AHC: Classical world Abolitionism

Balaur

I was struck while reading Cicero by an ethical dilemma about selling slaves-specifically, about whether it is ethical to omit that a slave has faults when selling him. At no point in this does Cicero, one of the more humane Romans, question or even defend slavery-it's just a fact of life.

Contrast that to the situation in antebellum America, where slavery is highly controversial, either a vital necessity to western civilization or a great moral evil.

What would it take to make slavery even a fraction as controversial in the ancient Mediterranean as it was in the 19th century?
 

Kyro92

Balaur said:
I was struck while reading Cicero by an ethical dilemma about selling slaves-specifically, about whether it is ethical to omit that a slave has faults when selling him. At no point in this does Cicero, one of the more humane Romans, question or even defend slavery-it's just a fact of life.

Contrast that to the situation in antebellum America, where slavery is highly controversial, either a vital necessity to western civilization or a great moral evil.

What would it take to make slavery even a fraction as controversial in the ancient Mediterranean as it was in the 19th century?
Click to expand...
I think your best bet would be the spread of a missionary religion- perhaps an alt-Christianity, perhaps not- with a stringently anti-slavery stance.

Does anyone know OTL-Mazdakism's stance on slavery?
 
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Flashman

Flashman

The real reason abolitionism was even a tenable position in 19th America was that forced labor was quite simply no where near as utilitous to the modern American man as it had been to almost any pre-Enlightenment civilization. Slaves had been reduced to one fairly niche role, whereas in the past there labor was needed for literally any task which allowed civilized life to be possible.
 

carlton_bach

Abolitionist sentiment is possible in the ancient world. Cynic philosophers (those guys are much more interesting than the Stoics), Christian mystics and even the occasional Roman jurisconsult entertained them. The problem is that slavery is a very different beast. Especially after Alexander, the Greco-Roman world has no real alternative to provide labour in a hierarchical structure. Wage labour was effectively stigmatised as a dishonest, untrustworthy arrangement and the monetised economy nowhere near widespread enough to make it work o a grand scale anyway. Slaves were present at every level of society, rich and poor, powerful and oppressed, much like waged labour is today (we wouldn't see a street cleaner on a zero-hours contract as 'essentially the same' as a professor of neurosurgery at a private hospital, but from the perspective of labour relations, they are). Calling for the abolition of slavery didn't just affect a particular area of the economy (let alone one fraught with race relations and associatedcrap). It affected every aspect of it. That's why it would be very difficult to make it widespread, except in a revolutionary context.

Egypt might have done it. THe place had some very interesting economic arrangements. I'm trying to imagine an abolitionist revolt in Egypt with the rural population demanding an end to slavery so that middle management jobs can go to freeborn folk again...
 
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