Are most people descended from slaves?

Page 2 of 3 [ 38 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next

Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 477
Location: The Georgian Quarter of The Pool of Life, The Centre of The Creative Universe

01 Apr 2012, 1:18 pm

puddingmouse wrote:

Chipshorter wrote:

First off regarding the Industrial Revolution, mill-hands and other wage slaves were a bit more luckier than those in the workhouses.

Had an ancestor end up in there. I am totally ghetto.

I had two Irish ancestor die in workhouses, one in Walton workhouse (the site is now a hospital and prison) due to Cholera in 1832 (yes the Cholera Riots) and another in Brownlow Hill workhouse (it was the biggest workhouse in the country, famous due the Irish potato famine and for the feminist Josephine Butler and the nurse Agnes Jones, now the site is home to Liverpool University and the Catholic Cathedral). Well I never I learn something new today the offices of my city's AS team use to be a workhouse :lol:

My ancestors when they came over to Liverpool in the 18th and 19th centuries they started out in the Scotie Road area (Scotland Road for your wools), a Scouse "ghetto" like a pan of Socuse anything and everyone of all backgrounds lobbed in the same space.

Joker
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 19 Mar 2011
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 7,593
Location: North Carolina The Tar Heel State :)

01 Apr 2012, 1:26 pm

Most of my family tree started out as slaves

TM
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 3 Feb 2012
Age: 41
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,122

01 Apr 2012, 1:40 pm

ruveyn wrote:

There is no such think as a wage-slave. Anyone paid a wage is on the job because he chooses to be. He may not love the job and the pay may be poor, but the wage system is the antithesis of slavery. Any wage earner can quit the job. It may not be wise for him to do so, but it is POSSIBLE. Not so for the slave. The slave is property.

ruveyn

Unless you're a socialist in which case there is no option to quit the job. I disagree but then I'm not a socialist. However, on the other extreme you have people claiming that having to pay taxes is akin to being robbed, and I don't really disagree with the feeling but on a definition level I disagree.

webcam
Velociraptor

Joined: 8 Feb 2012
Age: 30
Gender: Male
Posts: 427

01 Apr 2012, 2:20 pm

Yes, seeing as their was a noble class who owned a larger lower class, yes, most people descend from slaves.

Joker
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 19 Mar 2011
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 7,593
Location: North Carolina The Tar Heel State :)

01 Apr 2012, 2:23 pm

I think some of my ancestores where slaves in the Roman Empire it was common for them to enslave anyone.

Chipshorter
Velociraptor

Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 477
Location: The Georgian Quarter of The Pool of Life, The Centre of The Creative Universe

01 Apr 2012, 5:31 pm

Cicero in De Officicus, did state that whoever gives his labour for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves.
Ok ruveyn you did pointed out about the concept of chattel slavery, were slaves are property. However there are two other main forms of slavery, bonded labour (debt bondage) and forced labour.

TM did you know that the labour practice of Corvée was a form of taxation.

puddingmouse
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 24 Apr 2010
Age: 38
Gender: Female
Posts: 8,777
Location: Cottonopolis

01 Apr 2012, 7:19 pm

CrazyCatLord wrote:

Btw, I tracked down the ridiculous newspaper article based on the equally ridiculous phone interview that Dawkins mentions on his blog:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... state.html

What a load of rubbish :roll:

The Royal family owned slaves for hundreds of years. And unlike Dawkins, they still live off their inherited wealth nowadays. If the author seeks to besmirch people based on the sins of their distant ancestors and demands apologies and reparations, why not start with the Queen Mum?

Isn't British journalism brilliant? :roll:

_________________
Zombies, zombies will tear us apart...again.

slave
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 28 Feb 2012
Age: 112
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,420
Location: Dystopia Planetia

01 Apr 2012, 7:36 pm

Chipshorter wrote:

First off regarding the Industrial Revolution, mill-hands and other wage slaves were a bit more luckier than those in the workhouses.
Am not discounting child labour, poor living and working conditions in that statement.

There is some irony with the following comments about slavery as am typing this on my computer in a listed (grade II) Georgian house (my home) in an neighbourhood of Liverpool city centre with historical links with the transatlantic slave trade, as the area use be the residency of many merchants in the Triangular trade. I think that economically and social-politically speaking we are all still slaves in this day of ages. We are all slaves via the ideologies of Taylorism, Fordism, Flexibilism (Post-Fordism) and Authoritarianism.

YES!! !! ! YES!! !! ! we are all descended from slaves and we are all slaves ourselves.

In the game of power our Masters are simply the best players in the game and thus they have enslaved the rest of us.

Shhhh!! !...I tell you a secret...many of the slaves actually believe they are free.

Slaves are the most productive when they think they are free.

Chipshorter
Velociraptor

Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 477
Location: The Georgian Quarter of The Pool of Life, The Centre of The Creative Universe

01 Apr 2012, 8:07 pm

slave wrote:

I was looking at the etymology of the word slavery it has connects with the Slavs....many be the question should be are most people descended from Slavs? :lol:

I already know that secret thanks, While reading Plato I figured out that control is used to give the illusion of freedom. I learn from Sartre that freedom is a paradox as ones own freedom is based on the freedom of others, and from Camus I learn that freedom is an absurd condition like Sisyphus and his boulder. :wink:

techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,593
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

01 Apr 2012, 8:17 pm

This topic reminds me of how a girl my friend dated mentioned having grand parents and great grandparents who were in West Virginia and essentially slaves to the coal mines because the money they were paid in was company money and not US dollars so it wouldn't transfer out. Its crazy how much gets lost in the mission to whitewash history.

_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.

Kraichgauer
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 49,241
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.

02 Apr 2012, 1:55 pm

Joker wrote:

My family tree is a descendent from slaves it all goes back to the roman empire where some germans where slaves.

While there were German slaves among the Romans, most of them lived and died inside Roman controlled lands. It is also equally true that the early Germans also owned slaves - though many of these would have fit better with the later Medieval definition of serfs. As Germanic society had consisted of a large number of free people, it's a good bet that you and I are doubtlessly descended from both free and slave.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 70
Gender: Male
Posts: 35,189
Location: temperate zone

02 Apr 2012, 5:37 pm

Chipshorter wrote:

slave wrote:

I was looking at the etymology of the word slavery it has connects with the Slavs....many be the question should be are most people descended from Slavs? :lol:

And I learned from Kierkergard that "Freedom's just another word for "nothing left to loose. Nothing aint worth nothing, but its free."

Or was that Kris Kristoferson?

Anyway- back in the Iron Age when the Parthenon had just been built, but the Pyramids were already over 2000 years old the young Greco Roman civilzation trafficed in human slaves from all over. But the Barbarians of Europe were the n****rs of that time and were good source of slaves. The tribes of eastern europe, though political fragmented, recognized an ethnic unity and called themselves 'Slavs" meaning "people of the word" because they spoke a common language. Which is why their modern descendants are still called "Slavs"( Russians, Serbians, Slovenes, Slovaks, etc) who still speak related tongues.

But the outsiders to the mediterranean south came to conflate "slav" as an ethnic label with the status of being owned - because so many slavs that they encountered were also that- and so many people of that status were also slavs. So "slav" became the word used by the greeks for "slave", and by way of Greek and Latin became the english word "slave".

enrico_dandolo
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 20 Nov 2011
Age: 35
Gender: Female
Posts: 866

03 Apr 2012, 12:14 am

naturalplastic wrote:

Or was that Kris Kristoferson?

Anyway- back in the Iron Age when the Parthenon had just been built, but the Pyramids were already over 2000 years old the young Greco Roman civilzation trafficed in human slaves from all over. But the Barbarians of Europe were the n****rs of that time and were good source of slaves. The tribes of eastern europe, though political fragmented, recognized an ethnic unity and called themselves 'Slavs" meaning "people of the word" because they spoke a common language. Which is why their modern descendants are still called "Slavs"( Russians, Serbians, Slovenes, Slovaks, etc) who still speak related tongues.

But the outsiders to the mediterranean south came to conflate "slav" as an ethnic label with the status of being owned - because so many slavs that they encountered were also that- and so many people of that status were also slavs. So "slav" became the word used by the greeks for "slave", and by way of Greek and Latin became the english word "slave".

I don't know where you take that from, but it is very wrong.

1. I don't know about Ancient Greek, but the Latin word for "slave" was servus (hence "serf" and "service").
2. The Romans and Greeks had no Slav slaves, not least because they did not know them (well, they did, but only after the end of the Western Roman Empire). The word "slave" comes rather from the medieval Black Sea slave trade. I don't have start and end dates, but it had started in the 10th century, and it was still going on in the 15th. It caused major issues when the Slavs converted to Christianity -- though I guess Islam was starting to spread too, so the Genoese and Venitians probably just took some Muslims along.

Atlantic slavery gives slavery a bad name. It was certainly the most brutal form of slavery of all, even before racism kicked in, but in the Mediterranean and in Europe generally, it was much more human. In Rome, it was relatively decent. It was actually bad form to kill your slave. Being freed was a plausible eventuality, at least for urban slaves, and there was no discrimination towards sons of freed slave. Also, slaves were more of a side effect of wars in Mediterranean slavery, not an organized, large scale, purpose-built operation like in the Atlantic system. Of course, slavery is probably not a good economic system overall, but there is a huge difference between the inequity of Mediterranean slavery and the utter inhumanity of the American version, especially after it started to be ideological.

naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 70
Gender: Male
Posts: 35,189
Location: temperate zone

03 Apr 2012, 12:35 am

enrico_dandolo wrote:

naturalplastic wrote:

I pieced that together from incomplete stuff.

What you're saying makes more sense.

The derivation of "slave" from "slav" probably came from the later Byzantine era when greek colonists settled the north rim of the Black Sea and controled the trade coming out of what is now russia but was then just a wild area full of barbarian tribes.And then there is that troublesome rule - you cant make a fellow christian into a slave. The Slavic tribes of russian eventually converted to the Byzantine Greek form of Christianity and adopted the Greek alphabet.

Like you said - slavery was not quite as brutal in the ancient world. Slaves had property rights and many themselves owned slaves.

Kraichgauer
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 49,241
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.

03 Apr 2012, 12:37 am

naturalplastic wrote:

enrico_dandolo wrote:

naturalplastic wrote:

I could be wrong, but I think the Germans and Scandinavians had used the word slave as derived from Slav during the Middle Ages.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Chipshorter
Velociraptor

Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 477
Location: The Georgian Quarter of The Pool of Life, The Centre of The Creative Universe

03 Apr 2012, 7:25 am

naturalplastic wrote:

The derivation of "slave" from "slav" probably came from the later Byzantine era when greek colonists settled the north rim of the Black Sea and controled the trade coming out of what is now russia but was then just a wild area full of barbarian tribes.And then there is that troublesome rule - you cant make a fellow christian into a slave. The Slavic tribes of russian eventually converted to the Byzantine Greek form of Christianity and adopted the Greek alphabet.

Yes, that is correct. The word slave is derived from the old French word sclave from the Medieval Latin sclavus and from the Byzantine Greek word for Slav σκλάβος. The Latin word servus has its roots in the Etruscan language.

Its interesting the Slavic words for slave are the etymological roots for the word robot. Also the Old English word for slave wealh had the original meaning for Celt, is the origin of the word Welsh.

Page 2 of 3 [ 38 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next

Jump to:

Are most people descended from slaves? Post Reply New Topic

Are most people descended from slaves?