A History of Slavery and Serfdom

A History of Slavery and Serfdom by John Kells Ingram

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This 1895 text provides an engaging overview of slavery and serfdom in human history. The author, John Kells Ingram, surveys the history of human slavery from ancient times through modernity, or, more specifically, 1895. Ingram's survey includes an examination of slavery in Europe, Asia, Africa, the New World and the MIddle East.

I liked this book because it was free of the relentless modern moralization and sermonization that is necessary in modern books on the subject. It is also obviously devoid of political correctness, which is a nice feature.

Because of its position in time and its freedom from scoring points against European, racist imperialism, it can provide new bits of information that are omitted in modern naratives. For example, I had no idea that serfdom endured in Europe as long as it did:

“As money payments came into universal use as the medium of exchange, services were commuted into rents, and the relation of owner and occupier came to be regarded as a result of contract. Serfdom died out in England without any special legislation against it. 100 It survived, however, in exceptional instances in Britain, as in France; Hallam101 mentions, as perhaps the latest deed of enfranchisement, one of Elizabeth in 1574 in favour of the bondmen on some of her manors; and it appears that in Scotland the workers in coal and salt mines were in a state of serfdom until they were liberated by Acts of the 15th and 39th years of the reign of George 111.”

As for Prussia:

“Frederick William III., from the beginning of his reign, was actuated by an earnest desire to abolish serfdom in Prussia, and to raise the peasant to the position of a free and independent citizen.106 In 1799 he called on his officials to further as speedily as possible the remission of all compulsory services, and the granting of freeholds to the tenants, on his royal domains; and healing measures were largely carried out in the following years, in spite of many difficulties, in East and West Prussia and other provinces. But the final and conclusive impulse to a radical social renovation was given by the terrible disasters which overtook Prussia in 1806; and the high-minded men who surrounded the monarch were thus enabled to surmount the opposition of prejudice and self-interest, and to effect the legislation necessary for the reconstruction of the almost ruined realm.
The new enactments, already thoroughly prepared in the best public opinion, were elaborated by a special commission, of which Altenstein, Schun, and other distinguished statesmen were members; and Stein and Hardenberg gave to these measures the full weight of their support and influence. On the 9th of October 1807 the celebrated Emancipating Edict was signed. By this it was provided that the serfdom of those who occupied peasant holdings by hereditary tenure should be abolished throughout the monarchy, and that their compulsory menial services should cease, but that any obligations to their lords binding them as free persona by virtue of their possession of property, or of special contracts, should remain unchanged until redeemed by mutual agreement.107 As we have already stated, serfdom had been abolished on the royal domains in the kingdom of Prussia, properly so called, by Frederick William I. in the case of peasants holding directly from the crown; and now, on the 28th of October 1807, a Cabinet order extended this abolition to all the domains, and in the following July the domain tenants obtained full rights of property in their holdings, subject, however, to the continued payment of certain dues and services.”

In the New World, de las Casas get blamed for advocating Negro slavery, but this is apparently untrue:

“Las Casas, in his Historia de las Indias (lib. iii. cap. 101), frankly confesses the grave error into which he thus fell. “This advice that license should be given to bring negro slaves to these lands the clerigo Casas first gave, not considering the injustice with which the Portuguese take them and make them slaves; which advice, after he had apprehended the nature of the thing, he would not have given for all he had in the world. For he always held that they were made slaves unjustly and tyrannically; for the same reason holds good of them as of the Indians.”

Likewise, Christianity on the whole ameliorated the condition of slaves:

“The rise of Christianity in the Roman world still further improved the condition of the slave. The sentiments it created were not only favourable to the humane treatment of the class in the present, but were the germs out of which its entire liberation was destined, at a later period, in part to arise. It is sometimes unreasonably objected to the Christian church that it did not denounce slavery as a social crime and insist on its immediate abolition, that on the contrary it recognised the institution, ecclesiastical persons and societies themselves being owners of slaves. We have seen that slavery was a fundamental element of the old Roman constitution, not only incorporated with the laws, but necessarily arising out of, and essential to, the military mission of the state. When the work of conquest had been sufficiently achieved, it could not be expected that a radical alteration should be suddenly wrought either in the social system which was in harmony with it, or even in the general ideas which had grown up under its influence. The latter would, indeed, be gradually affected; and accordingly we have observed a change in the policy of the law, indicating a change in sentiment with respect to the slave class, which does not appear to have been at all due to Christian teaching, but to have arisen from the spontaneous influence of circumstances co-operating with the softened manners which were inspired by a pacific regime. But the institution itself could not be at once seriously disturbed; it was too deeply rooted and too closely bound up with the whole existing order of things. If it could have been immediately abolished, the results must have been disastrous, most of all to the slave population itself. Before that end could be accomplished, an essentially new social situation must come into existence; society must be organised for defence as it had previously been for conquest; transformation could not be wrought in a day. But in the meantime much might be done towards further mitigating the evils of slavery, especially by impressing on master and slave their relative duties and controlling their behaviour towards one another by the exercise of an independent moral authority.83 This was the work open to the members of the Christian priesthood, and it cannot be denied that it was well discharged. They could not, of course, fundamentally alter the operation of the institution on character, and the abuses which existed under paganism continued after the establishment of the new faith, but they were diminished in extent and intensity.”

Natural law also played a part:

“Dio Chrysostom, the adviser of Trajan, is the first Greek writer who has pronounced 71 the principle of slavery to be contrary to the law of nature. ‘,79 And a parallel change is found in the practical policy of the state. The military vocation of Rome was now felt to have reached its normal limits; to the age of conquest had succeeded the age of administration; and the emperors, understanding that, in the future, industrial activity must prevail, prepared the abolition of slavery as far as was then possible, by honouring the freedmen, by protecting the slave against his master, and by facilitating manumissions.”

Ingram sounds like Frederick Law Olmstead in arguing that slavery was morally destructive for masters as it was personally destructive for slaves. “On the morality of the masters whether personal, domestic, or social - the effects of the institution were disastrous.”

Notwithstanding its age, this is a first-rate survey of the subject and may be better than books written in the last 40 years since it is not burdened by anti-western ideology.