PC:Roman race-based slavery

Could a race-based slavery similar to the Antebellum South be possible in Roman Republic or Empire

What group or groups could fill the position of slaves.

What would be the impact on Rome
 
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 that Roman xenophobia couldn't turn into quasi-racist attitudes, giving whole population definite negative traits regardless of their cultural situation : Benjamin Isaac makes a good argument about how Roman prejudice, if not built on race as we understand it, was really rooted in geo-enironmental determinism from Aristotle, but heavily mixed with political and pragmatic concerns : some sort of social-lamarckism instead of social-darwinism if you will, mixed with an acceptance of slavery as necessary and fair because if they could do it, they did so.
It was as well considered as making these people a favor, bringing them into the service of civilization and its peoples : this is an important departure from Aristotelitian conception of slavery, because Romans did not see "natural slavery" as inherent to people or individuals, but relative to their relations with the Empire, both geographically and politically. As Romans weren't particularly pressed to find a rationalized justification to slavery beyond "we enslave our enemies, because that's cheap manpower, and "they're better off anyway evolving beyond a barbaric station"

So while you could get to some sort of social-lamarckist based-slavery, you'd need an important change in Roman history to go beyond an essentiallisation of Germans, Mauri, etc. as other than peoples without history, living in poor places, and in desperate need of guidance. Not unlike European paternalist justification for colonization of Africa, except Romans couldn't be bothered with conquering these shitty lands.

But race-based slavery? The idea would have been too foreign to Roman concept of the world, too "irredeemable".
 
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.
Could they end up receiving the bulk of their slaves from the various Germanic people, after the end of major conquests ?
 
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).
 
Could they end up receiving the bulk of their slaves from the various Germanic people, after the end of major conquests ?
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.

That was why freed slaves as freemen are automatically Roman citizens, and their children full Roman citizens without any legal disability, and why they can be even Emperor, like Pertinax, or king, like the Romans believed in Servius Tullius.


Racial slavery is incompatible with the rule that freedmen are citizens, and their descendants equal to freeborn Romans. Or that Romans, under certain conditions, could becomes slaves themselves.
 
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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.

You may be thinking of "Gallic", which refers to the Celts of Gaul - more closely related to Brittonic than Gaelic peoples.
 
Just an idea though it wouldn't be too similar to the South but what if the Romans took an Nazi-style approach and declared themselves the ubermensch and took all the "lesser races" as slaves (not all individuals of the "lesser races" but all slaves would be of foreign stock). You can have a Jim crow style of racism in Rome itself, but Idk in the rest of the empire
 
As Rome wars of conquest declined, Rome started developing shortages of slaves and it was getting impossible to get enough of slaves of any race.

If we make a POD that Roman slave traders went to Africa to get black slaves, presumably like Europeans they would need to buy slaves. Unlike Europeans later, Rome does not have guns to sell and it does not even have firewater so the natives there would be less interested in selling them slaves.
 
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).

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.
 
Could they end up receiving the bulk of their slaves from the various Germanic people, after the end of major conquests ?
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.

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.
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.
Trade with Barbarians strongly imply importation of slaves : Thomas Charles Edwards even theorizes that it caused a depopulation of eastern Ireland up to the IIIrd century, that fueled Britto-Roman latifundiae.
 
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.

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.
 
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.
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.
 
The thing with late european style racism is that it makes you a worse, rather than a better, conqueror. Had ancient romans thought of the gauls, mauri or syrians as irredimably barbaric, the kind of centralized, multiethnic state they built would had been impossible: European empires saw "bringing civilization" as imposing white rule, whereas romans saw it as bringing roman culture and law to those people. That requires one to believe that they are perfectly capable of adopting it.
 
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I could see it developing into an expansionist Rome, as the old sources dry up. Consider a Rome which pushes East, and brings vast new populations in as slaves - these would so outnumber existing populations that they could soon seem the norm. While Persians, Scythians etc might not seem too different from other Romans, once Rome is sending vast numbers of Indians back home as new slave populations, then one might come to equate slaves with Indians
 
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.

That's fair, I may have unreasonably extrapolated the racial slavery dynamic in the USA to the rest of the world. But even assuming my original claim is wrong, I think the Roman cultural conception of barbarianism and citizenship probably precludes the same sort of all-encompassing racial prejudices that defined Atlantic chattel slavery
 
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. .

This biblical view would be best described as justification after the fact. I do not think it refers to race in our context for example in medieval times, white serfs were considered to being sons of Ham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham

The whole thing with Ham is very unclear.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
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.
 
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.
 
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