-Poul Anderson, "The Warriors from Nowhere" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 305-337 AT p. 306.
"They walked past bowing slaves and saluting guardsmen..."
-Poul Anderson. Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 8.
Poul Anderson's Terran Empire began as a setting for space opera pulp fiction. Thus, it was the Roman Empire writ large, complete with Emperor, barbarians and slaves. However, space opera metamorphosed into serious speculative fiction so some explanation had to be devised for the slavery:
"Well, we're reviving [slavery] in the Empire, Rochefort thought. For terms and under conditions limited by law; as a punishment, in order to get some social utility out of the criminal; nevertheless, we're bringing back a thing the Ythrians are letting die."
-The People Of The Wind, IV, p. 487.
Rochefort wonders about the rightness of fighting the Ythrians but then remembers that:
"Man is my race." (ibid.)
That would not be a good enough reason for me.
15 comments:
Everyone has a right, and obligation, to be on their own side; my clan, my tribe, mi barrio.
Not to be so, at least as your starting position, is a violation of the most basic form of social trust. In which case you’ve no right to complain if you’re shunned, beaten, or driven out.
You don’t give loyalty, you don’t get solidarity, support or rights.
Kaor, Paul!
And I agree with Stirling's comments above. Rochefort's view is good enough for me, and will be plenty good enough for almost all human beings.
As for the unfortunate revival of slavery within the Empire, I discussed that in my "Crime and Punishment" article. And quoted Anderson's suggestions that actually had its origins with the libertarianism which once guided the Solar Commonwealth.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that historically, slavery was a ubiquitous institution; hunter-gatherers, neolithic farmers, city-states, nations, empires. It was more important in some places than others, but present just about everywhere on every continent in all times.
The first big exception was Western Europe (north of Spain and Italy) where it died out in the Middle Ages, being extinct by about 1300 except in some backward areas (like the Celtic periphery of the British Isles).
It died out in Japan about the same time.
Later on, West Europeans abolished it in their colonies and then went around the world gunboating everyone else into following suit; be elightened or we'll shell you and burn your house down, more or less.s
But until the 1830's, roughly, slavery was coterminous with the human race, with a few regional exceptions.
It's probably more or less a series of historical accidents that flipped this situation.
Eg., until a series of reforms in the 1870's (under heavy British pressure) 1/3 of the population of Siam (Thailand) were slaves.
Florence Baker, the wife of the great Victorian explorer, was a slave in the Ottoman Empire in the 1860's until he rescued her.
So, historically, slavery might have continued as in the Draka History.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: It helped, as well, that the Catholic Church disapproved of making Christians slaves. That helped to hasten its abolition in Europe.
Paul: Unfortunately, we still have slavery. Some Muslim nations, as Western influence waned, have revived it. And we have sex slavery in all too many Western nations, criminals trafficking in women and children, catering to the market in prostitution and abuse of children. Including the buying and selling of such victims.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Muslim law strictly forbids enslaving fellow Muslims, and I hadn't noticed that slowed -them- down.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, I should have remembered that. AND of how that did not stop Muslims from enslaving other Muslims. Esp. blacks from Africa.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, it did make it more rare. Most (though not all) of the slaves exported into the Muslim world from Africa were from pagan areas, originally. The Turkmen (in what's now Turkmenistan) were notorious for enslaving Persians prior to the Russian conquest, using as an excuse that they were Shia heretics; though they raided for Russian slaves too.
It might have. There were a whole confluence of historical trends that had to happen before it didn't, none of which were sufficient on its own.
Note that economic inefficiency was -not- one of the reasons slavery died out.
As a recent study on British abolition pointed out, the British abolished first the slave trade, and then slavery itself in their colonies, when they were at the height of their profitability. They simply decided it was wrong, and the economic costs had to be born.
(Though a lot of abolitionists in the early 19th century had somehow convinced themselves that the British sugar islands would flourish as never before with free labor. They were to be bitterly disappointed; it turned out nobody with an alternative wanted to cut cane for a living, which is the reason those places turned to slavery in the first place.)_
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, most blacks enslaved by Muslims were either pagans or Christians (think Ethiopia).But some black Muslims were also enslaved, which I have read has happened.
Yes, the hatred so many Sunnis and Shias have for each other would make it easier for one side or the other go enslaving Muslims.
Yes, down to at least Peter the Great's reign, Muslims from the Crimea or what became Turkmenistan carried out MASSIVE slave raids into the Russian lands.
I THOUGHT advances and changes in technology and economics were making plantation slavery more and more impractical and costly by the early 1800's. Looks like I was wrong, at least as regards sugar cane plantations.
Ad astra! Sean
We have two mosques in Lancaster. I have never been able to discern any doctrinal disagreement between different Muslim traditions. The difference seems to be whether a tradition is descended from Muhammad's appointed successor or from his son-in-law. Or something.
Paul: the Shia also have organizational differences (more clerical, basically) and belief in the return of ‘hidden’ imams.
Right. That second bit is clearly a doctrinal difference.
Kaor, Paul!
Shias are more Messianic/Millennarian minded than Sunni Muslims. And doctrine was also involved in that dispute about the succession to the caliphate.
Ad astra! Sean
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