Talk:Slavery

Should this page also include a reference to gender/sexual slavery? -- Cayzle

see sexual slavery

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Does anyone know whether there were more humane approaches taken towards slaves in ancient Rome between 2 BC and 2 AD?

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Was there any Asian slavery historically?

In China, slavery did exist but take a much milder form. One of my aunt (age 75 as of 2001) is not related to us by blood. She was sold to my grandma when she was a few years old. Her mother couldn't afford to raise her, so the deal worked like a paid adoption with the understanding that the child would work like a slave instead of part of the family. She was a servant to my mom's family. My grandma didn't treat her like a slave though she had to do all the dirty work in the house. She grew up with my mother and they treat each other like sisters. Milage varies. Some child slaves did get abuse in inhumane way. But as soon as the Communist government took over, no one dared to admit to be a slave owner. So there was not real legal binding. But throughout Chinese history, rich people bought servants, they didn't just hire them. However, the slaves could buy back their freedom according to the original sales contract.

Before the turn of the century, the poor people in the area of Taisan (southern China) sold themselves as slaves. The money went to their family in Taisan while the men were shipped to the America to build railroads, do laundry, dig gold mine etc. Nowadays, most Chinatowns in the US are populated by Taisan people. Many are descendents of slaves.

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I honestly don't know, so I didn't bother to put it in. Thanks for adding 'Africa', by the way. There's something approximating western serfdom in China in some periods, but serfdom has to be distinguished from chattel slavery, too. --MichaelTinkler

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Arguably, there is plenty of slave labor going on right now in labor camps in China staffed by political dissidents...of course, the Chinese would disagree with the description, though. --LMS

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Yep. I guess we need a division for 'state socialism.' The broad definitions of slavery around lately all concentrate on the loss of control over work rather than chattel, and China would certainly qualify under that heading. --MichaelTinkler

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How are we going to differentiate African Islamic slavery from African slavery. Currently there is nothing under Islamic slavery heading but under African slavery there is a lot about Islamic slavery. ---rmhermen

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so far it doesn't seem out of line to me with an Africa entry - it's mainly sub-Saharan (Egypt the only exception) or treating Africa as a source for slaves. I for one know just enough about slavery in Islam and the nasty controversies it brings up to stay away from writing that part of the entry!

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From the Mediterranean: Undoubtedly a majority of slaves were condemned to agricultural labor and lived hard lives. This seems to refer to the Roman latifundia, but from what I know, Greek slaves tended to be urban, with poorer citizens tilling the lands themselves outside of Sparta. Being a slave is never fun, especially if you happen to be female, yet again I don't think the treatment was that much worse than slaves received in America (relative to the well-being of the average citizen) and that did not seem to merit a comment. The strong exception to this were those slaves sentenced to work in mines, who in Greece and indeed all the Mediterranean and ancient world pretty much had to be worked to death in order to make mining profitable.

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I guess I was inserting the 'hard life' line to avert criticism that by talking about manumission I was glossing over the lot of the slave. Manumission was a promise that never came for a majority. On the subject of Rural slavery, Greek small farming depended on slavery as well, though admittedly on a smaller scale than latifundia. In fact, I shudder to suggest it, but American slaveholding was one of the few that came even close to successful internal re-supply rather than depending on debt-slavery and foreign war to keep restocking the system. Slave smuggling existed in the 1830s-50s, but it was relatively minor, and the number of slaves were not falling. Lots of economic arguments about social change in the ancient world depend on boom&bust cycles of slave supply. --MichaelTinkler

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To my knowledge, there really isn't any religious or cultural group that hasn't been slaves to someone at some point, but I'm not too sure. --Jzcool

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I notice a link to "psychiatric slavery": Hello, central, get me doctor Szasz! The Anome

Are you disputing/can you dispute Szasz' position or do you think this should be explained within the article? --Daniel C. Boyer

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"Brazil legally abolished slavery in 1888, although the practice somewhat continues there to this day." -- Evidence, please.

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Since when did evidence have to be presented for every fact in wikipedia. But since you asked, here you go - Brazil slavery law of 1888:

http://www.libertystory.net/LSDOCBRAZILSLAVERY.htm

That only documents the law; I don't think anyone doubts that. If you had merely said "Brazil outlawed slavery in 1888", no one would have asked for evidence because that's a totally plausible, unremarkable fact. More interesting is your claim that it still exists in some degree. That claim is pretty extraordinary, and requires some evidence. Something like an Amnesty International report would be good. --LDC

"That claim is pretty extraordinary" - I find nothing extraordinary regarding that claim. Is there some standard of "extraordinaryness" that should be used to judge which statements of fact require evidence and which statements of fact do not? It seems that the onus of proof should be on the individual who disputes a fact, not the individual who presents it, unless you want wikipedia to devolve into a state where every sentence needs evidence. Nonetheless, here is one (of many) references to modern slavery in Brazil: http://www.antislavery.org/archive/submission/submission1998-01Brazil.htm

Hey, there's nothing wrong with asking for evidence, especially in an encyclopedia. Thank you for providing some. This is interesting.

Saying that a nasty practice ended somewher 120 years ago is relatively non-controversial. Saying that it still goes on in a particular place is bound to raise some questions. If there is slavery in Brazil or Sudan, our readers would probably like to know who says so. --Ed Poor

I think the case of Sudan and elsewhere in North Africa is pretty well-known and uncontroversial. It was only Brazil that surprized me, because one generally thinks of that as a first-world nation.

Calling it a "nasty practice" is making a value judgement. The existence of slavery is an objective fact, the legal status of slavery is an objective fact, but whether slavery is proper or improper is a subjective opinion. Wikipedia should strive to be free of opinion.

Calling slavery a bad thing is pretty uncontroversial, but I agree that it would be better to at least imply an attribution of the opinion; for example, calling it "near-universally condemned practice..." or something.

surely there's something about slavery in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Stating that would effectively be an NPOV way of saying it is a "nasty practice" -- Tarquin 18:16 Sep 25, 2002 (UTC)

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not an arbiter of neutrality, it is a document that was created with political influence. You could state the fact that the UDHR makes statements opposed to slavery, but you could just as well state the fact that historical documents from 3,000 BCE to ~1800 CE made statements in favor of slavery. I suppose the meta question here is this: "Is making a neutral reference to a biased source inherently a neutral act?"

Slavery in Brazil

This reference [1] (http://www.brazilnetwork.org/slav2.htm) speaks of a kind of debt-bondage akin to slavery, reminiscent of the situation in Robert Heinlein's short novel Logic of Empire. --Ed Poor

Stating that there is debt bondage in Brazil is not vandalism but is something that is an objective fact. See for yourself; [2] (http://www.google.com/search?as_q=Brazil&num=10&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&as_epq=debt+bondage&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images). --mav

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To 128.193.88.187 (I think):

Okay, I thought I was writing good material that addressed the issues you raised, and personally, I find this kind of talk-page discussion unproductive (you see the mish-mosh of post/counterpost that's appearing here now), but here goes:

"Slavery was legally ended ... although the practice has continued illegally to this day." - You produced evidence that slavery existed in the early 1990s, and I thanked you for doing so. Do you have any evidence that slavery exists now, that the government initiatives have not been effective?

"although it is not clear that these steps will be sufficient" - This is superfluous, isn't it? When is it "clear" that any government activities will be sufficient? We always have to wait and see, no?

Respectfully awaiting your reply.

We have freedom of speech on the talk pages, although we generally try to focus on the matter of improving the article. I can call slavery "nasty" here; in an article I would not: we were discussing when and why to provide references. Something that is common knowledge such as the earth goes around the sun every 365 1/4 days needs no reference. That a particular government permits slavery within its territory probably does need one (many black US politicians deny that Sudan has slavery, so you see that there is some controversy). Anyway, thank you for contributing, and keep up the good work! --Ed Poor

Ed Poor wrote Do you have any evidence that slavery exists now?

Are you now attempting to impose some standard for the temporality of evidence? Nobody can prove that slavery exists *now*, for it is possible that slavery spontaneously ended five minutes ago. You may follow this link for evidence that slavery existed in Brazil as of May of 2002: http://www.antislavery.org/archive/submission/submission2002-Brazil.htm

Also of note in the above source is this tidbit "three landowners from the south of Pará state, including one who has been denounced for using slave labour, signed an agreement (Termo de compromisso) with the Labour Prosecution Service and the Regional Labour Delegation of Pará. The agreement means that the federal police no longer have the authority to investigate cases of slave labour in this region. "

Hey, lighten up. I'm not trying to impose anything. I'm not talking about a proof that defeats solipsism or even holds up in a court of law. I've just spent the better part of the last 2 hours digging up reports about debt bondage and starting an article on it.

Apparently debt bondage is a form of slavery even if it's not the same as chattel slavery where human beings are bought and sold as "property" and kept in chains or hamstrung for trying to escape.

I can quit my job any time I want, and simply walk out of my office building, and no one will try to stop me. In Brazil, can laborers in "debt bondage" simply walk away from the land they're working on? Will police (or others) force them back, using weapons?

I'm not doubting. I'm on your side, man!! Please don't confuse requests for solid scholarship with debate tactics: I H A T E slavery, okay? --Ed Poor

You are free to "HATE" slavery. I am neutral on the topic, caring not whether it is legal or illegal, nor whether it exists or has been extinguished. I came to this entry with the section regarding Brazil being blank, and fleshed it out with the two germane, neutral, and factual points that slavery was legally abolished in 1888 yet persists to this day. Debating the nature of slavery in Brazil perhaps belongs in the entry on Brazil instead of within slavery.

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I have read that slavery was abolished in England in 1772, but I don't remember where I read that. I am surprised at how little information on this is available on the web. Can anyone confirm that date? I also read that in a lawsuit in Scotland shortly after that, a court decided that that statute was applicable in Scotland as well as England, and the consequence was that the plaintiff, David Knight, was freed. Michael Hardy 00:51 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

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In 1806 the United States passed legislation that banned the importation of slaves ... The importation of slaves into the United States was banned on January 1, 1808.

So which is it? Was it banned in 1806 or in 1808? Somebody needs to make up their mind.... --Michael 21:15 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The bill was introduced in 1805, debated through 1806 and signed into law March 2, 1807. It could not go into effect because of restrictions in the Constitution until Jan 1 1808. Rmhermen 21:42 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)