New CBB

I have an additional question-set.

As we all know there have been some, probably several, economies in world history, that were (or would have been) severely curtailed by the abolition of slavery.

But I have read that there have been very few (maybe only one, maybe not even one) economies that were actually based on slavery.

First: Is that true?

Second: Doesn't that depend on what you mean by saying an economy "is based on" something?

Third: What natcultures, if any, can you think of, that were/are based on slavery?

Fourth: Whose conculture(s) is/are based on slavery? And what do you mean by that?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

The pre-Civil War American South's economy was based on slave labour. Similar economies existed in Brazil.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

I don't buy that. The vast majority of whites in the south weren't slaveowners. What did they do for a living?

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The author I was reading (sorry I don't remember which article) clearly knew about the ante-Bellum US states south of the Mason-Dixon line, as well as lots of other stuff.
He had proposed a ficitional society whose economy was "based on" slavery.
I think by that he may have meant that slave-taking and slave-trading were the major industries of the economy; I'm not sure any more since I don't have the article in front of me nor easily to-hand.
That would mean that after 1820 USAmerican slavery was not the basis of the Southron economy, or at least I don't think so, given that Micamo's remark is true.
The Southron economy took a huge hit from the abolition of slavery, but tenant-farming and share-cropping quickly took its place: most of the economic hardship was temporary and personal rather than regional, due to the dislocation of the slaves and the impoverishment of their owners; or else was due simply to having lost a war to an invading army and being treated as conquered territory by the more radical "reconstruction".

Pirates usually took slaves, and there have been economies based on piracy; how big a part of the profits from piracy were from slavery, though, in those economies?

Does anyone have a conculture based on piracy?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

They worked. Or they were poor. Very, very poor. The gap between rich and poor in the South was huge. The Slave Owning plantations relied on cotton mostly, and extensively used slave labour. And Whites were not the only ones to own slaves. The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with the defense of the Southern economic system (slavery and cotton), which all but collapsed after the Civil War.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

Well, Midh don't believe in intellectual property so they are those kind of pirates...



It's hard to call slave labor the basis of the economy when almost everyone participating in the economy wasn't involved in slavery.



Why were poor whites willing to enlist and fight against the union to preserve an economic system they didn't benefit from? Why were almost all of the changes to the confederate constitution dedicated to limiting federal power if keeping slavery was the real issue?

I read an alternative interpretation of the civil war that, on the level of individual citizens, the war was about religion: "Pietist" protestants to the north against catholics and lutherans to the south.

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I didn't say it was based on slavery, I said slave labour.


Many of the poor weren't willing to fight. Or they were paid to. On both sides many soldiers call it a War for the Rich fought by the Poor.

States' Rights issues played a major role in the political language of the War, but it was mostly fueled by economic issues and dissatisfaction on both the North's and the South's part concerning the many compromises that were attempted prior to the War. By the time the Civil War started, the issue of States Rights was out the window, it was the political power in the South fearing that the powers in the North would unbalance the North/South power axis in favour of the Northern social and economic model. That would (did) bring an end to the economic power the South had. The South's economy was based on cotton and plantation farming. The North's was based on industrialization. So to protect themselves and their way of life Southern states began to secede from the Union and set up their own independent government that would not be fettered by the partisan politics of the United States, and the increasing pressure to allow the federal government power in places it had not initially had. For example, the federal ruling that California was not to be a slave state. Traditionally it was up to the state to vote on slavery being accepted, but California was not allowed to join the Union unless its State Constitution stated that California was free state. This was a major blow to States' Rights, and the Southern politicians felt that the government had overstepped its boundaries.


Catholics held no power in the South. Baptists did, however.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

Who told you that?
Excuse me, I meant: "Citation needed".

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

OK, thanks.
..........
I had been taught, however, that Catholicism was popular in the ante-Bellum South.

Of those three references, only that last reference is indisputable, and only the middle reference mentions the South.

So I reserve the possibility that your reference was just plain wrong. (And also the possibility that what I was taught in college was wrong; that's possible too.)

......................

But, at any rate, you completely- and well- -answered the question "Who told you that?" --- so, Thanks.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

During that era, throughout the country Catholics were sub-humanized. The entire campaign behind the historical hatred of the Irish was due to the fact that so many were Catholic. I am not saying that Catholicism is bad or anything like that, mind you, just that historically in the U.S. it was seen as an enemy Religion, and that the South was, and in many ways still is, a strongly evangelical Baptist area.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

Well, I wasn't there, so FAIK you may be right.

What I was taught in college was that the ante-bellum South was more tolerant of Catholics than the ante-bellum North; and (without getting into whether there was a cause-effect relationship or which way it ran if so) a higher fraction of Southrons than Yankees were Catholic.

IME on "your" side is the fact that I never learned the family history of any Southron Catholic family that had been that before The War.
My parents and grandparents were Methodists -- the quiet kind. Their parents and grandparents were also Methodists -- not the quite kind, but rather the "shouting" kind.
During my life in the South, Baptist denominations were quite ubiquitous and influential (or, at least, were credited -- sometimes pejoratively -- with influence).

OTOH on "my" side is the famous "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" remark of some post-Reconstruction Yankee (radical?) Republican politician.

As if Yankee Republicans of the time more-or-less equated "Romanism" (Roman Catholics) with "Rebellion" (Southrons).

So as I admit, I don't know.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Slavery in Conworlds:

The Ankuati are pretty divided over this. The Free People of the northwest are extremely egalitarian and anarchistic, but in a very rough way; work together as a family or tribal unit, whether you're a nomadic buffalo herder or a semi-urban agriculturalist, you all co-operate so that everyone gets enough food and shelter and the tribe doesn't fail, but you're free to duel anyone who you've got a problem with and if you kill them, you have to compensate their tribe and close family - marry off one of your children to one of theirs, gift them some food or tools or whatever you have that they could find useful. The closest thing they have to a hierarchy is that the elders of a tribe tend to know the most, but that doesn't mean you have to do what they say, just that they'll usually have good advice.

Then there are the neutral tribes; mostly nomads who have little to do with the more settled tribes beyond a little bartering and gossip whenever they meet, but they are more or less Northwestern in their beliefs.

Last are the Ankuati of the Aliti Empire; their lands cover the east and southeast, and their capital is the city of Ai'alin; they've gone quite the opposite direction to the Free People, with one tribe (the Iliakhti) making up the nobles and elite merchants, another (the Kathniam) making up the military and lower merchants, and everyone else is a slave, many from the nomad tribes or from the southern lands, but a large proportion are just slaveborn.


The Iliakhti were always slavers in one regard; before they had even built Ai'alin, centuries before the Aliti Empire, they would attack other tribes and capture as many young men and women as they could, and take them as wives and husbands (while all Ankuati are sexist to a degree, the Iliakhti always had a superiority complex, and believed that their women still had the right to capture their own husbands). When they became agriculturalists, they got more and more obsessed with catching slaves, and once they began their monarchy, it was a law that the King must own at least nine slave-wives before he can take the throne.

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PROTO-ONURE: Jutésa coconóco ga zuntús, na en rógcag ma pohús.

In my conworld there are people born with a supernatural powers of healing. While some cultures revere these people as prophets or angels or priests, others consider them 'unclean' because they absorb the impurities of others or because they upset the order of things. In these cultures it is common for children born with the gift (they come with a telltale birthmark) to be 'claimed' by a wealthy person or sold into slavery by its parents.

These slaves are then forced to heal people against their will, often for the profit of their owner, and because they are almost always inexperienced and uneducated in the proper way to use their gift they often suffer 'rebounds' where the afflictions they absorb from other people become permanent.

Some of the more liberal, humanitarian-minded societies have begun to look down on the practice, either driving it out of existence altogether or stigmatizing it so only really despicable people would do it. However, others, like my main focus conculture, consider this type of slavery and others to be perfectly okay.

In addition, because the gift is about nine times as common in women as in men, these slaves are also made into concubines/sex slaves depending on the slaveowner's preference and cultural background.

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1st language: English (American)
Learning: French
Dabbling in: Japanese, Welsh, Romanian
Creating: Shyncan, Intergrafix