The Routledge History of Slavery

Gad Heuman, Trevor Burnard, Gad Heuman, Trevor Burnard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136892530
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Routledge History of Slavery is a landmark publication that provides an overview of the main themes surrounding the history of slavery from ancient Greece to the present day. Taking stock of the field of Slave Studies, the book explores the major advances that have taken place in the past few decades of study in this crucial field.

Offering an unusual, transnational history of slavery, the chapters have all been specially commissioned for the collection. The volume begins by delineating the global nature of the institution of slavery, examining slavery in different parts of the world and over time. Topics covered here include slavery in Africa and the Indian Ocean World, as well as the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In Part Two, the chapters explore different themes that define slavery such as slave culture, the slave economy, slave resistance and the planter class, as well as areas of life affected by slavery, such as family and work. The final part goes on to study changes and continuities over time, looking at areas such as abolition, the aftermath of emancipation and commemoration. The volume concludes with a chapter on modern slavery.

Including essays on all the key topics and issues, this important collection from a leading international group of scholars presents a comprehensive survey of the current state of the field. It will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of slavery.

Part 1 Slavery as a Global Institution

1 Greek and Roman Slavery

Niall McKeown

DOI: 10.4324/9780203840573-1

Introduction

When one thinks of the Greco-Roman world, one probably thinks of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. It was also, however, the world of Spartacus, perhaps the most famous slave in history, and tens of millions of its other inhabitants were also slaves. There is robust disagreement as to how to reconstruct their lives. This might seem surprising. Greek and Roman slavery have been studied for over 150 years and comparatively little new evidence has been discovered in that time. Historians have an inbuilt ability to disagree with one another, but one might still have expected increasing consensus. The continuing debate is, however, largely the product of three factors that lend the study of ancient slavery its distinctiveness and help it to make a very individual contribution to the general study of slaves.

First, “Greco-Roman” actually covers a number of very different slave systems. Our evidence allows us only snapshots of some of these, such as Athens between about 450 and 300 bc, and Roman Italy between about 100 bc and ad 200. These in turn were subject to considerable change over time. In addition, slaves fulfilled a great range of different roles within Athens and Rome. All these differences make generalisations difficult, but also offer interesting comparisons.

Second, historians of Greek and Roman slavery lack the kind of bureaucratic records used in the study of more modern slave societies. They are forced to glean information from a wide range of material, including drama and poetry. Their especial sensitivity to both the possibilities and the problems of such material is perhaps their most distinctive contribution to the overall study of slavery. The great variety of potential “readings” of texts, however, provides a second explanation for continued debate.

Modern geography, curiously, provides the final reason (see McKeown, 2007, especially Ch. 2–4). While there are no “national” schools of thought on ancient slavery, different areas have developed somewhat different emphases in their work. English-speaking scholars have tended to emphasise conflict between master and slave. French and Italian scholars have often taken a similar line, though with a greater willingness to apply Marxist ideas of class conflict. On the other hand, some German-speaking scholars, while recognising the inhumanity of slavery, have also asked why slavery was able to function successfully as long as it did, and have examined how slaves and ex-slaves were assimilated into the wider society.

If these differences help to explain why the past 150 years have not produced much agreement, they also explain why historians of Greek and Roman slavery provide provocative studies where one can find most of one’s assumptions about slavery challenged, as well as a variety of very different, though equally sophisticated, ways of reading evidence. Antiquity, moreover, offers us relatively well documented slave societies where, unlike many modern examples, neither capitalism nor race was crucial, even if racism existed and slave owners expected to profit from their slaves.

Early Greek slaveries and slavery in Athens

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey provide us with a (fictionalised) portrait of early Greek society of around 700 bc. Chattel slaves (outsiders bought for cash) and more numerous “semi-free” dependents served local “lords” and were apparently treated similarly. It has been suggested that Homeric servitude was a quasi-contractual relationship, with an expectation of rewards for the “good” servant. While it is certainly significant that the text emphasised the idea of the “good servant” and “good lord”, the servant’s rewards were precarious, and slavery was a fate one wanted to avoid. For example, after Odysseus bloodily regained control of his palace after 20 years away, he hanged 12 of his maids, apparently for sleeping with other noblemen (Garlan, 1988, 29–37).¹

The comparative unimportance of chattel slavery in Homer may represent the norm in archaic Greece (700–500 bc). For some states, however, it remained the pattern into the “classical” period (500–300 bc). The Spartans, for example, lived off the labour of helots (Cartledge, 1979, Ch. 10). Most historians believe these were the original inhabitants of Messenia and Laconia, which were conquered by the Spartans, though they may have been the losers in a struggle within Spartan society. They heavily outnumbered the Spartans, though the traditional ratio of 7:1 may be exaggerated. Some contemporaries referred to helots as slaves, but modern scholars usually place them between slave and free: “communal slaves” or even “serfs”. Helots were owned by the state rather than by the individuals whose farms they worked. They lived in family units and were allowed to keep part of their crop. Recent archaeological work suggests that there may have been sizeable, socially differentiated settlements of helots in Messenia (Hodkinson, 2008). Unfortunately, most of our evidence about helots comes from non-Spartans writing long after the events they describe and who had a tendency to sensationalise. Ancient writers clearly believed, however, that helots were harshly treated, humiliated and sometimes murdered. Helots responded with rebellions, particularly in Messenia. They had a common language and identity, and lived separately from their masters in areas that provided favourable territory for flight and resistance. There have been recent attempts to downplay the tensions between helot and Spartan. The weight of the evidence, however, suggests serious conflict. The Messenian helots were eventually able to assert their independence with the support of Sparta’s Greek enemies after 370/69 bc, and helotry seems to have disappeared in Laconia some time after the Roman conquest of the second century bc.

Some states, notably Athens, chose to use chattel slaves. Little evidence survives to explain the history of the process that culminated in perhaps a third of the population of classical Athens being slaves (Finley, 1998, Ch. 2; Morris, 2002). Moses Finley argued that slavery on such a scale was historically unusual because of the problems in controlling slaves and the costs in acquiring and maintaining them. He believed that the exploitation of internal labour sources (as in Sparta) was the usual choice for most elites in history. Finley suggested that three preconditions were needed before the rise of mass chattel slavery. (1) Large, privately controlled farms – if a ruler could simply appropriate a farmer’s surplus, or if farmers only produced at subsistence level, there would be little incentive to buy an extra labourer. (2) The development of market exchange – this helped to ensure a constant supply of slaves. It also created opportunities to sell any surpluses they created and made it easier to provision them. (3) Crucially, a lack of internal sources of labour – Finley believed that democratic structures helped protect ordinary Athenians from exploitation, most notably when debt-bondage was abolished in 594 bc. This forced larger landowners to import external labour to fulfil their manpower needs.

Finley may have exaggerated the importance of the abolition of debt-bondage. The development of democracy and of slavery were more probably processes lasting several hundred years into the fifth century. Indeed, some historians argue that rather than democracy helping to create slavery, slavery helped the development of democracy by allowing farmers time to engage in politics. There was also clearly some demand for chattel slaves even before 594 bc, and it has been suggested that Finley underestimated the positive economic attractions of slave labour (such as its flexibility). The infrequency with which we see slave systems on the Athenian scale, however, suggests that more than economic factors are required to explain its rise. For the moment, therefore, Finley’s position still represents the orthodoxy.

By the classical period Athens was the urban centre of a triangle of territory (“Attica”) approximately 40 miles on each side. At its height, between about 450 and 300 bc, modern estimates suggest a free population of 150,000–250,000 with 50,000–100,000 slaves. The figure for slaves is, however, largely an educated guess. Our sources imply that most slaves came from the Balkans and from Turkey, though some were from other Greek cities. The market was the main mechanism of acquiring slaves, with warfare, kidnapping and possibly child exposure the likeliest ultimate sources of those traded. There is little surviving evidence of slave breeding (or slave families), though it may have been significant.

The debate about the spread of slave ownership in Athens indicates the problems and choices faced by historians of ancient slavery. The traditional picture suggested that the richest few thousand Athenians used slaves to produce the bulk of their wealth. Another 10,000 middling farmers, the hoplites, allegedly owned one or two slaves as well. It was suggested that a growing population and attendant land division forced hoplites to intensify production with extra labour. Hired labour was despised and undependable, and only slave labour allowed farmers the free time required to engage in democratic life. The remaining 10,000–15,000 poorer citizens also aspired to own slaves, but may not have been able to afford them.

Some historians have, however, argued that slave ownership was restricted to the rich (Jameson, 2002). Texts implying that hoplites owned slaves may reflect their wishes rather than reality. Even if they needed extra labour (and the evidence for a land shortage and the supposed intensification it necessitated has been questioned), it has been suggested that extra labour could have been found from family or neighbours or hired workers (ordinary Athenians may have been more willing to be hired out than aristocratic contemporaries suggested). Computer models of probable farm production also suggest that it is doubtful whether hoplites could have afforded to buy and keep slaves. Lastly, it has been argued that the democracy improved the position of smaller farmers, directly through cash payments and indirectly by preventing exploitation by the rich. This, in turn, allegedly removed part of the need to intensify production, the supposed reason for buying a slave.

This position, however, implies a peasantry so poor that it would have been vulnerable both to periodic famine and to control by wealthy patrons, even given the benefits of democracy. Neither phenomenon is very significant in our sources. In addition, the computer modelling of hoplite farm production has such a wide margin of error that it cannot rule out the possibility of slave ownership. There are, then, problems with the argument that slave ownership was restricted to the rich, especially as it also requires actively arguing away all the literary evidence pointing to hoplite ownership of slaves. Relatively widespread slave ownership seems likelier.

Up to a third of slaves in Athens may have worked in her silver mines. We know little about their lives. It has been suggested that expensive inscriptions left behind by some, and the skilled work seen in the mines, indicate that their life may have been relatively tolerable. This seems doubtful. Mining in antiquity was often a punishment, and slave rental agreements involving the replacement of dead miners also hint at low life expectancy. The surviving inscriptions may well be the product of slave supervisors, not ordinary slaves, and the high standard of the mining work may simply show effective control.

Most slaves in Athens probably were involved in mixed agricultural and domestic work, living alongside their masters. One author described slave barracks and an overseer on the estate of a very wealthy landowner, but concentrations of more than a dozen slaves were probably quite unusual, and ownership of just one or two slaves the norm. In addition, the property of the wealthy was probably generally dotted about the countryside rather than in single units.

The remaining slaves did mostly artisan work. Some lived separately from their masters, paying a form of rent. A small number of slaves helped run businesses, including primitive banks, or acted as commercial agents. There were, finally, some state-owned slaves serving as record keepers, “civil servants”, street cleaners and even policemen. A few of these may have led quite independent lives.

Apart from their job, the temperament of their master was probably the other crucial element in a slave’s life. Comic sources suggest casual violence against slaves, though the interpretation of such material is problematic, as we shall see. Athenians, however, unlike the Romans, spent little time discussing abuses committed against slaves. This could be interpreted optimistically, suggesting the absence of severe abuse, but Athenian sources generally either ignore slaves altogether or adopt a cynical attitude towards them. Slaves certainly had little legal protection. A right of asylum existed, but the fate of slaves who used it is unknown. Killing one’s own slave was an offence against the gods, but any religious stigma could be removed with purification rites. Killing someone else’s slave was treated legally as damage to property. To the surprise of contemporaries, slaves were technically protected alongside the free from hubris, assault designed to humiliate. Even if it dated from a time when Athenians could be enslaved for debt, the law was certainly applied in the classical period. It may, however, have protected the owner’s honour rather than the slave’s, or been used to discourage misbehaviour towards slaves that might later be applied to citizens.

Slaves of both sexes were subject to sexual abuse from their master. There were few taboos against a male citizen seeking sex outside marriage, and slave prostitution was also an acceptable part of daily life. The only hint of a limitation on sexual use was an apparent distaste of the practice of castrating (Greek) slaves.²

Slaves were barred from pleading in courts, except in some commercial cases in the fourth century bc. When slaves testified, they typically did so under torture (Mirhady, 2000). Curiously, we have little evidence of this from surviving court speeches, and many examples of litigants refusing to surrender their slaves for torture. Some believe that torture was a legal fiction and never took place. Others have suggested that torture was common, and regarded as so effective in establishing the truth that it was unnecessary afterwards to continue with the court case, explaining the absence of references to it in court speeches. The continued demands to hand slaves over for judicial examination do indeed make little sense if torture was not a real possibility. In any case, the alleged incapacity of the slave to speak the truth without physical compulsion, and their physical vulnerability in law, helped to distinguish slave from free on an ideological level.

Athenian drama is potentially one of the most fruitful sources of evidence ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Slavery as a Global Institution
• Part 2 The Character of Slavery
• Part 3 Changes and Continuities
• Index