WI no slavery in Rome

[NapoleonXIV]

WI Slavery was incompatible with 'the Roman Way' to such an extent that they forbade it?

The Romans are no less militaristic or likely to conquer their neighbors for other reasons but they have a custom wherby they will execute prisoners if they feel threatened by them but let them go back to whateve lives they had before if they don't.

 

[carlton_bach]

Imagining any of the ancient cultures without some form of unfree labour is pretty much impossible (yes, it has become very fashionable in certain quarters to depict Ancient Egypt as an enlightened utopia in this respect, but the sources say otherwise). The implications would be huge.

- what takes the place of status servants? This requires a huge shift in thinking - free men serving free men?

- What takes the place of slaves as investment goods?

- How is concubinage and prostiutution organised?

- What do you do with prisoners of war? Ancient warfare was pretty much a l'outrance, so unless you enslave them, you'd have to kill them.

Rome without slavery would be a very different beast. I think late Antiquity could give us a few pointers towards what is possible, but I think the responses of a small, city-based society would have to be different to those of a great empire. Maybe Medieval Italian cities would make a decent analogy, but you'll still have to get rid of status slaves and slave concubines to round out the picture - somehow.

Take two thinking pills and call me in the morning? Seriously, if you work this through it could get very interesting.

 

[Norman]

I tend to be production based on these sorts of questions. The reason people had slaves was because it made economic sense (whether they knew it or not). If you can find ways to have production in Rome higher without use of Slaves than with the use of slave, I think it will go away on its own.

This having been said, what do you do with defeated enemies?

Well, you can either kill them, send them back to where they come from, or get them on your side.

Rome was actually pretty good with getting them on their side.

 

[Knight Of Armenia]

Well, give them some technological innovations (nothing too fancy; mills and the like are plenty, perhaps add in some of Hero's steam engines) before slavery takes a hold. Most of the ancient world didn't bother with Hero (or trying to use his parlor tricks as actual tools) because they had slaves already; if these innovations come first, then slaves as agricultural labor would be unnecessary, and that is the predominant reason for slaves in Rome (working the vast tracts of land that the elite gathered). Building projects and the like wouldn't be as important; simply have Augustus take a page from the old Pharoahs (in that the major projects were privileges and the people should be happy to work), and you've eliminated slave labor.

 

[Knight Of Armenia]

As for what to do with beaten peoples, simple: either Romanize them (as Rome often did, bringing their young back to be educated in the Roman ways), or, in case of armies that just don't like Rome, kill them (Romans showed that they had little protests in way of butchering vast populations, and if they sold the entire population of Carthage into slavery, I can see them all being executed just as easily).

 

[DominusNovus]

Well, it could certainly help in Roman conquests. When they conquer a region, they'd probably free the slaves (though, I guess they could respect the "local customs" and allow conquered peoples to keep their slaves, on occasion). This would prove to be a good incentive for the slaves to, ahem, interfere with the defense of the region.

 

[carlton_bach]

err - the reason for Roman slavery was certainly not to provide labour for latifundia or provide a disincentive to industrialisation. Slavery had deep roots in Rome longe before there were latifundia, and not only in Rome (as IIRC Gaius said: "an institution contrary to natural law, but anchored in the law of the peoples (ius gentium)"). I doubt either the invention of a few gadgets (many of which would work just as well with slave labour) or a successful prevention of the depopulation of the Italic copuntryside by, say, the Gracchi would have done it.

First of all, both Hero and the Gracchi would be too late. If anything, slavery would have to be nipped at the inception of the Roman state (at the latest by the time of the XII Tables - if it makes it into those, the law stays on the books). The advantage is that you can basically invent any regional event you want freely to do it (we know almost nothing about that time other sthan little stories told by national mythographers), but the problem that it needs to be pretty convincing to let the Romans go against every single nation around them in this regard for centuries.

Then the issue of technology and slavery being opposed to each other - very unlikely. The Hellenistc Greeks pretty much invented the concept of 'technology', and they also invented industrial-grade chattel slavery. THe Islamic world around the year 1000 was pretty much as progressive as you get, and they had slavery written into their religious law. China had slavery throughout its history, and even Renaissance Italy and Portugal were slaveholding societies (as was, of course, the British empire until 1834 and the United states until 1863). It's a nice liberal myth, but as a general truth it doesn't wash.

I think a more realistic WI would be 'rome without mass slavery' frex. what if Rome had a law on the books that limited slavery to voluntary, punitive or hereditary status, but forbade enslavement of war prisoners? Admittedly, not really probably either, but that way the slaves pouring into Italy are only those taken as war booty and the few debt slaves, and not the populations of entire cities. Such a more limited labour pool would make the Republican latifundia impossible and require a different kind of social structure in the countryside. Given the stronger sense of civic pride and liberties, the colonate could not be developed the same way. Maybe an early development of labour contract law?