The rather complex concept of human slavery

These days, we are all taught to see human slavery as a great evil, perhaps the greatest of evils, certainly right up there. However, historically, the concept of slavery has certainly always had its ups and downs in terms of its social acceptability. Slavery is probably an invention of human civilization, one of its earlier inventions. Social hierarchy is inevitable in large, complex societies, there is unequal distribution of resources, because there is unequal distribution of ability. Some people will be more capable than others and so, ideally anyway, they will be rewarded more resources to work with to benefit society with. At the bottom of the social hierarchy were the slaves, often a great many of them, to serve those with more "ability" to control resources usefully for society, as a whole. In theory, anyway. Of course, historically, there have always been degrees of slavery. Indentured servitude, serfdom, forced prison labor, even marriage up to a point. Society controls people, one way or another. Wage-slavery is a somewhat ironic term, but, there is certainly something to be said for the concept. Historically, slavery has been the traditional role of anyone who was totally destitute. The idea being, with no resources, you would have no way to survive in society. Why not simply become a hunter gatherer again, like our ancient ancestors? Firstly, most people no longer had the skills ot survive as a hunter gatherer. Secondly, the world was too crowded with people now to support hunter gathering for all, or most, or even many human beings. Slavery in the old American south was something rather unique. Americans were well aware that slavery was becoming very unpopular worldwide, and that slavery was rather inefficient in terms of generating an efficient industrial economy. So, southern states made sure no more than one third of the population was black. They knew that, otherwise, a successful insurrection was very likely indeed, and the whites might not survive it. In Haiti in the 1790's, black slaves outnumbered the 40,000 white colonists and soldiers ten to one. A successful rebellion wiped out the entire white population, to the last man, woman and child. Basically, the days of black slavery were coming to an end it was no longer practical. Black slavery itself was a rather odd phenomenon, probably caused by the congruence of a number of different factors -- the racial visibility of black people in Caucasian nations, the discovery of a great, unpopulated New Rorld, and the presence of slavery in various forms in some African nations. So, Europeans could import a pretrained underclass from Africa, use them to do all the labor needed in this huge underpopulated hemisphere, and hold them by their appearance alone. Great deal! Actually, slavery had largely disappeared in Europe by this time, because of its inefficiency and church objections, but, the New World created a new incentive! #history #sociology #economics