Questions tagged [slavery]
The system in which some people (slaves) are a property of other people (masters) and are forced by them to perform work.
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How were slave girls usually dressed in Arabia in early Islamic societies? [closed]
After slave girls were purchased by their owners and brought to the owners' Islamic hometowns, was it acceptable for these girls to be topless in public?
This resource quotes Sheikh Hamza Yusuf's ...
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1answer
334 views
Why did Spartacus turn South at Mutina instead of continuing North towards Thrace?
During the Roman Republic's Third Servile War (73–71 BC), a gladiator named Spartacus lead an army of escaped slaves in revolt against Rome. Spartacus was a Thracian from an area in Eastern and ...
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Did the Jesuit missions in New Spain coerce native labor?
Several Catholic orders operated missions in colonial Mexico; Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits (before their expulsion) all had their own strategies. Alejandro Murguía in The Medicine of Memory ...
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Are there any Ancient Greek texts showing concern for the fate of their slaves?
The Roman story about Vedius Pollio's cruelty toward his slave who was punished by Augustus is quite famous. Do we know such stories showing concern for the slave in ancient Greece?
(I read, and ...
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76 views
How many slaves did the British Empire free between 1700 and 1900?
Parliament's 1833 Slavery Abolition Act bought, over a six-year time period, the freedom of all slaves in the British Empire
the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, or to the ...
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1answer
348 views
What percentage of slaves originally brought from Africa were purchased from slave traders as opposed to having been captured by Europeans?
I was engaged in a debate over slavery in America yesterday and the following proposition I put forward was being contested: a majority of slaves brought to America from Africa were sold to Europeans ...
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1answer
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Did Catherine the Great really call for the abolition of serfdom?
... like Catherine the Great S01E01 (2019) shows?
This would be almost a century before serfdom was actually abolished, and makes one wonder why the Czars didn't just do it, if they were in favor of ...
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2answers
360 views
Before the Civil War, did the USA ever offer something like a “5-year plan” for the South to abolish slavery?
Before the U.S. Civil War broke out, did the North ever offer any sort of gradual slavery abolishment deal to the South, instead of demanding that the South stop slavery immediately? I imagine the ...
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143 views
After the end of slavery at the closure of the US civil war, what percentage of former slaves stayed at their previous workplaces?
Upon the abolition of slavery in the USA, there were suddenly millions of former slaves set free. But they were left without an obvious workplace. On the other side, millions of jobs done previously ...
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Who kept Roman peculium records?
This is effectively a Roman banking question but specifically with respect to the custody and record keeping of slaves wages.
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities indicates a need for a lot of ...
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3answers
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Did slaves have slaves?
Was there anywhere in history where the enslaved were able to enslave others?
Was there a slave hierarchy?
I read the slavery wikipedia entry, it mentions that in various cultures people retained ...
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1answer
89 views
Was there social pressure among whites for slave owners to trade their slaves north in the 1850s? [closed]
I was told that slave owners were supposed to sell their slaves to a more northern plantation. There was no law to do this, and I am not sure when this custom began (or even if it was really a custom)...
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1answer
252 views
How did Southern slaveholders in the United States relate to the Caribbean and Latin America?
The assertion in bold from Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Capital piqued my interest. I am quoting most of the paragraph in case the context may help.
A large part of the south-west – California, ...
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187 views
When was the last someone was condemned to slavery as a punishment in the United States?
These question and answer have established than even after the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, felons have been sentenced to be "sold as slave" for a given ...
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2answers
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Has chattel slavery ever been used as a criminal punishment in the USA since the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment?
The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution provides (my emphasis):
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly ...
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1answer
59 views
Entry-level articles on USA slavery?
I am a first period history student in Brazil, and have been studying the formation of American colonial societies during the 16th and 17th centuries. We have only now started studying the formation ...
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1answer
274 views
Why have “classical” given names (seemingly) had greater persistence in American black culture?
This is not quite a duplicate of Did American slave holders typically give their slaves the names of Roman nobility?. Over there, two sheds' answer gives a compelling argument that it wasn't so much ...
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Was murdering a slave illegal in American slavery, and if so, what punishments were given for it?
Was there any punishment for killing slaves, and what punishment was given for it, and was it enforced?
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Did galley captains put corks in the mouths of slave rowers to keep them quiet?
I’m reading Sword and Scimitar by Simon Scarrow and there’s this bit about rowers in galleys of the Knights of St. John (Malta). In the story, it is important the Knights' galley keeps silence so that ...
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2answers
434 views
Why didn't slaves just leave? [closed]
How did ancient cultures keep their slaves from just walking away? Record-keeping in these societies was quite poor. Even if paperwork did exist stating that someone was a slave, the next town over ...
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2answers
338 views
Why was agriculture more conducive to slavery in U.S. South than the North?
The most common explanation I hear for why there was more slavery in the South than the North in is that farming was more profitable in the South due to climate, soil quality etc. and the North had ...
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1answer
287 views
What was the historical prevalance of inherited chattel slavery?
Slavery was widespread throughout the ancient world. However, some of the most common examples seem to differ qualitatively from slavery as it's commonly conceived today. For instance, Greek slavery ...
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3answers
299 views
Economic status of whites in the US South at the height of slavery?
In Tony Horwitz' book Midnight Rising about John Brown's raid, on page 23 discusses Calhoun's stance on slavery: he asserted that slavery freed Whites from drudgery and class conflict.
I wonder if at ...
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2answers
292 views
Are there any histories of indigenous Americans who were brought to Europe?
I have read brief accounts of indigenous Americans who were brought to Europe in the wake of Columbus's arrival, including a family of Inuit who were brought to meet Elizabeth I but died shortly after ...
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2answers
438 views
What was the South actually afraid Lincoln or Congress would do that precipitated the Civil War?
While the US Civil War was fought over slavery, it doesn't appear that an interpretation of law from the 19th century supports the notion that Congress or the President could have eliminated slavery ...
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4answers
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How accurate/realistic is the conception of 'the kindly slave owner'?
I'm reading an historical fiction novel New York by Edward Rutherfurd at the moment.
One of the early chapters, set in New Amsterdam (New York City) in the mid 17th century, is told from the ...
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2answers
474 views
Were the first African Americans in Jamestown slaves or indentured servants?
Recently, Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia referred to the first African Americans to arrive in Jamestown as indentured servants. This quickly created a twitter storm of corrections, first by ...
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1answer
346 views
Why there are more people of red hair among Arabs than Mongols when both populations are naturally born with dark hair?
Question Title is edited by J Asia, see OP's comments in my answer, below. Have left rest of OP's question as is (the body of question). This question, in my limited understanding of genetics, is ...
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3answers
738 views
Were slave plantations economically superior or inferior to plantations with paid labor?
According to certain Marxist authors (Mostly Georgi Plekhanov (and some others), but I'm afraid I cannot quote because the text is not in electronic form and not in English.), slavery in US and latter ...
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3answers
663 views
Did Sparta give citizenship to the helots who participated on its side in the Battle of Plataea?
What happened to the 35,000 helots that fought at Plataea?
Were they made Spartan citizens?
I just felt this might have been disruptive to Spartan society.
I've checked Wikipedia, Google.. ...
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1answer
2k views
Are there records of US slaves who practiced Islam following their import from Africa?
Islam has historically been prevalent in many regions of Africa, such as in the Songhai Empire, which was based around Sharia law. It seems plausible to me that some Africans were practitioners of ...
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What % of slave owners in the antebellum south committed rape?
In David Blight’s biography of Frederick Douglas, he explains the young Frederick witnesses several violent beatings and or rapes by the age of 7 or 8.
It’s also unclear weather or not the head of ...
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1answer
204 views
Are there historic examples of slave emancipation leading to mass starvation?
I was reading this article about "1 Million New Afrikan / Blacks Died From Starvation & Disease When Slavery Ended & Reconstruction Period ( Largest Biological Crisis of 19th Century)" and I ...
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2answers
366 views
Earliest Traces of Slavery
The earliest example I know is from Sumer. That would be the earliest example of institutionalized slavery, because that's (one of) the earliest forms of urbanized civilization. However, what's the ...
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1answer
351 views
What was the 'indemnity' paid out by Haiti actually for?
The Haitian Revolution was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection between 1791 and 1804 and led by Toussaint L'Ouvrture.
Haiti paid reparations to French slave-holders set in 1825 ...
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1answer
313 views
Did freed slaves keep a portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the wall?
I read somewhere that post-civil war, many freed slaves kept a portrait/drawing of Abraham Lincoln in their house, and that this "tradition" went on for some time. Is this true, and can anyone share a ...
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Where can I find a personal account of freedom of a slave in America after 1863
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared free all slaves in the Confederacy. In 1865 the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the whole country. I am familiar with the context.
What I am ...
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2answers
204 views
What developments in Jefferson's life caused him to withdraw from the topic of slavery in political discourse?
Where Jefferson once saw slavery as the central flaw in Virginia, a sentiment he forcibly expressed in his Notes on the State of Virginia, he later “began to adjust his thinking to concentrate instead ...
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What prompted Lincoln to change his mind about ending slavery?
Prior to the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln asserted that he would not end slavery in the South and that he was not in favor of racial equality. Yet, by 1863 he signed the “Emancipation Proclamation” ...
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1answer
783 views
What is the position of modern scholarship as regarding the claims of professor Samuel Rafinesque in his book about the indigenous Americans [closed]
Here is an excerpt of a 19th century book by Professor Rafinesque:
PROFESSOR CONSTANTINE SAMUEL RAFINESQUE (THE PRIMITIVE BLACK NATIONS OF
AMERICA 1832)
"The Native American Negroes or black ...
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1answer
219 views
How did the Russian-American Company hire serfs?
In the Russian Empire until 1861 the estate of serfdom kept most of the country's population the property of others. This cheap labor was attractive to capitalist enterprises like the Russian-American ...
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5answers
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What did the Emancipation Proclamation exactly do?
I'm a bit confused about what Lincoln's proclamation did exactly. It's thought by some the Emancipation Proclamation gave all slaves the status of free. However from reading the introduction of the ...
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1answer
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Were myopic slaves more valuable in ancient Greece?
When reading on nearsightedness I came across the following passage:
We only have to remember how valuable a myopic slave was in ancient Greece, as a rare person who preserved his ability to read ...
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0answers
124 views
What was John Hippisley's worldview when he advocated for the slave trade?
I'm reading about William Wilberforce's opposition to the slave trade. One of the quotes is from John Hippisley, who was a proponent of the slave trade. In one of his essays he says "The impossibility ...
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1answer
432 views
What obligations did a freed slave have to his/her former master in Anglo-Saxon England?
As in Ancient Rome, slaves in Anglo-Saxon England could gain their freedom:
The manumission (freeing) of slaves was solemnized by ceremony, the
presence of witnesses, and legal documentation...
...
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Did Western “New Imperialism” actually free slaves in Muslim lands?
Slavery is fair game in mainstream/traditional Islam. I have heard various commentaries that abolishing of slavery in various Muslim-dominated countries actually coincided with the 2nd wave of Western ...
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French Revolutionary figure who thought apes could oversee black slaves?
I'm operating off of fuzzy memory for this question but I know I have encountered this bizarre (and offensive: fair warning) historical figure who I am inquiring about here before in my previous ...
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1answer
2k views
What (primary) sources are there on the life of female slaves in Classical Greece, more specifically Athens?
Since there was often a difference in what jobs male and female slaves were respectively made to work in (and there even being one exclusive to women, being a wet nurse), I was wondering whether, for ...
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1answer
409 views
What evidence is there for inventions by slaves or former slaves in Ancient Rome?
The article Slavery in the Roman Empire claims that
Slaves are...reported to have made several important inventions.
A number of slaves and freedmen did achieve some measure of fame and fortune: ...
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1answer
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In ancient Rome, could free-born Romans become slaves?
In the article Roman Slavery, Kenneth Tuite of the Classics Department at the University of Maryland states quite categorically that Romans could not be slaves:
Although a class system existed, ...
