Big business slavery

In another plate King Ghezo has explained original causes of slavery from his throne at Royal Palaces of Abomey  in modern-day Benin, the south coast of Northwest Africa.

Human numbers stress living conditions. Some of us start defining "others" as unnecessary surplusage. Adversity yields prisoners of war. Killing POWs is unpleasant so enslavement claims a moral high-road. Overpopulation encourages slavery.

What a damnable shame!

Human biology has driven such tendencies since our evolution brought us to conflict with our our own kind. No wonder our cultures and institutions record overpopulation-encouraged slavery to the beginning of history. Good books of many of our greatest golden-ruled religions are marbled with expressions showing overpopulation-encouraged slavery as among the oldest of human endeavors.

This plate wraps our minds around the gargantuan size of African Slave sales between 1500 and 1900. Though 388,000 Atlantic slaves were the total of U.S. slave imports between 1525 and 1866, survivors of slave travel likely approached 13 million African slaves during the same time. These 13 million were to live as slaves in other parts of the world. So, though we who have grown up in the "us" known as the United States, "others" who imposed slavery around the world used over 33 times as many victims.

Big business indeed. Too many people encourages adversity, adversity worsens into conflict. Conflict yields prisoners of war. Mind-numbing slaughter of endless enemies yields to the moral impetus of big business slavery.

Patterson's table of contents reminds that we humans of every race, creed, color, and kind have more or less independently arrived at the same damnable institution.  Repeatedly throughout history at many different times and different places around the world, slavery of "unnecessary others" get to seeming a worthwhile, useful activity as living conditions decline.

 

 

 

 

 

Overpopulation encourages slavery, African examples.

The Overpopulation Slavery plate above captures grueling African conditions roughly between 1500 and 1900. Of course, slavery had existed in earlier African communities for literally thousands of years. The Black Holocaust Museum details that well.

Even after 2000 inheritace-based chattel slavery continues in places such as Mauritania. e

Through global history, overpopulation encourages slavery again and again.

Can we do better than to borrow heavily from the excellent Slavery and Social Death, A Comparative Study by Harvard's Orlando Patterson? "There is no region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution. Probably there is no group of people whose ancestors were not at one time slaves or slaveholders." Orlando Patterson Slavery and Social Death, a Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA; London, England: Harvard University Press, 1982) at vii.

Gates of No Return at Ouidah.

Among Classical Greeks from the sixth century BCE, “the agent of the state responsible for the public regulation of slaves was the war archon.” Patterson at p. 40, note 18. Of course, a military provider of captives! "In many societies slavery rose by convicts and/or the chronically poor. “In France, Spain, England, and the Netherlands a severe form of enslavement of Europeans by Europeans was to develop and flourish from the middle of the fifteenth century to well into the nineteenth. This was penal slavery, beginning with galley slavery and continuing with its replacement by the Bagnes, or penal slavery in public works. Both were slavery in every sense of the term. They developed as substitutes for the death penalty at a time when there was not a prison system in Europe to accommodate the huge number of persons found guilty of capital offenses.” Ibid. p. 45, note 43. Patterson's powerful analysis flowed from many cultures in which slavery became a dominant institution. “Slavery was not only ubiquitous but turns out to have thrived most in precisely those areas and periods of the world where our conventional wisdom would lead us to expect it least. It was firmly established in all the great early centers of human civilization and, far from declining, actually increased in significance with the growth of all the epochs and cultures that modern Western peoples consider watersheds in their historical development. Ancient Greece and Rome were not simply slaveholding societies…slavery was very solidly the base of their socioeconomic structures.” Ibid. at vii. Why? Because humans' overpopulating nature -- like other momentarily-successful animals -- eventually out - conceives their life support. Darwin saw that "[M]ore individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive...” So, "there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence." Survival-enhancing characteristics have a greater likelihood of being "naturally selected” in those struggles. Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (London: John Murray Publishing, 1859), p. 5. Prisoners of war, convicts, and the chronically poor hold back their communities in ways that become seen as impossible as numbers outrun life support. Pressures of "too many," intense overpopulation, sets the stage for slavery. Someone says, "I think I  can make our socially-dead captives contribute on my farm, mine, factory, or religion-business. Let me try. If slavery works, then, mercifully, these people may live! If some fail, they were going to be executed anyway." Slavery typically re-emerges during periods of overpopulation stress. What begins as the lot of the convict, the POW, and those labelled as chronically incapable, may spread to others as institutionalization sets in. Footnotes:

Big business slavery

King Ghezo has explained slavery from his thrown at his Royal Palaces of Abomey in modern-day Benin

upport for slavery "long past the times when England and others had ended slavery 

 

Overpopulation enables, motivates, & sparks rebirth of slavery.

In the paradise of underpopulation affluence nobody needs slavery. So why does slavery re-appear repeatedly throughout human history?

Is it possible that as human numbers outrun life support, we want life-support that "others" are already counting on? That as numbers outrun life support our fearful, overpopulation-selected "us - versus - them" passions trigger unrest, violence, and war? That war brings capture of  prisoners of war (POWs) who, like other of societies' convicts and chronically poor, are loathed by those struggling to escape the poverty of population pressures.

As burdens of non-contributing captives increase does overpopulation motivate slavery? Do people and leaders incline toward less fatal ways of exploiting those who otherwise face execution as enemies? Many an emperor has looked on slavery as the more merciful of the two available choices. Of course, death makes certain that the enemy POW won't take up arms again. But slavery lets the captive live for the benefit of slavers.

Overpopulation starts slavery: convicts.

All societies label some as  "criminals" for behaviors disruptive to the "us" group offended. Criminals lose their freedom. During times of underpopulation affluence criminals may have some limited "rights" in prison. In harder times societies resent resources spared for prisoner upkeep. Then, convicts are increasingly seen as low-worth overpopulation excess. Then rulers may invoke self-interested enslavement as more merciful than death.

Overpopulation starts slavery: prisoners of war (POWS).

Again as societies compete, armies organize to take what "we" need from "others." Prisoners are captured. Overpopulation poverty resents captives and support leaders finding ways to make prisoners more productive?

One of Africa's many slave warehouse-prisons

    

Overpopulation starts slavery: the chronically poor.

In much the same way, chronic poor explode in numbers as humans overpopulate available land, resources, and jobs. Dominant "us" groups increasingly loath the chronically poor as a drag on their own lives. All this sets the stage for some exploitive slaver to dream up forced productivity from the chronically poor. Again slavery is sold as a "merciful" choice where starvation of the poor can be avoided.

Overpopulation starts slavery again and again throughout history.

Can we do better than to borrow heavily from the excellent Slavery and Social Death, A Comparative Study by Harvard's Orlando Patterson? "There is no region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution. Probably there is no group of people whose ancestors were not at one time slaves or slaveholders." Orlando Patterson Slavery and Social Death, a Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA; London, England: Harvard University Press, 1982) at vii.

Gates of No Return at Ouidah.

Among Classical Greeks from the sixth century BCE, “the agent of the state responsible for the public regulation of slaves was the war archon.” Patterson at p. 40, note 18. Of course, a military provider of captives!

"In many societies slavery rose by convicts and/or the chronically poor.

“In France, Spain, England, and the Netherlands a severe form of enslavement of Europeans by Europeans was to develop and flourish from the middle of the fifteenth century to well into the nineteenth. This was penal slavery, beginning with galley slavery and continuing with its replacement by the Bagnes, or penal slavery in public works. Both were slavery in every sense of the term. They developed as substitutes for the death penalty at a time when there was not a prison system in Europe to accommodate the huge number of persons found guilty of capital offenses.” Ibid. p. 45, note 43.

Patterson's powerful analysis flowed from many cultures in which slavery became a dominant institution.

“Slavery was not only ubiquitous but turns out to have thrived most in precisely those areas and periods of the world where our conventional wisdom would lead us to expect it least. It was firmly established in all the great early centers of human civilization and, far from declining, actually increased in significance with the growth of all the epochs and cultures that modern Western peoples consider watersheds in their historical development. Ancient Greece and Rome were not simply slaveholding societies…slavery was very solidly the base of their socioeconomic structures.” Ibid. at vii.

Why? Because humans' overpopulating nature -- like other momentarily-successful animals -- eventually out - conceives their life support. Darwin saw that "[M]ore individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive...” So, "there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence." Survival-enhancing characteristics have a greater likelihood of being "naturally selected” in those struggles. Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (London: John Murray Publishing, 1859), p. 5.

Prisoners of war, convicts, and the chronically poor hold back their communities in ways that become seen as impossible as numbers outrun life support. Pressures of "too many," intense overpopulation, sets the stage for slavery. Someone says, "I think I  can make our socially-dead captives contribute on my farm, mine, factory, or religion-business. Let me try. If slavery works, then, mercifully, these people may live! If some fail, they were going to be executed anyway."

Slavery typically re-emerges during periods of overpopulation stress. What begins as the lot of the convict, the POW, and those labelled as chronically incapable, may spread to others as institutionalization sets in.

Footnotes: