[TimTheTinker]

OP speaks the truth. At least since the Roman empire, there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery. (not to exclude the East or the Arab world, I just don't know enough to comment on them)

In the Roman empire, selling oneself as a slave was even seen as a last resort when capital was urgently needed (like when a debt repayment was ordered by a magistrate and a person didn't have enough money and fungible possessions to pay it). Slaves could also buy their freedom, and were sometimes even given their freedom as a gift.

Of course, there were cruel masters as well as kind ones. But prior to the African slave trade, the institution itself wasn't remotely as brutal or morally abhorrent, because it wasn't built on a social commitment to racism.

American racism was fueled in part by the abhorrent belief that Africans were of a separate race (i.e. subspecies) that was inferior in a Darwinian sense, thus dehumanizing them in people's minds. This sentiment appears sometimes in 1800s American literature. (And if I may say so, I think it bears a remarkable resemblance to some Nazi antisemitic propaganda.)

[ta1631233034]

Roman slavery is one of the most romanticised things on the internet. The number of slaves who could buy their way free was miniscule. Most slaves were worked to death on the farms and mines, and had about a 5-year life expectancy after capture. Sure, life was better for a handful of slaves, particularly well-educated Greek slaves, but for most slaves life was brutal and short.

People seem obsessed with declaring the US south as having some sort of so-much-worse slavery, but they view the past with pretty rose-coloured glasses. 'But it's not racism!' is a meaningless moral alteration to the act of raiding other lands, dragging people back to your lands, and working them to death in under a decade.

As for Roman opinions on racism, no, they weren't racists in the sense of the modern term, but they were still intensely bigoted and committed more than a few genocides. Our friend Jules came home bragging of killing a million Gauls and enslaving a million more and got social cachet for that. They didn't see Gauls as a difference 'race' (that's a modern construct) but they definitely saw them as an outgroup that needed to be dominated.

[OrvalWintermute]

> ...At least since the Roman empire, there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery. (not to exclude the East or the Arab world, I just don't know enough to comment on them)

So, you launch a massive generalization, and attempt to walk it back by opting out most of the world (Asia, the middle east/Arab World, but making no mention of Africa, or Oceania). While we broadly view slavery as a despicable practice, please don't practice selective historical revisionism to minimize the barbaric suffering experienced to this day in some countries, and the astronomical death rates in the sugar plantations.

Examples from Historical Context: American Slavery in Comparative Perspective [1]

"Death rates among slaves in the Caribbean were one-third higher than in the South, and suicide appears to have been much more common. Unlike slaves in the South, West Indian slaves were expected to produce their own food in their "free time," and care for the elderly and the infirm."(

"The largest difference between slavery in the South and in Latin America was demographic. The slave population in Brazil and the West Indies had a lower proportion of female slaves, a much lower birthrate, and a higher proportion of recent arrivals from Africa. In striking contrast, southern slaves had an equal sex ratio, a high birthrate, and a predominantly American-born population".

"Slavery in the United States was especially distinctive in the ability of the slave population to increase its numbers by natural reproduction. In the Caribbean, Dutch Guiana, and Brazil, the slave death rate was so high and the birthrate so low that slaves could not sustain their population without imports from Africa. The average number of children born to an early nineteenth-century southern slave woman was 9.2—twice as many as in the West Indies."

Additionally, you have ignored that slavery is still active in a number of countries [2], [3], [4], [5]

Slavery is a practice worthy of contempt, still practiced, and modern.

[1] Historical Context: American Slavery in Comparative Perspective https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-res...

[2] https://www.mic.com/articles/82347/the-world-s-worst-countri...

[3] https://face2faceafrica.com/article/slavery-africa-today/3

[4] https://www.theclever.com/15-countries-where-slavery-is-stil...

[5] https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-oct-17-la-fg-wn-sl...

[TimTheTinker]

I have no disagreement with any of your points, though I don't think our statements otherwise conflict.

My knowledge of world history outside the West is scant. That's why I restricted my statements to the Western world.

[thaumasiotes]

Spain, Portugal, and Holland are all part of the Western world.

[thaumasiotes]

> Slaves could also buy their freedom, and were sometimes even given their freedom as a gift.

Again, this is not a difference between ancient slavery and American slavery. Why do you mention it?

> Of course, there were cruel masters as well as kind ones. But prior to the African slave trade, the institution itself wasn't remotely as brutal or morally abhorrent, because it wasn't built on a social commitment to racism.

Now it seems like you're specifically trying not to respond to the claim that American slaves received crueler treatment than ancient slaves did.

[Larrikin]

You're arguing that exceptions and rare occurrences in American slavery are equivalent to the norms in Rome and for some reason trying to make American slavery seem like it really wasn't all that bad.

Your style of responding also makes it seem like you're arguing the point that slavery wasn't all that bad in the US from a very specific view point

[thaumasiotes]

They're rare occurrences in American slavery and they're also rare occurrences in Rome.

As some other people have pointed out, if you look at objective indices of quality of life, the United States generally comes out as possibly the best place in all of history you could have been enslaved.

[wavefunction]

>there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery

Absolutist statements like this rarely seem to hold true.[0] American slavery is European slavery as well. Europeans (both countries and individuals) benefited extremely handsomely from enslaving people in Africa and bringing them to their colonies in America. And even after they had finally outlawed slavery for themselves just a few scant decades before the US did, they kept buying that affordable slave-produced cotton and sugar and coffee and etc. from the Americas.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe