Ending Mass-Slavery in Rome

GdwnsnHo

Banned
One of the primary blockers that comes up whenever an industrial revolution in the Roman Empire timeline turns up is that Rome was so attached to slavery - which in turn depresses demand for goods, making the economy grow more slowly, and means that the wealth in circulation is too little to justify the higher prices needed to encourage industrial development.

So the idea is, without overthrowing the Empire, end the institution of mass-slavery in Rome.

My ideas

1) Increase the tax on slave sales from 2% to 10% - drastically reducing the profitability of slaves.

2) (Optional) End the rule stating that a slave cannot be freed before he is 30.

I imagine that with more freedmen (and as a result, more children) the population would be higher, but have more agency, and start their own crafts - increasing what can be traded, and therefore more trade.

Thoughts?
 
1 - you payed taxes on the republic according to your wealth and property not according to transactions. In the empire the community had to pay a fixed amount. Taxing cash transactions on the Roman empire would be impossible.

2 - you could even put the age in the 2 years old, it all depends on if the owner wants to free the slave or not. And you just can't force them to free them.
 
Even if you freed all those slaves, they'd still be desperately poor and ultimately end up in hock to some rich person or another, just like your average citizen/freedman. Rome was too unequal to ever allow a consumer economy to develop, as were most pre-industrial societies.

Does Rome even have the technology for real industry? It's more than knowledge of machines, what about the metallurgical (just to name one) knowledge needed to keep early steam boilers from blowing up?
 
1 - you payed taxes on the republic according to your wealth and property not according to transactions. In the empire the community had to pay a fixed amount. Taxing cash transactions on the Roman empire would be impossible.

2 - you could even put the age in the 2 years old, it all depends on if the owner wants to free the slave or not. And you just can't force them to free them.


1) In theory that could be changed. There is nothing that I know of stopping the Republic or the Empire from doing so. The only problem I see is that you would need more tax collectors as it might be more difficult to detect tax fraud.

2) Yeah, this one is easy., just remove all restrictions on sales.

The biggest problem is that the vast majority of Romans didn't see anything wrong with having slaves. Even Spartacus was only upset about gladiator slaves not slavery in general. If you were able to fight you shouldn't be a slave but if you are only capable of working in the fields or mines you an go hang for all he cared. It was an entirely self centered point of view, he was only concerned about himself and people he knew not slaves in general.
 
Any chance of the Empire being converted to Judaism?

The Ancient Jews had quite a few laws requiring slaves to be freed after seven years, or if their master maimed them, so a Judaic Empire might have turned against the institution at some point. But it's rather a long shot.
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
1 - you payed taxes on the republic according to your wealth and property not according to transactions. In the empire the community had to pay a fixed amount. Taxing cash transactions on the Roman empire would be impossible.

To steal from Wikipedia

Wikipedia said:
Augustus imposed a 2 percent tax on the sale of slaves, estimated to generate annual revenues of about 5 million sesterces—a figure that indicates some 250,000 sales.[31] The tax was increased to 4 percent by 43 CE.[32] Slave markets seem to have existed in every city of the Empire, but outside Rome the major center was Ephesus.[31]

2 - you could even put the age in the 2 years old, it all depends on if the owner wants to free the slave or not. And you just can't force them to free them.

Fair point. Entirely valid. Although you could (technically) force them, but I can see instant-uprisings.

Even if you freed all those slaves, they'd still be desperately poor and ultimately end up in hock to some rich person or another, just like your average citizen/freedman. Rome was too unequal to ever allow a consumer economy to develop, as were most pre-industrial societies.

Well, you may be overlooking the reduced demand for slaves in the first place - now this doesn't directly increase the population of the Empire, but it DOES decrease the supply of labour - increasing the average price - the same market forces that led to the end of slavery in the colonial period - Although we aren't anywhere near that level of pricing yet. This means less dirt-poor freed slaves.

Are they going to be dirt poor? We know that even the Chattel Slaves of the Colonial period were able to make some money on the side if they were lucky - and these lucky ones who have skills from before they were enslaved are going to be key. They have skills they can use to earn a living, or just be labourers that can move on (assuming they aren't wage-slaves).

Does Rome even have the technology for real industry? It's more than knowledge of machines, what about the metallurgical (just to name one) knowledge needed to keep early steam boilers from blowing up?

The technology would most likely only be developed IF there is a sufficient level of profit in doing so. There may have been inventions we never heard of developed that never progressed because it was cheaper to just use slaves. Hopefully ITTL there would be more of these inventions used.

1) In theory that could be changed. There is nothing that I know of stopping the Republic or the Empire from doing so. The only problem I see is that you would need more tax collectors as it might be more difficult to detect tax fraud.

Well, Augustus seemed to be able to do it - So it may not lead to more collectors.

2) Yeah, this one is easy., just remove all restrictions on sales.
Yep.

The biggest problem is that the vast majority of Romans didn't see anything wrong with having slaves. Even Spartacus was only upset about gladiator slaves not slavery in general. If you were able to fight you shouldn't be a slave but if you are only capable of working in the fields or mines you an go hang for all he cared. It was an entirely self centered point of view, he was only concerned about himself and people he knew not slaves in general.

I have no issue with people not seeing anything wrong with slavery, I just want to see an end to mass-slavery in the Empire.
 
Well, Augustus seemed to be able to do it - So it may not lead to more collectors.

Fair enough.


I have no issue with people not seeing anything wrong with slavery, I just want to see an end to mass-slavery in the Empire.

If not for moral issues why is the government doing this? Why raise taxes on slave particularly? If the government needs more taxes and can get others to agree with it why not just a general tax hike on everything? In other words you need a reason for the Roman government to do this. Slave owners were a political force in and of themselves and you need a reason for the government to do this and to win against their opposition.
 
The reason is the problem indeed, if you insist on the condition not to overthrow the Empire. (For an attempt at a solution with an overthrown Empire, see TL in my sig.)

Religious reasons have been brought to the fore (Judaism), but they`re really implausible.
Economic reasons are beyond the grasp of Roman politicians.
Social reasons - e.g. much more frequent slave rebellions with much greater damage to important cities, in the best case to Rome itself - may be viable. But I suppose they might just have led to the manumission / emancipation of certain predefined groups at a specific point in time, not to an outlawing of slavery, which would mean that the situation could easily come back after a few decades.
Perhaps a combination of the first and the latter works. But then you end up with something that only faintly resembles the Roman Empire.

Also, and perhaps more importantly:
If you want to leave the general socio-economic outlook of the Roman Empire otherweise unchanged, then abolishing slavery won´t bring about a solution for the economic conundrums you listed. In the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, there were considerably fewer slaves than in the 1st century BCE. That didn`t solve the economic stagnation problem in the slightest. Instead of slaves, unfree coloni / indentured servants now worked on the latifundia after Diocletian´s reforms. Nothing much changed. And indentured servitude lasted for more than another millennium, in many countries well into the 19th century. That´s not because another economic outlook was impossible; it´s because power was concentrated in the hands of few and those few moulded laws, jurisdiction and the like as it best suited them, and even those who had no stakes in the business just couldn`t imagine things to be otherwise (and if they did, they`d get eliminated one way or another).

Overcoming mass slavery without replacing it with something very similar means overthrowing the socio-economic structures of Roman society. To put it in Marxist words: The means of production need to be controlled by class-conscious labourers. Class-consciousness here doesn`t mean red-flags-1st-of-May-kind of stuff, but for example the idea that paupers can give each other credit through common banks etc., and to have faith that this will work. Because that`s what the propertied elites had: actual control and a deep-rooted sense that people like them were capable of what it took to run an enterprise and a country.
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
If not for moral issues why is the government doing this? Why raise taxes on slave particularly? If the government needs more taxes and can get others to agree with it why not just a general tax hike on everything? In other words you need a reason for the Roman government to do this. Slave owners were a political force in and of themselves and you need a reason for the government to do this and to win against their opposition.

The reason is the problem indeed, if you insist on the condition not to overthrow the Empire. (For an attempt at a solution with an overthrown Empire, see TL in my sig.)

Religious reasons have been brought to the fore (Judaism), but they`re really implausible.
Economic reasons are beyond the grasp of Roman politicians.
Social reasons - e.g. much more frequent slave rebellions with much greater damage to important cities, in the best case to Rome itself - may be viable. But I suppose they might just have led to the manumission / emancipation of certain predefined groups at a specific point in time, not to an outlawing of slavery, which would mean that the situation could easily come back after a few decades.
Perhaps a combination of the first and the latter works. But then you end up with something that only faintly resembles the Roman Empire.

Also, and perhaps more importantly:
If you want to leave the general socio-economic outlook of the Roman Empire otherweise unchanged, then abolishing slavery won´t bring about a solution for the economic conundrums you listed. In the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, there were considerably fewer slaves than in the 1st century BCE. That didn`t solve the economic stagnation problem in the slightest. Instead of slaves, unfree coloni / indentured servants now worked on the latifundia after Diocletian´s reforms. Nothing much changed. And indentured servitude lasted for more than another millennium, in many countries well into the 19th century. That´s not because another economic outlook was impossible; it´s because power was concentrated in the hands of few and those few moulded laws, jurisdiction and the like as it best suited them, and even those who had no stakes in the business just couldn`t imagine things to be otherwise (and if they did, they`d get eliminated one way or another).

Overcoming mass slavery without replacing it with something very similar means overthrowing the socio-economic structures of Roman society. To put it in Marxist words: The means of production need to be controlled by class-conscious labourers. Class-consciousness here doesn`t mean red-flags-1st-of-May-kind of stuff, but for example the idea that paupers can give each other credit through common banks etc., and to have faith that this will work. Because that`s what the propertied elites had: actual control and a deep-rooted sense that people like them were capable of what it took to run an enterprise and a country.

A possible reason to increase the tax could be political.

After Cannae, the prohibition on the recruitment of slaves into the army was lifted, what if the slaveowners lobbied against this, and the final resolution was that the republic couldn't recruit slaves, but instituted a tax on the purchase of slaves.

I have another idea, that would have to work in tandem with the policy below.

The introduction of the suggested "Common Bank". Probably based off the experiment of a Populares Senator. Near his main home (say a few villages), he provides the initial float for the bank. Encouraging people to use it, and it leading to small successes locally, but more income for the Senator, he establishes some branch offices/other banks further afield - more money for him - and then some traders emerge between the villages that weren't there before, creating more wealth, and spreading the news of the Common Bank that enabled this to happen - the early seeds of a Class-Concious working and merchant class.

On the assumption that the region flourishes enough to be newsworthy, it makes people aware of the value of it - and the Senator pushes the Senate to fund the institution of dozens if not hundreds of Common Banks. Probably more able to persuade members to do so as private investors because it increases their income.

Now assuming that this policy works, and is effective across Italia, then we could see the development of an emancipation movement, not for moral reasons, but because slaves cannot own property - and as such much more likely to be happy to see an increase in the tax of slaves. But this would most certainly be based on the actions of the merchant and working class, and those richer who didn't rely on slaves - so probably the more urban aspects of society.
 
Hm, interesting idea; senators might actually do it because it doesn`t merely provide them with money, but also with a huge network of people who are in a very indirect client relationship to him (power seemed to be even more cherished than money): they are borrowers and/or lenders of the bank he backs with his name, fortune and credibility. A senator who backs a common bank is a powerful patron. Others might jump for it even without a political decision of the Senate to implement this, rather on a competitive basis.

I don´t know if this will lead directly to a questioning of slavery.
But it will create capitalism in the Roman Empire. And capitalism will, sooner or later, question slavery.
 
Any chance of the Empire being converted to Judaism?

The Ancient Jews had quite a few laws requiring slaves to be freed after seven years, or if their master maimed them, so a Judaic Empire might have turned against the institution at some point. But it's rather a long shot.

Which only applied to fellow Jews; keeping foreigners as permanent slaves and passing them down to your children was permitted.
 
The easiest way to do it would be to have a POD in the early republic, before Roman society became overly reliant on slaves. Maybe have some early reformer input laws restricting the use of slaves and/or change their founding myth in some way that looks down on slavery.
 
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