The modern abolitionism movement appeared around the 1700s-1800s. However slavery has existed as long as human recorded history. How can we make earlier abolitionism movements sucessful? The more ancient the better.
The modern abolitionism movement appeared around the 1700s-1800s. However slavery has existed as long as human recorded history. How can we make earlier abolitionism movements sucessful? The more ancient the better.
Slavery as a Crime against humanity has it's punishment built in:
It utterly rots a Societies ability to innovate by removing the need to make things go more efficient through having cheap labour available.
Or in other words a society without slavery even if it's still hardly egalitarian will always outperform slave-societies over time unless the slave-society has a much larger resource-base giving it more fat to burn.
So IMO Abolitionist movements could start in societies who are neighbouring a no-slavery society and see themselves continuously outperformed. Add in a defeat in a war, despite having a significant numerical advantage to really drive the lesson home.
Candidate: A best case Goryeo, which after allowing emancipation in 958 continues on to get rid of it over the next decades and then continues on to punch even more out of it's weight than OTL. Handwave away the Mongols and have the Song eventually figure out that being a no-slavery society makes you stronger. Once China goes Abolitionist, Abolitionism will spread to the rest of Asia.
The problem is that, while I am fully aware that slavery existed in East Asia, is hard to characterize the area as a slave society, one where widespread slavery was an integral part of the fundamental economic processes like it was the case in the Confederacy or Rome.
Moreover, slave societies have outperformed non-slave ones historically (Rome being a case in point). It could be even argued that it would, in some contexts, be a way to broaden the resource base. I am not sure that slavery necessarily makes a society stagnant, at least not on such timescales that would impress decision-makers. Classical Greece was pretty innovative, and they were fairly big on slavery. Athens, which was probably the most dynamic polis for several generations, had quite a lot of slaves and I'd say it qualifies as another slave society. I don't think the East Asian patterns are comparable, though.
I don't know about East Asia to comment, but Carl Sagan argues in Cosmos (the book) that the reason for the Greek stagnation in technology and science (not philosophy) was their reliance on slaves for manual labor and their rejection of it as the lower classes' place. This led to philosophy concentrating in the abstract, and killing the emerging scientific method on its cradle. Just throwing that out there, not sure how much truth is there to it, but Sagan makes some good points.
I don't know about East Asia to comment, but Carl Sagan argues in Cosmos (the book) that the reason for the Greek stagnation in technology and science (not philosophy) was their reliance on slaves for manual labor and their rejection of it as the lower classes' place. This led to philosophy concentrating in the abstract, and killing the emerging scientific method on its cradle. Just throwing that out there, not sure how much truth is there to it, but Sagan makes some good points.
While there's a grain of truth in that (and it's often repeated) I think that it should be noted that Greek technology and science was emphatically not stagnant. That the Greeks did not create a mechanized industrial revolution, I would say, is in a sense something that does not need to be explained. They had not a modern scientific outlook, of course, and yes, manual labor was largely despised, of course technical advances were not the result of a concentrated R&D program led by top intellectual, but I don't see any reason to think it should have been otherwise. Slavery was part of that mindset and social structure, but it's excessive in my opinion to see it as the cause of some specific backwardness, which would be backwardness only relative to ourselves after all.
I would go as far as saying that projecting the roots of our scientific mentality to the Greeks is, in part, a Western misconception that feeds on the post-Renaissance long affair Western cultures have been having with their memory.
By the way, with this I don't mean to imply that Greek thought was unimportant.
I think the best way to abolish slavery early on would have been for one of the Popes (perhaps even before the discovery of the New World) issue an Encyclical declaring the enslavement of human beings to be a mortal sin. Serfdom permissible. Bonded servitude for a period of years. Permissible. Slavery for life, forbidden.
Papal Bull Sublimis Deus - 1537 said:...The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God's word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.
We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.
Yes. That Papal Encyclical did prevent the enslavement of the NATIVE AMERICANS in Spanish America. But it left a loophole big enough to sail a galleon through when it came to Africans, which apparently it did not mention. And it was not issued soon enough.That already happened historically. Heck, you even have stuff like this:
It wasn't enough.
Yes. That Papal Encyclical did prevent the enslavement of the NATIVE AMERICANS in Spanish America. But it left a loophole big enough to sail a galleon through when it came to Africans, which apparently it did not mention. And it was not issued soon enough.
It isn't. And it DID restrain the Spanish to a large degree when it came to slavery, which is why the SPANISH colonies had relatively few slaves. But it did not restrain the Portuguese, who had a long established African slave trade for 80 years before this encyclical. And by the 17th Century, the French were totally ignoring this encyclical and the British and the Dutch, Protestant as they were, did not recognize the authority of Rome at all.Well, it states " and other people of whom We have recent knowledge" and "all other people who may later be discovered by Christians". That doesn't sound particularly ambiguous.
But it left a loophole big enough to sail a galleon through