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Do any of your concultures have or once had slavery? How did it work?

Midh have two kinds of slavery: Indentured Servitude, where someone is sold for a number of years to pay off a debt (while not technically slavery, I'm counting it because the subject can be sold into it by their family members against their will), and Permanent Slavery, which is more traditional.

Permanent Slaves are mostly captured humans but a few dragons as well; The distinction between who is okay to enslave and who is not is defined by mindset and behavior rather than species. A murderer, thief, or traitor among the Midh could quickly find themselves in shackles, and even a human can come to be accepted and even adopted into a clan if they follow "draconic traditions" and hold "draconic values." (The meaning of which can come to be a little arbitrary.) Midh seem to find plenty of reasons, however, to mistrust and dislike even adopted humans. Regardless of their nominal ideology, bigotry due to species is a very real thing.

The Kekawa, a human culture of mine, have a system of sex slavery that's less developed at the moment: A woman (and sometimes a man) purchased is painfully given a series of tattoos all over her (or his) body that indicate the identity of their owner. Being caught screwing a slave who isn't yours means death for both the slave and their lover. When the master dies or simply grows bored of them the slave is also executed; They are not re-sold.

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The Keintapans have a system of slavery, although it isn't fully fleshed yet. The Keintapans were meant to be a conglomeration of stereotypical commies, nazis, and a feminist's worst nightmare.

In Keintapan society, from an outsider's point of view, there are four classes of slaves: "free" women, men, women, and eduated. "Free" women are simply normal women. They are bound to their closest male relative, whether it's their father, brother, husband, son, and so forth. Unlike in other traditional societies where women are bound to males, the woman, in this case, is legally bound and her "master" can transfer her to another male in the family legally and even sell her to be a normal slave if he so wants. Depending on the region, "free" women might be treated just like normal slaves.

Male slaves are male slaves.

Women slaves are women slaves. They also tend to be sex slaves, although this is really up to the master. The Keintapans use the analogy of a dog - you can play games with a dog, but not everyone wants to; similarly, you can bone your female slave, but not everyone might want to. However, Keintapans also consider it good etiquette to share a female sex slave - especially an attractive one - with your friends and other family members. Refusing to do so makes you look, in their eyes, as selfish and inconsiderate (sort of like sharing your toys, or sharing your food, or sharing your car, etc.). This practice started to slowly die away once Keintapa began to get some influence from the significantly more liberal Aidisese Empire. Anyhow, however, Keintapans consider pedophilia undesirable, so boning a 10 year old girl is not considered good. This is not necessarily because of some kind of higher moral standard, but rather because Keintapans consider children to not have sufficient "adult energy" (or something like that), and boning one would drain your energy as it takes away your "adult energy".

Educated slaves, the rarest type, are like the educated slaves in Rome and Greece who would tutor children. For instance, they might serve as secretaries to their masters, or even the equivalent of business partners in all but name. In a sense, these men (and very, very rarely, women) are really slaves in all but name - legally they are owned by their master, but due to how their help, they often are very independent.

Slaves can also be owned by corporations, businesses, and other non-person entities. Male slaves are most often used for labor and female slaves most often used for prostitution, for instance. Sometimes, businesses such as inns and restaurants might provide a female slave as a kind of business appreciation for customers. Anyhow, educated slaves also work for the government, and many are in-fact standard bureaucrats who report to their masters who happen to be supervisors and so forth.


Again, the entire system is not fully fleshed, since Keintapa isn't really my focus conculture, and it's sort of meant to be slightly over the top in a way.

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I now have a blog. Witness the horror.

I think I think, therefore I think I am.
- Ambrose Bierce

I thought shagging kids GAVE adults energy...

[/south park]

The Amjati have slavery and it is tied to their caste system.

Ozjumi is the caste of the slaves. Those born into it will remain slaves their whole lives. They are often tattooed with a unique name by their owner in childhood. This name is recorded with the owners in a registry. When a slave dies or is sold, the registry must be updated. Ozjumi are not allowed to marry.

Aleni is the caste of the worker or artist. Any worker of this caste may enter into servitude to a person of a higher caste. They can hold ozjumi as slaves themselves. Captured slaves are considered to be Aleni even if they are normally slaves for the rest of their lives.

The higher castes Korsal (Merchants), Eljeki (Gentry) and Vrekal (Nobility) can have both Aleni and Ozjumi. It is common for Eljeki and Vrekal to take secondary wives the lower castes, but not Ozjumi. Children from these marriages belong to the lowest caste between the parents.

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Ikasmu ati'uki nai uraiur.
Hinai nimuśim naimi nai sasamiur urukani. Śi'ama nai huhumiur na ni'amuśim nai sasamiur.
Pumaki nimuśim śima'a na ami nimuśim ara'a. Hini nihrasum i'aku tumra urukani na nihrasum sanik hraspir.

Actually, that sparked of a thought I had some time ago:
In my conworld sáza, mathematics is considered something not worth your time. First of all the godlike dathákh can do it way better than any normal human will ever be able to (at least this is how they think) and on the other hand currency and monetary trades are seen as greedy and vicious, similar in old Japan. Therefore, only people of the lowest social cast are concerned with numbers. That's why there was developed a deep "heretic" belief dealing with numbers and the prophecies drawn from them. Still, I haven't decided whether there exists slavery. Sorry for being a little off topic with that.

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I have a blog now. Read it.

Adpihi never had people born into slavery; nor any sizable class of people permanently enslaved.

Though they lost such industrial items as steam-engines and water-powered mills when they crashed on Adpihi, they always remembered that such things were possible, and always considered that machines and animals, or paid labor, were better ways to accomplish things, than forced labor.

When such technology couldn't be implemented, sometimes the best way to get some work done was with work-gangs of slaves. But mostly the slaves were owned by governments instead of by private people. Also, there were several economic arrangements by which a richer person could accept a poorer person's indentured service for a set period of time, in exchange for providing something the poorer person wanted. That's not, strictly speaking, slavery.

However, at some times and in some places, young adults mostly start out poor and without a large set of valuable marketable skills. In effect they are usually temporarily indentured until they've worked enough to pay off their training or to save up to buy their training.

There's also sometimes a corvee or labor-draft. Bunches of people, sometimes mostly from nearby and sometimes mostly from far away, may be called upon to, for instance, build or reinforce levees around rivers flooding or about to flood, or to find and properly handle the dead, injured, and otherwise distressed people and properties after a hurricane, or to reinforce city defenses when an attack of some kind is expected.

But mostly, in most times and in most places, slavery is only a punishment for a crime, and only governments can have slaves; people can't own people. Most of such slavery is more indentured servitude for a set and limited period of time, rather than actual slavery. Sometimes, though, some criminals are "indentured for life", i.e., enslaved.

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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.

In my conworld slavery exists, though it is not particularly prevalent. There are no laws against it, but for cultural reasons it is fairly rare.
However, there is in one important culture a high level of debt slavery. They are not considered slaves, but that is more of a semantic difference. These people are under debt bondage incurred by lenders, sometimes even for generations.
It would be like someone in our world saying, "I'm here about the car you have for sale. I have enough to pay half, the rest I am willing to work for."
The other person has of course the option to turn the offer down, if they don't think they'll get enough work out of them to be worth half the asking price of the car.

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It's not very nice, being eaten by a cow
-Curlyjimsam

I'll get into Orcish slavery soon! But yeah, they have slavery.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

The Bagamaji colonists often took Native Zelsen slaves during their occupation. Some stayed on the island with the colonists, and others were shipped back East where they might be sold to owners in the Bagamaji or Stchafe empire. Quite a number of Zelsen slaves oversea were educated by their owners, or even sent to local schools when there was time. In fact, one of these slaves was Skas, who after being freed sailed back to Zelse and later became the figurehead of the revolt that drove the colonists off the island and eventually helped form the Zelsen Empire (in name at least, the actual idea that it was one nation didn't come about until Empress Mokosh' and the construction of the Ich'kabazh' capital).

Zelsen slavery to the Bagamaji colonists is a major theme in Valais Etak's famous operetta "Kibuk'zha Ich'kabazh' Nova Na" (The Last Wild Kibuk' Of Old Ich'kabazh'), symbolized by the human-owned Kibuk'

Slavery has been mostly wiped out in modern countries, however it still exists all over Wadao and in a number of Pochtu-region areas (especially the North-Eastern Pochtu countries that had less influence from the larger powers during and just after the Great War)

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Zelsian (Khzayske)

The Zebadlu groups were often made up of exslaves, in particular, slaves of the gutians and sumerians. They were, towards the end, slaves of the akkadians and amorites, which is where they got their term for a slave, abde/abd-

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Know phrases in more languages than can fit in this signature.
Speaks English and Spanish.
Reads Sumerian.
There is more.

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.