Following rules: inherently a virtue?

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yes Farm boy, what should I do to a man that comes to conquer me so he can take my daughter?

Poke him with a stick and lock the door?

Call the police?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Eh. I think it was probably entirely self-serving and served as an incentive to conquest. Man things to do stuff for you. Woman things for that and more. And when it was inconvenient or unwanted, I'd put heavy money that the extermination just sort of selectively happened whatever the law said.

Not all slavery was the same. But.

The question of "incentive to conquest" is certainly valid. The "moral high ground" of course suggests that if there were a rule against conquest that everyone followed then the "what do we do with the conquered?" question is moot. So maybe all the "They had slaves! Disregard them as evil!" angst needs to be redirected at the aggressive conquest perpetrators themselves rather than the slaveholders.

 

[Farm Boy]

I agree Tim. Very much. But every time I try that, I get mentally disabled people crawling up my butt about a gaudy old rag.

 

[Lexicus]

You really need to ask yourself how to eliminate the blind spot that tells you "all slavery is the same."

This...is so off-base it's kinda funny.

So maybe all the "They had slaves! Disregard them as evil!" angst needs to be redirected at the aggressive conquest perpetrators themselves rather than the slaveholders.

In the ancient Greek polis, the body of the citizens was comprised of people who had the economic means to afford the weapons necessary to serve as a hoplite in the phalanx, so the slaveholders and the conquest perpetrators were...the exact same people.

Farm Boy is actually right on the money that the whole "look how humanitarian we are, enslaving these people instead of exterminating them" was just self-serving garbage invented by the slaveholders as a rationalization, but even if we assume it's true something doesn't become morally right just because it is marginally better than an even worse alternative...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I agree Tim. Very much. But every time I try that, I get mentally disabled people crawling up my butt about a gaudy old rag.

I think the problem there is that slavery as practiced in the southern United States is extremely hard to depict in terms of "well, we enslaved them rather than exterminating them when they came to conquer us and lost." It really can't be portrayed very easily as an offshoot of conquest at all. That was well into the "raid, capture, and take people strictly for the sake of slavery" territory. So when you fly that gaudy old rag the ambivalence I hold for ancient forms of slavery doesn't seem to apply.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Farm Boy is actually right on the money that the whole "look how humanitarian we are, enslaving these people instead of exterminating them" was just self-serving garbage invented by the slaveholders as a rationalization, but even if we assume it's true something doesn't become morally right just because it is marginally better than an even worse alternative...

I would not be surprised if some wars were started by people who want slaves, in which case the whole moral high ground falls apart. I don't know too much about the wars though.

 

[AdamCrock]

I think we have to establish if following rules equals following orders , because You know ... Nazis

 

[rah]

Yeah Tim, I think everyone can agree that they are two totally different things.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

This...is so off-base it's kinda funny.

I dunno man, your default responses to any discussion of slavery seem totally steeped in "United States, circa 1840" to me. Like, we can pull you intellectually into this "poor people v hoplites" issue, but emotionally you seem to never let go of "slavery means dragging people from their homes and shipping them to another continent as property."

 

[Birdjaguar]

Rules are less strident organizing principles than laws. Both are important in complex societies. Manners are rules that are flecible and changing all the time. None-the-less they are very imp[important within their social context. I'm pretty law abiding, but frequently break rules depending upon the context and impact.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I would not be surprised if some wars were started by people who want slaves, in which case the whole moral high ground falls apart. I don't know too much about the wars though.

This was lucrative business for Africans during the triangle trade days. The people living there didn't sell their *own* community members, and the Portuguese/Spanish/etc didn't send their own soldiers wading deep into territories with malaria rampant in pre-penicillin years to procure them.

Similarly, Crimeans/other Mongol offshoots often raided Eastern Europe for slaves and sold them to Islamic countries (Black Sea was a pretty common shipping path). In this case it was more "raiding" than formal wars, but slaves were indeed the express/direct purpose.

So, yeah, no surprises. This was a thing. People did some pretty awful stuff for money, and still do albeit in different forms.

 

[BenitoChavez]

I would not be surprised if some wars were started by people who want slaves, in which case the whole moral high ground falls apart. I don't know too much about the wars though.

Oh yeah, that certainly happened. In the Roman Republic wars were fought, at least in part to gain slaves. When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul some estimate he took a million slaves back to Rome. The actual number is debatable but there's no doubt slavery was a good way to become rich back then.

 

[Commodore]

What if the slave were soldiers that came to conquer you and lost? Would that be morally wrong? Would it be better than just killing them?

If they came to conquer you and lost, then why not just send them home? Why are the only choices for the defeated in this scenario slavery or death? I would say any society that only gives those two options to a defeated enemy probably deserved to be attacked in the first place.

 

[Lexicus]

I would not be surprised if some wars were started by people who want slaves, in which case the whole moral high ground falls apart. I don't know too much about the wars though.

As someone fairly familiar with the history of the classical Mediterannean world, this is an understatement. The powerful empires of that period were literally defined by a "coinage-soldier-slave complex" wherein professional armies were raised and equipped by wealthy individuals who would go into debt in order to do that, and a major source of cash to repay those debts was selling captives as slaves!

I dunno man, your default responses to any discussion of slavery seem totally steeped in "United States, circa 1840" to me. Like, we can pull you intellectually into this "poor people v hoplites" issue, but emotionally you seem to never let go of "slavery means dragging people from their homes and shipping them to another continent as property."

Drop the "another continent" part; slavery in the classical Mediterranean world absolutely meant dragging people from their homes and shipping them off somewhere (usually across the Mediterranean) as property!

 

[rah]

If they came to conquer you and lost, then why not just send them home? Why are the only choices for the defeated in this scenario slavery or death? I would say any society that only gives those two options to a defeated enemy probably deserved to be attacked in the first place.

Some might think if you sent them home they'd be back next season. I would love to hear alternate solution proposed.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

But if you took away their weapons they would have to make new ones, and that might make the wars too expensive if they keep losing.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I would not be surprised if some wars were started by people who want slaves, in which case the whole moral high ground falls apart. I don't know too much about the wars though.

Distinguishing between slave taking raids and wars of conquest can be a challenge, for sure. Just looking at the late period era of African exploitation...

The Boers and English assault on the southern tip of the continent certainly leans towards a war of conquest in which enslaving the native population is a consequence more than an objective. Most likely the long term end results would have been better for the conquerors had they followed the process used in North America and just exterminated the natives.

A lot of sub-Saharan Africa experienced minimal efforts at actual conquest and were just raided for slaves as an end goal.

A lot of sub-Saharan Africa also internalized the morality of such raiding, leading to tribes viewing the neighboring tribes as a source of salable product to be "harvested."

The USians for the most part isolated slavery from conquest completely, and just took to "people are property so long as they can be marked by skin color" as a position unto itself.

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't think you can overstate how evil the circa 1840 was, but I think we can definitely understate the ancient evil of kill the babies, kill the old, work the men, and rape the women. Oh, our rape children can be members of society mostly as per normal, so it's kewl. Glory to Rome!

I mean, you could do the sort of Chinese thing and just castrate POWs. Somehow, I'm guessing the basic motivation involved is exactly. the. same.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Some might think if you sent them home they'd be back next season. I would love to hear alternate solution proposed.

Well, there was a time when the ethical options included a good maiming and sending them on their way...

 

[rah]

But if you took away their weapons they would have to make new ones, and that might make the wars too expensive if they keep losing.

If they were expensive weapons maybe. Looking at native Americans, their were many weapons that were very easy to acquire.