Could they end up receiving the bulk of their slaves from the various Germanic people, after the end of major conquests ?You'd need slaves coming from essentially one source, which would be hard to reach : between Africans, Germanic, Gaelic, Syrians etc. importations and the natural reproduction of the servile poll, slavery was racially as diverse than the overall population.
Not really. Slavery existed even during the times of the Kings, and from sources such as debt slavery. You have former Roman citizens sold as slaves, and from raids to neighboring states in Latium.Could they end up receiving the bulk of their slaves from the various Germanic people, after the end of major conquests ?
Gaelic
The main issue is that the Roman conception of race differs radically from the European ideas of race that made Atlantic chattel slavery possible. The real revolution in race conception in Europe happened after Christianity was adopted across the continent. This brought with it the ideas of the three lineages of Noah and the proselytizing missions that were later used to justify racial slavery. So it's possible for racial slavery to become instituted in Rome, but it would have to come after the empire became predominantly Christian, and the government would have to adopt the same mindset towards some hypothetical foreign group, probably either the Persians or Africans. However, by this time IOTL, the Empire didn't have the capability to project power and take the massive numbers of slaves that this policy would entail, since after Diocletian, the Roman army took on a largely defensive stance (even more so than under Augustus or Hadrian).
Slavery wasn't just fueled trough conquest (even if the Republican and early Imperial conquest did it on a large scale), but from trade as well : trade with Barbarians included an important importation of slaves IOTL, at least until the IIIrd to IVth century.Could they end up receiving the bulk of their slaves from the various Germanic people, after the end of major conquests ?
I appreciate the correction, but I used Gaelic consciously : while the enslavement of Gaulish peoples from the IInd to Ist century BCE was quite important, it was relatively short-lived as supply after the Cesarian conquest. Similarly, the Brittonic enslavement was limited (at the exception of Northern Brittonic people, especially before the establishment of the Pictish coalition/confederation). We do know that Romans had a commercial presence in Ireland (enforced by military projection), and probably set up client petty-kingdoms on the eastern coast.I hate to nitpick, but the Romans probably never dealt with Gaelic people in any very important capacity. "Gaelic" refers to the branch of Celtic typified by Irish, which (by consensus - although some relate Irish to the Celtic languages of Iberia, it's not generally considered proven) never really left Ireland until the medieval period.
Slavery wasn't just fueled trough conquest (even if the Republican and early Imperial conquest did it on a large scale), but from trade as well : trade with Barbarians included an important importation of slaves IOTL, at least until the IIIrd to IVth century.
Well, you're not wrong, but that's essentially true for archaic or early classical Roman Republic : it was abolished in the IVth century BCE, and gradually disappeared from there, especially as slaves obtained trough imperial conquests provided an alternative. Nexum was eventually quickly replaced by clientelism. By the time trade became a main supply of slaves, Nexum's abolition was more a narrative justifying a posteriori enslavement of foreigners rather than their own kind, and it might not be this causal IMO.Don't forget debt slavery and debt bondage, of which Nexum is a form, during the early part of Rome's history. One reason why race based slavery cannot take root is because of the possibility of fellow Romans becoming slaves for one reason or the other, and that early in the history of the city, probably a majority of Roman slaves were Romans or Latins.
To be honest, this is a pretty weird historiography. I seriously doubt that Portuguese slave traders in Sierra Leone were actually thinking about the three lineages of Noah when they bought and sold people, and if they said they were it's obviously an excuse. Certainly nobody read the Bible and thought "hey, why don't we go down south and enslave the children of Ham?", and it's not exactly a coincidence that the slave trade revved up when Brazil and the Caribbean started to fill with sugar plantations.
Pretty much any society can become racist in a very short period of time. All you need is to have some group of people that you want to be inferior, and I guarantee you'll find some religious, sentimental, or "scientific" reason to say they are.
The real revolution in race conception in Europe happened after Christianity was adopted across the continent. This brought with it the ideas of the three lineages of Noah and the proselytizing missions that were later used to justify racial slavery. .
Yeah, tribes and cultures rather than race. Note how gens and genus refer to smaller groups or class.Racially based slavery is pretty much impossible in a society that doesn't have a concept of race. The specific situations that led to the concept of race were long distance sea travel that allowed the conceptualization of the population of the world as divided into poles which formed races without considering intermediate peoples. The Romans could, and did, enslave whole ethnic groups, but they did not view race as a category independent of the social organization of a group.
Yeah, tribes and cultures rather than race. Note how gens and genus refer to smaller groups or class.
Are you saying Christianity specifically makes a culture divide people into races?Not if culture includes Christianity after about 300 CE.