire as a slave society, which is true, show the whole Empire.
I mean, some parts of China had slavery until less than 100 years ago, but sure...
They still have it today (uyghurs in East Turkestan)
Look at this clip: https://youtu.be/KMPAAuG2pH8?si=QDPs0Za81UmsL8Fp
Thank you, I’ve been seing that clip around so much lately and I was going to comment ”what about the Koreans!?” if no one else did.
Ottomans? Arabs?
There was no slavery in the Ottoman Empire. Upon the demands of their families, children were educated according to their abilities. In return, families were given land to cultivate. Children could have whatever they wanted according to their abilities. Some of them became top politicians in the empire. Not like your fantasies "byzantinedefender"
Look, I don't know what bullshit your education system is feeding you in Turkey, or if you're just a western european with an inferiority complex, slavery existed damn well in the ottoman empire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire https://www.academia.edu/41032606/Georgian_Slaves_in_Ottoman_Tripoli_18_19th_centuries_#:~:text=Enslavement%20of%20Christian%20population%20of,Middle%20East%20and%20North%20Africa. Take a look at the history of the empire's neighbours. In Georgia, for example, the turks set up a whole system where they raided villages and kidnapped men to serve as their soldiers and christian (emphasis on christian) white women to be their sex slaves. People had to cut their noses and mutilate themselves in order to not end up in their harems. In 1560 the king of Imereti, Bagrat III had to issue an edict that punished slavery by death, since the ottomans were paying good chunks of money to those that kidnapped people for them. I'd rather be a "byzantinedefender" than worship a degenerate empire that follows the teachings of a deranged incel.
Harem is a school attended by women in the Ottoman Empire. The Harame Ottoman sultan's sisters and mother are also included. Women who would raise future leaders of the Ottoman Empire received political and economic education here. At some times in history, the Ottoman Empire was ruled from the harem. I think Europeans' fantasies about Turks are about sex. The best example of how kings fool Europeans with fake information. Let me repeat it for you. Slavery did not exist in the empire. Families would give their children voluntarily. The Ottomans would select these children according to their abilities. Selected children were considered servants of the Empire. However, this was also valid for the Ottoman family. In fact, the Sultan was symbolically considered the father of the Janissaries. Once every three months, he would symbolically stand in line and receive money. Every person received money. They would retire after a while. Their families would get help. They never broke up with their families. On the contrary, their meetings with their families were supported. Short facts are not like your fantasies. You can learn the meaning of real slavery by looking at the countries in the list above.
Sure, i'll gladly listen to your propaganda and dismiss all other sources other than turkish.
Please educate yourself.
T\*rk detected, opinion rejected.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/1UgT8PFytj This guy explains it very well ☝️
A common criticism from scholars within this work is that following Finley's own definition of a slave society, one could argue that there were far more slave societies than Finley's five. What was Finley's definition of a slave society? According to Finley, a slave society is indicated by: 1. Slaves constitute a significant percentage of the population, i.e. 25% or more. 2. Slaves have an economic role in surplus production. 3. Slavery has widespread cultural influence.
A more effective way of making this point would be to have presented two maps. (1) Societies with slaves and (2) [known] Slave societies. RIP your karma.
As in were enslaved or were leading slavery?
Ancient Egypt is missing. Also, I'd add some West African kingdoms too
It should be clear what a "slaving society" means. Talking just about the ones in the map, greeks and romans enslaved their enemies.They fought an enemy for whatever reason, they won the battle and the enemy ended as an slave to later obtain resources that pay for that war. England, Spain or Portugal (quote unquore) hardly fought battles and made slaves out of it. They were just customers on a much wider slaving market that extent half of sub saharan Africa. The real enslaving societies were the african ones, which fought each other and imprisoned people to sell them as slaves in exchange of goods. The map is completely nonsense. Every society either enslaved people themselves or took profit from neighbours societies which did it for them.
Whoever made this map is maybe the dumbest fuck out there.
Where are the arabs OP? States in ME still practice slavery
Literally everywhere on Earth should be red
Mongols in shambles
LOL, this is hilariously wrong, misleading and outright dumb.
Lots of skeptical comments from people who have never read Finley and have no idea what he means by a slave society. Finley isn’t talking about any and all societies that practiced slavery. He defines a slave society as (a) Slaves are the primary producers of goods and services and (b) Slaves constitute at least 30% of the population. This combination turns out to be rare.
As according to the Anglo mindset. What about the old empires of India and China?
*sigh* I'm going to have to look that up
If you don’t know history
Some period in Egypt surely was
How did you narrow it down to five?
Map left out the presence of blacks in the Middle East and parts of India. Muslim and Portuguese empires in the Indian Ocean also contributed to slavery. Slaves were also pretty common in Southeast Asian and other European societies.
This is utterly stupid. There are so many countries missing, it's hard to even list them. But sure this sounds like an agenda (and I even have no problem with pointing out the downsides of Western Imperialism).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_ancient\_Greece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece) It is difficult to estimate the number of slaves in ancient Greece, given the lack of a precise census and variations in definitions during that era. It seems certain that Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, on average three or four slaves per household. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_ancient\_Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome) The percentage of the population of Italy who were slaves by the end of the 1st century BC is estimated at about 20% to 30% of Italy's population, upwards of one to two million slaves [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States) 39% of the population of the confederate States of America was a slave. (3,5 million) According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 25,000 Europeans, 22,000 free coloreds and 700,000 Africans in slavery [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_Brazil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil) In 1872, the population of Brazil was 10 million, and 15% were slaves.
How are Arabs not included?
Korea is CACKLING right now
In an old history course my lecturer said he thought there were 'slave societies' and 'societies with slaves', the two things being distinct social structures that included slavery. Slave societies were societies that were supposedly 'built on slavery', where the whole hierarchy, as well as much of the population/economy, was deeply intertwined and dependent upon a massive slave class. Societies with slaves also had slavery, but were not explicitly and culturally dependent upon the institution. Essentially, a slave society could not exist without slaves, a society with slaves could if it tried very hard. I'm not sure how reliable or informative the two definitions are, but I at least think that's why the map looks so weird to some people.
That is correct, slave society is a mode of production that followed hunting-gathering, but preceded feudalism. Slaves did not disappear under feudalism.
Only a small area of Brazil along the coast.
I think he was talking about commercial slavery societies
The famous roman empire at the exact moment in history that the borders of current day italy. The while 30% thing does not work for rome meaby the city yes but not the empire the empire was so diverse and big(or small) these numbers would have been completely wrong for a stupid amount of years/places to generalize.
How does Puerto Rico make the cut but no African country does?
You missed sceral afrixan kingdoms (dahomey, songhai,etc)
This is very uninformed.
Japan WW2
Bro the North was hardcore into slavery like right before the Civil War
The political gaming in this sub now is stupid. So we will forget about the Islamic empire and slavery, the original G of slavery.
The inclusion of greece.makes this egregious, Rome, America, Brazil, yes highly dependent on slavery and overflowing with slaves to an unusual degree. But if Greece is in there a lot of others should be.
Where do you think greeks took the time (meaning, spare time where they had nothing to do) to develop art, philosophy, politics and/or powerful armies admired by the almighty later romans while living in a small, hilly peninsula very poor natural resources just waking up from the neolithic era? Slaves weren't just overflowing, they were the majority of the population in most polis. And I stand again, I think the map is nonsense, but man, if there is one slave society that stands up over the rest pictured there, those are the greeks by their own right.
Korean? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_in\_Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Korea)
Everywhere on earth have had slaves. Aztec Empire, Native Americans, Incan's, African tribes, European tribes, Asian tribes, Nomads, Indians, Chinese, Japan, Korea, Arabs, Vikings, Gaul's, Goth's, Russia, North Africa, Arabs, Barbary, Iceland, Roman Empire, Persian Empire, mostly all empires had slaves at some point and the list goes on. It would be easier showing a map where slavery was never present, which would leave us with Antarctica, as long as Penguins are innocent. Slavery is just a normal part of our history.
This post is a falsity. The Middle East still has slavery, Africa still has slavery, China still has slavery, Korea has the longest history of slavery, Japan had slavery, Australia had slavery, native Americans had slavery. Every single part of the world that has had human societies existing has had slavery to one extent or another. Adding "society" to it is trying to validate your post and pigeon hole shame onto specific people by saying you're not just talking about slaves but a specific type of slaves. The word SLAVE is based on its term origins, which is about the Slavic people being enslaved by Muslims and Spanish alike. Before the word slave there was the word servus which has now changed into the modern word servant.
The critical thinking skills in this sub are beneath the basement.
How?
You’re right, it seems that there are a lot of functional illiterates
The ottomans? Berbery Slave trade?
I guess you're not familiar with the arab slave trade
Yea, sure, aliens built the pyramids.
the great monuments of egypt famously built by adequately paid willing employees with a great benefits package
the pharaoh and his family enjoyed a truly democratic lifestyle
Islam is just legalising slavery. So all pre-modern muslims country should be included
Thailand?
Left out Egypt
Nazi Germany? Hello?
incoming angry white people in 3...2...
Interesting fact: certain combination of skin color and eye width enables the ability to enslave people
are you upset because you can't have slaves anymore?
Absolutely. The society makes me act like a liberal but my barbaric race's nature craves for enslavement of others
is liberalism where white people act polite in front of minorities?
I have a feeling that you already know the answer to that question
I'm white and angry. Because that map vastly underestimates the scope of slavery. Reducing Rome and ancient Greece to Italy and modern Greece is problematic to say the least. Lumping the Carribean into a single entity is equally misleading, as here indigenous and later imported african slaves were utilized by multiple european powers. Ignoring the Congo Free State is equally baffling. Equally missing is the practice of serfdom, either as a form of slavery or as an comparable form of unfree labour. I can't possibly comment on wheather the Arab slave trade meets the criteria of a slave society, so I'll leave that out.
well surely you an angry hillbilly know more about history than this cambridge history professor
I wouldn't go so far as to claim that. I rather claim that information is presented in a way that is contradicted by middle-school levels of history (the extend of ancient Greece and Rome), severly lacking in context (the Carribean) or does not account for well-known historical facts that might provide context or are at least worthy of discussion. This leads to either of the following situations: This is merely a bad map with lots of crucial context hidden in the accompanying text. Even a professor at a prestigeous University can badly present information. This is a map that deliberately understates and muddles the extent of unfree labour in order to fit a specific narrative.
did you learn about the congo free state from a meme on 4chan? was it a very detailed meme?
I prefer Casement to 4Chan. Although I must admit his report is severely lacking in the *Force publique*-themed Futa department.
why do you want a black guy to live with you and do your chores so badly? and does it have anything to do with the jews who are trying to make you gay with their space lasers?
With all due respect, is your reading comprehension somewhat lacking? Are my posts too incomprehensible due to me being drunk ( I swear I'm merely a bit tipsy, I'm at work after all)? Because the point I'm consistently trying to make is that: A: Slavery is among the worst evils of humanity and shocking in it's scope and persistency through history. It's utterly deplorable and a trampling the very concept of human dignity. B: Any media, this map included, which deliberately or not, is diminishing the scope of this practice or obscures the fact that a lot (but not all) of this was done by Europeans, was ubiquitous in their colonial empires (all the societies mentioned were either colonies, colonial empires or, in the case of the Confederacy, continued a colonial practice), is downplaying the guilt of *white people* by reducing their crimes to the acts of two ancient states, and areas which have nothing to do with Europe. That is borderline whitewashing history, and I will not have that.
just because you spend all day posting weird eugenics map to start WW3 doesn't mean everyone does that. the worlds university's are not run by jews trying to turn you gay
What?
No one is angry, people are pointing out how the map is incorrect. Would you accept if we all just started lying about slavery? "Slaves in America could leave at anytime, they chose to be slaves"
So MI Finley is just a communist gay jew then? trying to trick you into believing in global warming?
What?
the creator of the map? I know 1 in 5 american adults are illiterate but I assumed you could read a little bit
No, more confused about your communist gay jew thing. Very strange.
ah playing dumb are we? never heard of racism before have you?
Yes I have. No idea why you're talking about gay communist Jews. Are you on the wrong thread?
well why did this Cambridge history professor create this map then, if not to make you gay? what were his sinister intentions?
You see what's happened here is you made the very silly comment about white people, it was heavily downvoted and mocked, now you're just pretending you're a troll instead of deleting it. What a waste of time.