Did America ACTUALLY have 400 years of slavery?

[abradley]

In what way was Roman slavery worse?

In Rome a slave's life wasn't worth a plug nickel, in America slaves were worth something (Depending on the time) and could be expensive to replace.

 

[caketastydelish]

How were the Roman slaves not worth anything? What do you mean by that ?

 

[abradley]

How were the Roman slaves not worth anything? What do you mean by that ?

Simple, Rome had the technology and man power to build water mills, instead they used slaves. That is until they stopped conquering then they started switching over to water mills.

 

[Traitorfish]

Simple, Rome had the technology and man power to build water mills, instead they used slaves. That is until they stopped conquering then they started switching over to water mills.

Wait, are you somehow under the impression that Roman slaves were used exclusively to power treadmills?

 

[caketastydelish]

Simple, Rome had the technology and man power to build water mills, instead they used slaves. That is until they stopped conquering then they started switching over to water mills.

I seriously don't understand why that matters. I think the gladiators were slaves. The fact that they were forced to kill each other sounds more valid IMO in terms of "Roman slaves had it worse."

 

[red_elk]

From what I read, the cost of slaves in Ancient Rome varied wildly. A slave with unique skills could cost a fortune, like hundreds of thousands dollars in modern prices. Unskilled workers were much cheaper but still young healthy men or beautiful women did cost a lot. "Not worth a plug nickel" was probably true only for old or sick people who were a net loss to keep.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Simple, Rome had the technology and man power to build water mills, instead they used slaves. That is until they stopped conquering then they started switching over to water mills.

Water mills only work when there is a good flow of river.

Many places in the Roman empire did not have year round flowing rivers.

Made little sense to build a watermill for perhaps just 3 wet months
and and have unskilled slaves still needing to be fed, idling by.

 

[Lexicus]

But nobody here is anti Rome.

Well, except, you know, me. Rome also wrongfully executed the person that Christians consider to be the Messiah, just saying.

In what way was Roman slavery worse?

abradley is just reciting 19th-century proslavery literature talking points verbatim. Don't take anything he says seriously.

 

[abradley]

One way the Roman slave's lot was worse was the owner could kill them legally, for any reason. Rome wasn't a land of compassion.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-367333.html

"Conclusion
The entire Roman state and cultural apparatus was, then, built on the exploitation of one part of the population to provide for the other part. Regarded as no more than a commodity, any good treatment a slave received was largely only to preserve their value as a worker and as an asset in the case of future sale. No doubt, some slave owners were more generous than others and there was, in a few cases, the possibility of earning one's freedom but the harsh day-to-day reality of the vast majority of Roman slaves was certainly an unenviable one."
https://www.ancient.eu/article/629/slavery-in-the-roman-world/

 

[schlaufuchs]

One way the Roman slave's lot was worse was the owner could kill them legally, for any reason. Rome wasn't a land of compassion.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-367333.html

"Conclusion
The entire Roman state and cultural apparatus was, then, built on the exploitation of one part of the population to provide for the other part. Regarded as no more than a commodity, any good treatment a slave received was largely only to preserve their value as a worker and as an asset in the case of future sale. No doubt, some slave owners were more generous than others and there was, in a few cases, the possibility of earning one's freedom but the harsh day-to-day reality of the vast majority of Roman slaves was certainly an unenviable one."
https://www.ancient.eu/article/629/slavery-in-the-roman-world/

Ironic, then, that the type of slavery typically associated with the brutal conditions you're citing was, in fact, penal slavery.

Also - rather disingenuous to make blanket declarations about the nature of slavery in the whole of Roman history when the category meant different things within the context of different kinds of labor, and the institution changed pretty substantially over the course of its history.

 

[abradley]

Well, except, you know, me. Rome also wrongfully executed the person that Christians consider to be the Messiah, just saying.

Yes they did, but who was calling the tune?

This is a rock opera, not theologically valid, but I feel you should be able to figure who was behind the Crucifixion.

 

[Plotinus]

If you're trying to blame Andrew Lloyd Weber for the crucifixion, it's hardly the worst thing he's done.

 

[caketastydelish]

What the hell are you talking about? "Generous"? it literally is the same as America, like the exact same in every way. One of the important similarities is of course the persistence of slavery before and after political independence from the UK and the ratification of the Constitution.

If that is the case, then why did they bother having a revolution and fighting and dying for a regime change. Does no taxation without representation mean nothing to you? As well as many other important differences. Clearly it isn’t “literally the same in every way”. It was a different political entity. They even allied with France, England’s enemy. And they fought alongside the English against the French before they had independence. If “Slavery that existed in North America regardless of political entity is what you mean, then it was much longer than 400 years of slavery.

 

[Alvarez_Player]

I'm not trying to preach anything here, os standing besides anyone who cares any bit with comparisons about long dead power traditions (i.e. Romans, Aztecs and whatsoever).

But I do think this interesting discussion is way too biased to legal definitions, economic value, etc. when the political statement "America has had 400 years of slavery" is, to me, clearly more said as a political protest than an actually precise definition.

First of all, in the American continent, as I've previously pointed, only US citizen consider "America=US". So the phrase is exclusively made by US black movements against their established powers and elites. This is not to be taken, by any means, as a legal affirmation. This is a complaint from black people living in the US. What they mean, as I understand, is that the English colonies, plus the USA, were constructed by the labor of people who were not treated as self determining citizens since the foundational basis of this specific society until the moment they really forced white people to recognize and treat them as true citizens, what only started to happen - in a not definitive process - on the later decades of the XXth century.

The discussion of what legally constitutes slavery, or which slavery is worse, or what political entity backed it, completely misses the point that black people and their labor were continually treated "as if they were slaves" throughout US history, as much as throughout the rest of the American history. If you have a horsehockey life because you're black, if your labor is worth less because you're black, if you're deemed suspicious on public spaces because you're black, if you're constantly stoped and violently treated by the policeman because you're black, if the legal system doesn't give you fair treatment of the law because you're black, if you're more subject to death penalties by the courts because you're black, if you're hated and hunted by organized groups because you're black, etc. etc., legal definitions really doesn't make so much of a difference, do they? That's the whole point, in my opinion.

EDIT: mispells (English is not my native language, I'm American, but not from US).

 

[caketastydelish]

I’m a person of color in America and I’ll be happy to tell you there is no white privilege. And there are plenty of minorities and black people who agree with me. Luckily, not everyone is an left social justice warrior snowflake who is just looking for things to be offended about.

 

[Alvarez_Player]

If you're saying it, than SURELY it must be the truth about the realities of things in society.

Well, I was just pointing out how the phrase which you proposed to discus in the first place has a political rethoric on it's meaning, whether someone agrees or not with it's implications or assumptions.

But than again, taking a sentence out of it's common context and trying to invalidate it by a totally different context of meaning (like taking a political protest phrase and trying to refute it from legal terms perspective) is just another rethorical action.

That said, the fact that you seemed to take it personally by referring to your own personal experience and comparing it to people who have other point of view on the same matter while judging and diminishing them by labeling and generalizing instead of arguing on a reasonable manner, all at once, says a lot more about the intentions behind this whole thread than the discussion that actually took place here.

 

[Henri Christophe]

First, I'm not a slave apologist, or a libertarian or ron paul fan or whatever.

That said, a phrase that keeps popping up here in America (especially around black history month) is "America had 400 years of slavery". But how true is this?

America was founded in 1776 and slavery was abolished in 1865. That's less than 100 years - not even close to 400.

"but we mean the colonies in the geographical region that would later become America".

Well, that's not the same as America, but I'll be generous and give it to you. The first African slaves to reach any of the British colonies didn't arrive until the year 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. That adds up to 246 years - still well short of 400.

In conclusion, "America had 400 years of slavery" is not actually true, but even if I'm generous with what they mean by "America" it still isn't close to true.


I think slavery for even 1 second is wrong, let alone 250 years and I'm no CSA fan or whatever. But why do we spread lies?

edit: I did the math and even if you go all the way back to 1492, when they started making contact with the new world period, (long before African slaves were introduced and none of that geographical area at the time would become the United States regardless) adds up to 373. Still short of 400.

If we think the Americas a whole continente. The slavery starts whith Colombus arrival in 1492 and just finish in Brazil (the last one in the continent) in 1888. What give to us 396 years of slavery, close enouth of 400 years to just say. 400 years of slavery.

 

[innonimatu]

I mean, does it? What ultimately replaced slavery was a system of peonage that ensured the basic continuity of pre- and post-bellum Southern planter economy. It's not as if the South stopped producing tobacco, cotton or rice, after all. The ultimately significance of abolition wasn't liberating Southern blacks from the plantation, but providing the legal basis for their grandchildren to do so, and it's possible to imagine that if the United States had achieved a non-military resolution to the "slave question", it could have transitioned directly to peonage.

The expansion of convict labour after the Civil War mostly served to fill those roles previously occupied by slaves that could not easily be filled by agricultural peons, such as public works and industry. There's enough continuity in how slave labour and convict labour were use that Congress' legal identification of convict labour with slavery seems less like a technicality and more like prescience. I don't know how far that continues down to the present, but it's worth consideration.

It's a good point that until the civil rights thing there they had a kind of indentured servitude replacing slavery, with the some ameliorating factor that people could migrate elsewhere (and many did). But I wouldn't say that convict labour replaced slavery, the scale was much different - it couldn't replace it as an economic structure. It was the hiring of former slaves still in poverty and without options that kept a social system mostly in place. And to be fair there was a period when an effort was made to dismantle it. What happened only in the 1960s could have been settled in the 1870s if history had taken some different turns?

Simple, Rome had the technology and man power to build water mills, instead they used slaves. That is until they stopped conquering then they started switching over to water mills.

Romans did build mills. And had something like a feudal/servant system towards the end of the imperial era. Not that the people were pleased with that - they seemed to be entirely unwilling to defend the empire from barbarian incursions. And did some peasant rebellions of their own on top of those.
Slavery evolved to something else. Big oligarchs of the republic and later the empire found ways to continue ruling over other people and having them sustain their luxuries. Happens a lot...

 

[Zardnaar]

It's a good point that until the civil rights thing there they had a kind of indentured servitude replacing slavery, with the some ameliorating factor that people could migrate elsewhere (and many did). But I wouldn't say that convict labour replaced slavery, the scale was much different - it couldn't replace it as an economic structure. It was the hiring of former slaves still in poverty and without options that kept a social system mostly in place. And to be fair there was a period when an effort was made to dismantle it. What happened only in the 1960s could have been settled in the 1870s if history had taken some different turns?



Romans did build mills. And had something like a feudal/servant system towards the end of the imperial era. Not that the people were pleased with that - they seemed to be entirely unwilling to defend the empire from barbarian incursions. And did some peasant rebellions of their own on top of those.
Slavery evolved to something else. Big oligarchs of the republic and later the empire found ways to continue ruling over other people and having them sustain their luxuries. Happens a lot...

I think the economic system broke down in the 3rd century. After that running on fumes until things fell apart.

 

[innonimatu]

I think the economic system broke down in the 3rd century. After that running on fumes until things fell apart.

I believe trade within the empire only crashed, with concominat abandonment of cities, in the 5th century. Certainly by the 4th big cities were still big, and provincial cities still retained their functions, they were hastily building walls. Than meant manpower available locally, to the city, and trade to sypply it. Even if the monetary economy started breaking down in the third century, something replaced it, or the debased currency sufficed. It was political fragmentation in the 5th century that finally lead to trade network collapse and urban abandonment. How fast that happened I can only speculate. In this corned it may have happened over a single lifetime, if so it must have seemed catastrophic.