The protocol was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 and entered into force on 25 December 2003. As of November 2022, it has been ratified by 180 parties.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) is responsible for implementing the protocol. It offers
practical help to states with drafting laws, creating comprehensive
national anti-trafficking strategies, and assisting with resources to
implement them. In March 2009, UNODC launched the Blue Heart Campaign to fight human trafficking, to raise awareness, and to encourage involvement and inspire action.
The protocol commits ratifying states to prevent and combat
trafficking in persons, protecting and assisting victims of trafficking
and promoting cooperation among states in order to meet those
objectives.
Content of the protocol
The protocol covers the following:
Defining the crime of trafficking in human beings;
To be considered trafficking in persons, a situation must meet three
conditions: act (i.e., recruitment), means (i.e., through the use of
force or deception) and purpose (i.e., for the purpose of forced labour)
"Trafficking in persons" shall mean the recruitment,
transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of
the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of
fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of
vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to
achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for
the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum,
the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual
exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to
slavery, servitude or the removal of organs... The consent of a victim
of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth [above]
shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth [above] have been
used.
Facilitating the return and acceptance of children who have been
victims of cross-border trafficking, with due regard to their safety
Suspending parental rights of parents, caregivers, or any other
persons who have parental rights in respect of a child should they be
found to have trafficked a child
Ensuring that definitions of trafficking reflect the need for
special safeguards and care for children, including appropriate legal
protection
Ensuring that trafficked persons are not punished for any offences
or activities related to their having been trafficked, such as
prostitution and immigration violations
Ensuring that victims of trafficking are protected from deportation
or return where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that such return
would represent a significant security risk to the trafficked person or
their family
Considering temporary or permanent residence in countries of transit
or destination for trafficking victims in exchange for testimony
against alleged traffickers, or on humanitarian and compassionate
grounds
Providing for proportional criminal penalties to be applied to
persons found guilty of trafficking in aggravating circumstances,
including offences involving trafficking in children or offences
committed or involving complicity by state officials
Providing for the confiscation of the instruments and proceeds of
trafficking and related offences to be used for the benefit of
trafficked persons
The convention and the protocol obligate ratifying states to introduce national trafficking legislation.
Regional action against trafficking in human beings
In Warsaw on 16 May 2005, the Council of EuropeConvention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings
was opened for accession. The convention established a Group of Experts
on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) which monitors
the implementation of the convention through country reports. It has
been ratified (as of January 2016) by 45 European states, while a
further one state (Turkey) has signed but not yet ratified it.
Vietnam under Chinese rule or Bắc thuộc (北屬, lit. "belonging to the north")
(111 BC–939, 1407–1428) refers to four historical periods when several
portions of modern-day Northern Vietnam was under the rule of various Chinese dynasties. Bắc thuộc in Vietnamese historiography is traditionally considered to have started in 111 BC, when the Han dynasty conquered Nanyue (Vietnamese "Nam Việt") and lasted until 939, when the Ngô dynasty was founded. A fourth, relatively brief, 20-year rule by the Ming dynasty
during the 15th century is usually excluded by historians in their
discussion of the main, almost continuous, period of Chinese rule from
111 BC to 939 AD. Historians such as Keith W. Taylor,
Catherine Churchman, and Jaymin Kim assert that these periods and
stereotypes enveloped the narrative as modern constructs, however, and
critique them as tools for various nationalist and irredentist causes in
China, Vietnam,
and other countries. Museums in Vietnam often completely omit periods
of Chinese rule, skipping over large periods of its own history.
Geographical extent and impact
The
four periods of Chinese rule did not correspond to the modern borders
of Vietnam, but were mainly limited to the area around the Red River Delta
and adjacent areas. During the first three periods of Chinese rule, the
pre-Sinitic indigenous culture was centered in the northern part of
modern Vietnam, in the alluvial deltas of the Hong, Cả and Mã Rivers.Ten centuries of Chinese rule left a substantial genetic footprint, with settlement by large numbers of ethnic Han, while opening up Vietnam for trade and cultural exchange.
Elements of Chinese culture
such as language, religion, art, and way of life constituted an
important component of traditional Vietnamese culture until modernity.
This cultural affiliation with China remained true even when Vietnam was
militarily defending itself against attempted invasions, such as
against the Yuan dynasty. Chinese characters remained the official script of Vietnam until French colonization in the 20th century, despite the rise in vernacular chữ Nôm literature in the aftermath of the expulsion of the Ming.
Historiography
French historiography
History
of Vietnam being invaded and ruled by China rule has had substantial
influence from French colonial scholarship and Vietnamese postcolonial
national history writing. During the 19th century, the French promoted
the view that Vietnam had little of its own culture and borrowed it
almost entirely from China. They did this to justify European colonial
rule in Vietnam. By portraying the Vietnamese as merely borrowers of
civilization, the French situated themselves in a historical paradigm of
bringing civilization to a backwards region of the world. French
scholar Leonard Aurousseau argued that not only did Vietnam borrow
culturally and politically from China, the population of Vietnam was
also directly the result of migration from the state of Yue
in China. This line of thought was followed by Joseph Buttinger, who
authored the first English language history book on Vietnamese history.
He believed that to fight off the Chinese, the Vietnamese had to become
like the Chinese.
Vietnamese national historiography
Another
narrative, the national school of Vietnamese history, portrays the
period in "a militant, nationalistic, and very contemporary vision
through which emerged a hypothetical substratum of an original Vietnam
that was miraculously preserved throughout a millennium of the Chinese
presence."
The national Vietnamese narrative depicts the Chinese as a corrupt and
profit-driven people and merely the first of the foreign colonizing
empires that were eventually driven from Vietnam. According to Catherine
Churchman, this is not an entirely new historical tradition but a
rewriting or updating of it, and has roots in Dai Viet, which portrayed itself as the Southern Empire equal to the Northern Empire (China). Dai Viet literati of the Trần and Lê dynasties sought an ancient origin for their autonomy prior to Chinese rule and traced their genealogy to Triệu Đà or the semi-legendary Hồng Bàng dynasty.
They recorded that the Northern Empire suffered defeat for not
respecting these views. However, scholars such as Nhi Hoang Thuc Nguyen
argue that "the trope of a small country consistently repelling the
China’s cultural force is a recent, postcolonial, mid-20th-century
construction".
Works by Japanese scholars in the 1970s as well as in the English
language in the 1980s have taken on elements of the national school.
Katakura Minoru's Chūgoku shihaika no betonamu emphasizes the innate characteristics of the Vietnamese people. Keith Taylor's The Birth of Vietnam (1983) asserts a strong continuity from the semi-legendary kingdoms of the Red River Plain
to the founding of Dai Viet, which was the result of a thousand-year
struggle against the Chinese that culminated in the restoration of
Vietnamese sovereignty. Jennifer Holmgren's The Chinese Colonisation of Northern Vietnam uses Sinicization and Vietnamization
as terms to refer to political and cultural change in different
directions. Works following the national school of Vietnamese history
retroactively assign Vietnamese group consciousness to past periods (Han-Tang
era) based on evidence in later eras. The national school of Vietnamese
history has remained practically unchanged since the 1980s and has
become the national orthodoxy.
Anachronisms
The
argument for an intrinsic, intractable, and distinctly Southeast Asian
Vietnamese identity in the Red River Plain throughout history has been
categorized by Catherine Churchman as context, cultural continuity, and resistance. Context
refers to the downplaying of similarities between Vietnam and China
while emphasizing Vietnam's Southeast Asian identity in the postcolonial
period. Cultural continuity refers to an intrinsic Vietnamese "cultural core" that has always existed in the Red River Plain since time immemorial. Resistance
refers to the national struggle of the Vietnamese people against
foreign aggressors. Proponents of this historical narrative, such as
Nguyen Khac Vien, characterize the history of Vietnam under Chinese rule
as a "steadfast popular resistance marked by armed insurrections
against foreign domination", while opponents such as Churchman note the
lack of evidence, anachronisms, linguistic problems, adherence to
Chinese political and cultural norms, and similarities as well as
differences with other peoples under Chinese rule.
The Vietnamese national narrative has introduced anachronisms in
order to prove a unified Vietnamese national consciousness. The word
Viet/Yue is often used to refer to an ethnic group when it had various
meanings throughout history. There was no terminology to describe a
Chinese-Vietnamese dichotomy during the Han-Tang period nor was there a
term to describe a cohesive group inhabiting the area between the Pearl River and the Red River. During the Tang period, the indigenous people of Annan or Jinghai Circuit were referred to as the Wild Man (Wild Barbarians), the Li, or the Annamese (Annan people).
In addition, the national history tends to have a narrow view limited
to modern national boundaries, leading to conclusions of exceptionalism.
Although it is true that the political situation in the Red River Plain
was less stable than in Guangzhou to the north, such circumstances were
not restricted to the area. The Vietnamese national narrative
retroactively assigns any local rebellions, the rise of local dynasties,
and their local autonomy with the motive of seeking national
independence.
These early moves toward autonomy in the 10th century were fairly tame
compared to the activities of people who cushioned them from more direct
contact with Southern dynasties empires.
Previously orthodox views in Vietnamese history were changed to fit a modern nationalist ideology. The rulers of Nam Việt (Nanyue), referred to as the Triệu dynasty
(Zhao dynasty), were reclassified as foreigners in modern Vietnamese
historiography. While traditional Vietnamese historiography considered
the Triệu dynasty to be an orthodox regime, modern Vietnamese scholars
generally regard it as a foreign dynasty that ruled Vietnam. The oldest
text compiled by a Vietnamese court, the 13th century Đại Việt sử ký, considered Nanyue to be the official starting point of their history. According to the Đại Việt sử ký, Zhao Tuo established the foundation of Đại Việt. However, later historians in the 18th century started questioning this view. Ngô Thì Sĩ argued that Zhao Tuo
was a foreign invader and Nanyue a foreign dynasty that should not be
included in Vietnamese history. This view became the mainstream among
Vietnamese historians in North Vietnam
and later became the state orthodoxy after reunification. Nanyue was
removed from the national history while Zhao Tuo was recast as a foreign
invader.
Language has also been used as evidence for a distinct Vietnamese
identity in the Han-Tang period. However, some research points to the
formation of a Vietnamese language only afterward as the result of a
creolization and language shift involving Middle Chinese.
Fortunata, slave of a slave of a slave. Contract for her purchase, Roman London, c. 90 AD, dug up at No 1 Poultry in 1994, as deciphered by Roger Tomlin.
In some human societies there were slaves who owned slaves. Although details varied, there were two broad cases: peculium slavery, and elite political slavery.
A peculium was a slave's informal property, and is best known from ancient Rome.
In strict law, slaves could own nothing. Yet in everyday Roman life a
large volume of business was transacted by slaves: it suited their
owners, who made money from it. Thus an astute slave could save and
might grow quite rich, buying one or more slaves of his own. His slaves
might to do the same: thus there could be slaves of slaves of slaves.
The head slave, unless liberated, remained a slave in every respect: his
owner could examine him under torture for suspected embezzlement. The peculium
concept is found in many other cultures; for example Jewish law had
something similar, including slaves of slaves. So did slave-era Brazil,
where slaves — quite often, women — could acquire slaves of their own,
and use them to pay for their freedom. It seems the practice evolved
amongst the slaves themselves. Peculium slavery, with
slave-owning slaves, has been found in other parts of the world,
including Africa and China, and there were cases, though few, in North
America.
In some polities
rulers preferred to appoint slaves as government officials since they
could control them better. In its most developed form, the slave had
been separated from his parents while young — in some cases, castrated
— and brought up in the royal household, knowing no other loyalty.
Accordingly, talented slaves were gradually promoted to positions of
great trust, including military command, management of palace affairs,
and sometimes high political office. Hence some powerful slaves had
slaves of their own. Nevertheless, unless the ruler chose to set him at
liberty, the elite slave remained a slave, and could be degraded or
killed at whim. Societies of this kind existed in the Islamic world
including the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India
and large parts of West Africa; elite harem slaves were a parallel
case. Imperial Rome itself had a similar institution, in which slaves
of the emperor were senior civil servants, owning slaves of their own
who handled public funds. Early modern Russia likewise had elite slaves
who owned slaves, as did imperial China. Being owned by an enslaved
person by no means guaranteed compassionate treatment.
Introduction
The Chief Black Eunuch, slave, but a powerful man in the Ottoman Empire (1912 postcard)
That slaves acquired slaves of their own may seem surprising to
Westerners. But their understanding of slavery has been dominated by a stereotype drawn from the plantation economy of the Americas, which was not typical of all times and places.
In his ground-breaking comparative study Slavery and Social Death (1982), Jamaican scholar Orlando Patterson wrote:
The servus vicarius
(slave of a slave) was a universal occurrence. I know of no slave
society in which slaves who could afford them were denied the purchase
of other slaves.
Patterson did not undertake to prove his claim systematically since it
was not central to his book. This article has been compiled from a
diversity of secondary sources;
they seem to show that slave-owning slaves can indeed be found in many
eras and cultures, though not universally (and though eventually
forbidden in Russia).
Historical sources for scholars
Most
slaves are completely forgotten. A given person could be the slave of a
slave without it leaving a trace. For example, classical Chinese
historians — thorough and painstaking — did not conceive it was part
of their duty to record the doings of low persons; when they mention
slavery, it is by chance. Slavery is far better known to us from Roman sources, and this for an unusual combination of circumstances.
First, though Roman slaves had no rights themselves their doings
were continually affecting those who did. It immensely complicated
Roman law. Roman jurists wrote about it abundantly; "there are few branches of the law in which the slave does not prominently appear". Many fragments of their writings have been preserved.
Two skilled ex-slaves
acknowledge their master for setting them free (British Museum).
Public inscriptions like this were expected and are an important source
for scholars.
Secondly, there was a peculiar funeral custom. Roman slaves, after years of labour for their owners, were fairly often manumitted
(liberated). They were expected to be grateful, and show it, by
leaving a suitable funerary inscription, with biographical details.
Freed slaves were glad to go along with the custom since it showed their
family had gone up in the world. Paradoxically, while ordinary free plebeians
ended up packed into unmarked graves (“a uniform mass of black, viscid,
pestilential, unctious matter”), ex-slaves commemorated themselves in
marble or other durable substances. Three-quarters of funerary inscriptions in Rome concern former slaves.
An astonishing number of these public inscriptions have survived; (and see below). Since 1853 German scholars have been recording every one of them (the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, or CIL). They have been placed online.
Then there are archaeological finds in all parts of the empire.
Piecing these bits of information together scholars can learn that, for
example, Fortunata, a slave girl in first-century London, was bought for
a handsome sum by one Vegetus, a civil servant who was himself an
official slave of Montanus, an important slave of the Roman emperor
himself (title image, and below).
It seems that no other pre-modern society has such a density of
detail survived. For the others, it is by chance that the records
mention slaves, still less slaves of slaves. On the other hand, in the
Islamic world some slaves became famous. In India, the slave of a slave
became a king.
Definitions
What is a "slave" is endlessly debated, but is a matter of definition. In this article information is supplied in each pertinent section for the reader to judge.
The expression "slave of a slave" has also been used as a metaphor e.g. for a downtrodden way of life,or as a form of Oriental politeness (akin to English "your humble servant").
As part of an upwardly mobile slave's private fortune
Although the slave's peculium
is best known from ancient Rome, the concept that even a slave could
gradually acquire property, including slaves of his/her own, occurs
spontaneously in other societies. For example, in Brazil and West
Africa it seems that it was evolved by the slaves themselves, often as
an emancipation strategy, rarely being mentioned by the elite.
Rome
Contradiction
Rich ex-slaves arriving at their colleague Trimalchio's extravagant banquet (drawing by Norman Lindsay)
The legal status of slaves was abysmal and they could be treated with
great cruelty (see next section). Yet it was a standing joke in Rome
that some managed to buy their freedom and retire as rich men. There was even a law that said what was supposed to happen if an ex-slave died worth more than 100,000 sesterces.
Some retired slaves bought their way into the upper ranks of society;
it has been estimated that "about one fifth of the local aristocracy of
Italy was descended from slaves". Since slaves were not supposed to be capable of owning property at all, the seeming contradiction should now be explained.
Status
In traditional Roman law (ius civile) slaves were not persons: they were things. They could not own property, contract a valid marriage, sue or be sued in a court of law nor give evidence (except under torture). In criminal cases (except high treason) slaves could not testify against their owners at all.
Slaves could be sold, sexually abused or accidentally beaten to death with impunity, or exposed to die when too old and worn out to serve. According to Jennifer Glancy,
An inscription from Puteoli details the job description of a manceps, a public official whose duties included torturing and even executing slaves on demand. Private citizens could hire the manceps to conduct the desired torture of their slaves; the manceps would supply the necessary equipment.
Ordinary human decency, or enlightened self-interest, might well produce humane treatment; but there were practically no effective laws to enforce it.
If there were laws that said a master must not deliberately kill or
disable his own slave without cause, it was not out of pity for the
slave: what was objected to was the wanton damage to heritable property.
In the Eastern Roman Empire
under Christian emperors conditions improved in some respects; for
example, slaves were forbidden to be forcibly prostituted, though they
remained open to abuse and exploitation.
Slaves as business administrators
Large numbers of slaves were employed in a vast array of economic activities, including managing a business.
Marble bust, thought to be of Cato the Elder, who multiplied his fortune by employing slave businessmen
In Rome it was unseemly for the upper classes of society to engage in commerce.
Yet some had large fortunes they meant to increase. Accordingly, they
invested in agriculture and, as they acquired more farms, put in
confidential slaves to manage them; or they invested in town houses and
employed slaves as rent-collectors and property managers, or even set up
slave physicians or theatrical performers. "In Rome, clerks, accountants, commercial agents, teachers, doctors, rhetoricians, and even superintendents, were predominantly slaves". Still other slaves were put to manage shops or factories, or supervise a moneylending business. "Slaves travelled to Africa or Gaul to collect debts, buy things, or run businesses".
"As a general rule, supervision of the master's holdings was entrusted
to an entire hierarchy of financial agents working in both city and
country, who carried out the wishes of their dominus and whom we know from inscriptions".
If a master suspected his slaves were cheating him, he had the
right to interrogate them under torture; he did not need a court order.
Hence rich men increasingly relied on slaves to administer their
affairs: "slaves even became the absolute rule when it came to the
administration of money". It has been pointed out that most of the unjust servants mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew
were managerial slaves of this class; the author takes it for granted
they will be tortured with "weeping and gnashing of teeth". Yvon Thébert
thought that, nevertheless, there were some free men (not many) who
deliberately sold themselves into slavery in order to get lucrative jobs
as business managers.
An American economist could not believe managers were appointed from
the enslaved classes and argued that they must have been free men who
had volunteered for slave status.
A slave who was good at business management was much more
valuable; hence some bright slave children were educated as skilled
administrators, being taught to keep accounts and so forth.
There were slaves who were allowed to go into business for themselves,
see next section, the master getting a cut of the profits.
In this way masters indirectly benefited from activities which they
could not, or would not, perform themselves. For example, Cato the Elder, being a senator, was legally forbidden to be a shipowner, so he appointed confidential slaves to do it for him, making a lot of money that way. According to the historian Plutarch, Cato
used
to lend money also to those of his slaves who wished it, and they would
buy boys with it, and after training and teaching them for a year, at
Cato’s expense, would sell them again. Many of these boys Cato would
retain for himself, reckoning to the credit of the slave the highest
price bid for his boy.
He ran a paid brothel for his slaves; they were strictly forbidden to go elsewhere, wrote Plutarch.
Slaves' informal property: the peculium
Freed slaves commemorate legitimate Roman marriage. This touching inscription ("He took me into his care at the age of seven.") hints she was originally part of his peculium. (British Museum.)
Already in the Roman Republic slaves were allowed to earn a peculium, which at first was just an informal fund, like a child's allowance.
Probably slaves had been 'buying' and 'selling' things informally long
before the law had to grapple with the anomaly: they could own nothing,
so how could they buy?
A peculium was whatever surplus a master allowed his slave
to accumulate on the side, and could be inferred from his keeping a
separate account with his master's permission. The fund could consist
of any kind of wealth, including sub-slaves, who were called servi vicarii. (The head slave was called servus ordinarius.)
Masters believed that slaves, if allowed a peculium, would work harder. Also, slaves might be allowed to purchase their freedom one day; and those with large peculia could afford to pay more. Still further, and as noted, some masters allowed their slaves to go
into business on their own, taking a share of the proceeds. A 2nd
century text mentions venaliciarii: slaves who were in the business of buying and selling enslaved persons as merchandise. But a slave was less likely to work hard and take business risks in order to increase his peculium,
if he thought his master might confiscate it. Masters could see this.
Accordingly, in order to uphold their mutual expectations the peculium
must become more than an informal concession, it must harden into
something like a legal right. Yet slaves had no rights. To reconcile
the contradiction was part of the subtlety of Roman law.
The peculium recognised in praetorial law
The Forum, Rome
The starting point was that a master who allowed his slave to go into business for himself was not liable for his slave's debts.
So the slave's creditors had no recourse against the master. But
since they could not sue the slave for non-payment either (for he was a
non-person) this was deeply unattractive to third parties and
discouraged commerce. The law had to be practical. Accordingly, the praetor evolved new legal remedies. One of these, called the actio de peculio, allowed creditors to sue the master himself, but only up to the value of the slave's peculium. Therefore, although there was nothing resembling modern company law in Rome, a similar advantage — trading with limited liability — could be achieved by using a slave to do the trading.
It was possible for the slave to be owned jointly by a group of
investors, making him even more like a modern corporate vehicle.
No
wonder, therefore, that many Roman business enterprises — banks,
factories, shops and even schools — were run by slaves acting as
grantees of a peculium.
Be that as it may, the law had now formally recognised the existence of the slave's peculium. It has been said that the law created a fictitious person with legal identity: not the slave himself, but his peculium, which took on a life of its own. Nevertheless, the peculium was attached to the slave. That said, little more than a condensed version of Roman legal literature has survived, and the law of peculium is imperfectly understood.
What sort of master would allow his slave a large peculium
— thus exposing himself to large liability? "Probably only a man of
means, used to dealing with well-tested, trustworthy servants, and
looking for business opportunities allowing for little — if any —
supervision": men like Cato.
Managerial slaves were often manumitted at the end of their careers, perhaps aged 30–40, and were expected to show gratitude to their patrons (obsequium) e.g. by naming them in their funerary inscriptions. Typically the freedmen in these inscriptions — a "staggering" 27,000 have been found — have Greek names. Most slaves in urban Rome originated from the Greek East, and were relatively well educated. Their fate was very different from the slaves who laboured in the Roman latifundia or mines. Those "would rather be dead than alive", wrote Diodorus Siculus. Even so, some managerial slaves were never freed. Freed slaves continued to owe certain financial obligations to their ex-owners.
It seems that masters and promising slaves took to making
bargains. They agreed how much the slave would have to pay to be freed,
and the slave proceeded to accumulate his peculium accordingly.
Any surplus would represent the slave's retirement fund. The Romans
made a business out of the granting of freedom. But since in law the peculium belonged to the master anyway, theoretically there was nothing to stop him from confiscating the peculium and refusing to liberate the slave.
In reality, though, such a breach of faith would be deeply damaging to
the master's financial credit, since it was to his interest that his
slaves' peculia were known to be scrupulously honoured. Apparently, there is no record of such a confiscation. According to Tacitus an outraged slave killed his owner when he refused to free him at the agreed price. It was safer, and anyway morally approved in this society, to keep one's word.
Sub-slaves as part of a slave's peculium
As noted, slaves could themselves acquire slaves (servi vicarii), who might conceivably be put out to trade and earn a peculium of their own, perhaps acquiring sub-sub-slaves. According to Richard Gamauf, it could go this far:
Almost like in a pyramid scheme, he describes slaves with peculia
as 'talent-scouts' looking to recruit promising subordinates; suitably
trained, they will go out and recruit others. Subordinates look forward
to promotion, which comes when a manumission creates a vacancy at the
top of the chain. At the 'apex' stands the master.
It
was to him that profits from all of the slaves and under-slaves were
ultimately funnelled. He needed to know neither how many slaves he
actually owned, nor how the members of his familia servorum
operated at any given moment. He had no need to ensure, personally, the
productivity of slaves (to him probably anonymous) in lower positions or
on far-away estates. The servi ordinarii at each level took care of this.
The future Pope Callixtus I
started as a sub-sub-slave. While young, he was given a sum of money
by his enslaved owner and told to "bring him profits from banking
deals", which he did. He became Pope in 217 CE.
To be owned by an enslaved person by no means guaranteed kind
treatment. "Pomponius, a second-century jurist, mentions a slave who
prostituted the ancillae (women-servants) who were part of his peculium".
In 1994 there was dug up in the City of London the remains of a Roman writing tablet. It proved to contain a fragment of a legal contract for the sale of a Gaulish girl called Fortunata. The buyer, who could afford to pay 600 denarii
— two years' salary for a Roman soldier — was not only a slave himself,
but was owned by another slave belonging to the Roman emperor, probably
Domitian or Trajan. The vendor warranted that she was healthy and not "liable to wander or run away". The contract was dated to about AD 81–96.
The Swiss scholar Erman wrote a book called Servus Vicarius: L'Esclave de L'Esclave Romain (The Roman Slave's Slave) (Lausanne, 1896), still the only monograph on the subject. He thought a similar institution existed amongst the Egyptians, the Persians and the Greeks.
Jewish law
According to Talmud scholar Boaz Cohen, Jewish law had a concept somewhat similar to Roman peculium, called segullah. Thus the slave Ziba of King Saul owned 20 sub-slaves (2 Samuel 19:17). In ancient Hebrew society a slave counted in some respects as a member of the family. When Jerome came to translate the Hebrew Bible into the Latin Vulgate he rendered the word segullah as peculium, probably on the advice of Jewish scholars.
Brazil
Punishment (Jean Baptiste Debret, "Shoemaker's Shop", Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Brésil.) Incentivisation got better results, however.
Brazil abolished slavery in 1888; in the accompanying euphoria, many slave records were destroyed.
It is only fairly recently that scholars have begun to recover the
surviving documents. In the slave era, if an owner voluntarily
liberated a slave there was a document to prove it, called a letter of
manumission. Newly freed people took good care to file these in public
registries, and they are now crucial historical sources. They have been
investigated most for the state of Bahia, one of the major slaveholding regions of the Americas.
In Brazil it was "not rare" for slaves to own slaves as part of an informal peculium. Reis found 507 slave-owning slaves in early 19th century Salvador, the provincial capital, and suggested the real number was at least twice as high. However, the institution was not inherited from Roman law nor was it mentioned in Brazil's vague and anachronistic slave laws. It was a custom that had evolved independently, seemingly amongst the slaves themselves, though they considered it specially demeaning to be the slave of a slave.
CERTIFICATE.
"I solemnly baptise with the Holy ChrismJoaquim, a Nagô man, apparently 22 years old, slave of Benedicto, a Hausa
man, himself a slave of Dona Ponciana Isabel de Freitas, white, widow,
domiciled in Cais da Loiça; the godfather is Domingos Lopes de Oliveira,
a
Benguela man, ex-slave, single, domiciled in the parish of Santo Antonio Além do Campo. — 26 January 1817."
In this society investing in enslaved persons was the main road to
prosperity and prestige, and negotiation — albeit between highly unequal
beings — was a favoured strategy, more effective than beating, though
that too was employed, quite often.
Slaves who owned sub-slaves used various tactics to achieve
recognition for their property. One method was to have their sub-slaves
baptised. It was a pious Catholic custom for white owners to take
their slaves to church to be baptised, and when this was done the priest
would issue a certificate. Slave-owning slaves did the same, relying
on the certificate as informal proof of ownership.
How sub-slavery was enforced e.g. if a slave's slave refused to obey her, or tried to run away, research has not yet revealed.
City of Salvador
Colonial Salvador, hub of one of the world's major slaveholding regions
Nishida studied 3,516 letters of manumission registered at Salvador
between 1808 and 1884. In this port city whites were in a minority,
being perhaps 30% of the population.
Of the slaves, although most had been born in Brazil, many had been
born in Africa. The Africans were not a homogenous people; they
associated according to their various African ethnicities. Thus each nação (nation, ethnic group) met at its favourite street corner, conversed in its own language and had a mutual aid association.
In Salvador, slaves were often exploited in the hiring out system:
Wage-earning slaves called escravos de ganho
were hired out on either a full-time or part-time basis. They were
obliged to return to their owners a mutually agreed portion of their
daily or weekly wages. Some even lived outside their owners' houses. The
most visible examples of escravos de ganho were peddlers of both sexes, male porters working in gangs, male artisans, and female market-stall keepers called quitandeiras.
The city also permitted domestic slaves to hire themselves out as
peddlers or prostitutes at night and on Sundays and holidays.
Slave entrepreneurs
Gang of street porters for hire
Women food vendors
Aspiration
(Jean-Baptiste Debret, Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Brésil: New York Public Library)
From their earnings enterprising slaves saved up to buy their freedom.
Most paid cash, but Nishida found 35 cases of self-purchase through
slave substitution. For example, Francisco, an African-born Nagô slave, paid for his freedom by substituting his slave Joǎo, another Nagô man.
It has been noticed that freedperson and substitute-slave in this era tended to belong to the same nação. The reason was that the cheapest slaves to buy were negros novos (newly arrived Africans), since they neither spoke Portuguese nor were acculturated to the slave society in any way; they had to be broken in.
Slaves purchased sub-slaves from the same language group. "With the
owner's consent, a slave purchased the substitute, acculturated and
trained the newcomer in special occupational skills, and finally 'traded
in' the substitute for the slave's own freedom".
Owners willingly accepted these trade-ins. In place of an ageing slave, they got a young one.
One shopkeeper agreed to liberate his slave Gertrudes on condition
that she found and trained a replacement, also to be called Gertrudes,
as nearly as possible to the same standard. Similar bargains were made in ancient Rome.
Domestic scene (Une Dame d´une Fortune Ordinaire, Jean-Baptiste Debret, c. 1823)
Reis suggested that some slaves may have been crewmen on Brazilian
slaving-ships, hence were able to purchase Africans on favourable terms. Manumission by slave-substitution died out with the transatlantic slave-trade.
Stuart B. Schwartz
studied 1,015 manumission letters for a much earlier period
(1684–1745). He found that, of those set at liberty, nearly half had to
pay for it.
A significant proportion of these slaves paid not in cash but in
substitute slaves. It struck him that females were far more likely to
be manumitted than males, a finding echoed by other scholars ("Every
recent study of manumission in Latin America has found that a sizeable
majority of those freed were females".)
Schwartz did not speculate why, but he noted that in 1735 a Brazilian
council alleged that manumissions were paid for by prostitution and
crime. Possibly, however, the occupations of female escravas do ganho better allowed them to handle money themselves, and save some.
Schwartz found a legal record that suggested that some slaves, in order
to purchase sub-slaves cheaply, by-passed the regular system and
imported direct from Africa.
A [Brazilian-born] slave, Lucianna Maria da Conceição, wished to purchase a slave as a dowry
for her granddaughter. She gave money to a friend to be sent to Africa
for this purpose, and a Nagô woman named Jeronima was purchased and
delivered to her. The newly acquired slave was conducted to the [sugar
mill] where Lucianna resided but was eventually sent to the city to be
"hired out" (por ao ganho). Jeronima then sent her earnings to her mistress, who continued to labor as a slave on the plantation.
State of Pernambuco
A Pernambuco sugar mill according to English traveller Henry Koster
The Benedictine Order owned several sugar plantations in Pernambuco
with many slaves, but their numbers gradually fell and few monks were
left to supervise them. The monks evolved a strategy of encouraging
slaves to buy their freedom by offering to take “one slave for another”
(a substitute), which may have contributed to the formation of a group
of slave-owning slaves.
At the Jaguaribe
plantation the overseer was one Nicolau de Souza. As was commonplace
for generations, he was a slave himself. Rarely supervised by the
absentee monks, he was in charge of perhaps a hundred labourers. In 1812 the English traveller Henry Koster
lived nearby and he wrote about Nicolau, whose efficient administration
he admired. According to Koster, Nicolau had a wife and children,
slaves like himself,
and he was able to buy their freedom. He was unable to buy his own
freedom, however, despite offering "two Africans" in exchange, since the
monks thought he was irreplaceable. Nicolau otherwise enjoyed a
comfortable lifestyle, rode about like a rich planter, was allowed to
remain seated in their presence, and owned at least nine slaves of his
own. Few free Brazilian men owned that many. Koster made it quite clear that Nicolau longed to be a free man, however.
Surviving tax and manumission records for Minas Gerais
show that at least one slave woman acquired slaves as a long term
capital investment — not just to pay for her own manumission. Thus, in a
freedom bargain, one Dominga Pereira, a Mina woman, gave her owner two
pounds of gold and a male slave; he allowed her to keep her four other
slaves and take them away.
How she acquired gold and five slaves is not clear.
"Eighteenth-century primary sources created a certain mystique about
Mina women, praising their physical beauty and crediting them with
special powers over occult forces. At the same time, they were
recognized as shrewd traders..."
One slave owned by Dominga was André do Couto Godinho
(1720-1790). Although born the slave of a slave, and despite formal
colour bars, he attended the most prestigious university in Portugal,
was admitted to the priesthood, and was sent to a West African kingdom
on religious and ambassadorial duties.
North America
The Barbadoes Mulatto Girl, Agostino Brunias, Barbados Museum & Historical SocietyLow-country landscape (William Armstrong)
Elite plantation slaves
In eighteenth-century Barbados
some plantations had elite slaves who enjoyed far better living
standards than the mass of field labourers, including the right to
accumulate property and the use of slaves for their own purposes. At
Newton Plantation the family of Old Doll, "a retired housekeeper
matriarch" were given preferential treatment for many years. Upwardly
mobile, literate, disdaining menial tasks, if sent to work in the fields
they stirred up trouble; otherwise, they co-operated in the smooth
running of the estate. "Not only did Doll's family have access to slave
attendants", wrote Barbadian historian Hilary Beckles,
"they also 'possessed' their own slaves who waited on them". Mary Ann,
a member of Doll's family, had a white companion who willed her a slave
called Esther; in time Esther had five children, all of whom slaved for
Doll's family. Effectively, Old Doll's family were slave-owning
slaves.
The low country task system
Most
plantations in the American South used the gang system, in which slaves
were worked in groups from sunrise to sunset and had little leisure to
acquire property. In the low country of South Carolina and Georgia, however, the task system
prevailed. Slaves were compelled to perform certain specific tasks; but
once completed, the rest of the day was theirs. Thus incentivised,
slaves finished their tasks quickly, perhaps by early afternoon. They
proceeded to farm fields of their own, which were customarily allowed
them for the purpose. Hence slaves acquired livestock and other
property. Philip D. Morgan reviewed the records of the Southern Claims Commission,
from which it was apparent that by the outset of the Civil War field
hands in some counties owned horses, cows, buggies, wagons, hogs, sheep
and trading commodities; these they bought, sold, hired out, or
bequeathed to kinfolks. Despite their servile status, their right to
own those things was unquestioned in the slave society. However, few cases have been found of slaves owning slaves in the United States.
American slaves buying slaves
An exception is revealed by the lawsuit Guardian of Sally, a Negro v. Beaty (1792), Supreme Court of South Carolina.
The defendant Beaty owned "a negro wench slave", not otherwise
identified, whom he hired out for wages, part of which she was allowed
to keep for herself. She gradually saved up "a considerable sum of
money". Out of this fund she paid Beaty to purchase another of his
female slaves, named Sally. (It may have been her own daughter.) She
then let Sally go free. Beaty tried to repudiate the transaction,
arguing that a slave could not acquire property — he cited Roman law,
though not much — so Sally must be his slave still. The court, which
obviously thought Beaty was behaving despicably, recognised the purchase
and held Sally was free.
But for Beaty's unusual behaviour this instance (of a slave
owning a slave) would have gone unrecorded. Another instance is Free
Frank, a slave who had a salpetre
business in Kentucky; from the profits he purchased his wife and let
her go free; two years later (1819) he purchased his own freedom.
It is likely there were similar incidents, if only because "some
African American slaveholders owned relatives and friends not to exploit
them but because manumission either was too difficult to obtain or
would not bring much benefit". Lightner and Ragan found that, while
this was generally so, there were also African Americans who owned
slaves in order to exploit them for their labour.
West Africa
Hausaland
Hausaland, c.1906
The anthropologist Polly Hill found that a kind of farm-slavery flourished among the people of Hausaland, north Nigeria; her characterisation resembles peculium
slavery as described in this article. Slaves were acquired by capture,
inheritance or purchase in the market, though they did have certain
customary rights. They laboured for their masters on farms, but "during
a 'long morning' only". The rest of the day was theirs, during which
they could cultivate plots of land for themselves. It saved their
owners the expense of feeding them. However, in their own time some of
these slaves accumulated wealth, and even purchased slaves of their own.
In 1903 the new British colonial authorities declared slavery
null and void, but their proclamation was ignored. In 1906 it was
reported that "many farm slaves became rich and owned many slaves of
their own". Slavery persisted for another two decades before it was
eradicated.
Igboland
Nkanu West, Enugu, today
Rutgers historian Carolyn A. Brown found that traditional slavery among the Nkanu people, Igboland,
southeastern Nigeria, was rigid and oppressive. Domestic slaves were
liable to be sold to slave traders or even sacrificed in funeral rites;
they were hardly ever manumitted. Nevertheless, some slaves managed to
acquire property and "displayed wealth in culturally recognized ways:
they bought other slaves, who served as their surrogates while they
traveled, and they married many wives". In the 1920s it dawned on the
enslaved classes that slavery was illegal under British colonial rule,
and they started to rebel. The first to do so were the wealthier,
slave-owning slaves since "these men had almost eliminated the
restrictions between themselves and the freeborn" yet were being denied
participation in social rites, the status symbols of the truly free. During 1922-1929 there were violent conflicts between slaves and owners, forcing the authorities to intervene.
Bundu
ORAL HISTORY.
"At that time, there were many slaves. Everyone had slaves. The Fulbe
had slaves, smiths had slaves. Even slaves had slaves, really, it is
true. Slaves of Fulbe lived in the same compound with the Fulbe. Slaves
of smiths lived in the same compound with the smiths. Slaves lived in
the same compound with the slaves (who owned them)... Everyone knew who
was a slave of a free-born person, who was a slave of a smith, who was a
slave of a slave."
In Bundu, Senegambia
there was a class of slave-owning slaves. Though the French colonial
authorities were supposed to stop slavery (and told Paris they had
succeeded), the practice was persistent, and survived long enough to be
recalled by old people interviewed as recently as 1991 (see quotebox).
Scholar Andrew F. Clark found that
A strong moral code, which reflects the dominant, free-born Fulbe
ideology, underpins the narratives... Slaves are frequently portrayed
as 'knowing their place', or faithfully serving their masters. Some
traditions deal with the bravery, hard work or good deeds of slaves;
others relate stories of undisciplined, clever or runaway slaves.
Because of the recency of slavery, in some West African countries it is illegal to refer to a person's servile origins.
Amongst the ethnic minority Yi people of Yunnan, southwest China there existed a form of slavery in which there were slave-owning slaves. In 1957 the author Alan Winnington visited a mountainous area where, despite the Chinese Communist Revolution, the government had not yet succeeded in eradicating the practice. These people, whom Winnington knew as the Norsu (Mosuo) existed in four castes: nobles, commoners, "separate-slaves" and house-slaves.
According to Winnington, the separate-slaves were assigned wattle
huts and sexual mates, being bred like cattle. Their children were
taken from them, becoming the noble's house-slaves, the lowest status of
humanity in the region and "maybe anywhere in the world", since they
were treated abominably. As they grew up they were inherited by the
nobles' sons and daughters, who in due course sent them to breed as
separate-slaves; so the cycle repeated.
The separate-slaves were made to cultivate land but were allowed
some spare time to do so for their own benefit. From the proceeds,
including opium-growing, some were able to save up and buy slaves of
their own, and perhaps their freedom. "Slaves possess slaves, and even
the slaves of slaves possess slaves". The nobles, who called themselves
the "Black-bone Yi" ('black-bone' denoted aristocracy) had strict
marriage laws meant to ensure racial 'purity' for themselves, and were a warlike people whose tradition was to go on slaving raids in which they captured members of the Han (Chinese majority ethnic group). The slaves they owned were thus mainly of Han descent.
Even today, when (according to a Czech researcher) everybody in the
region is "equally poor", descendants of the slaves are "sneered at" by
those claiming aristocratic ancestry.
The explorer and naturalist William Dampier, who in 1688 visited Aceh,
Sumatra, recorded that a local nobleman was reputed to own more than
1,000 slaves, some of whom were traders who owned slaves of their own,
and so on. In his own words:
Some
of these [slaves] were topping [prominent] merchants, and had many
Slaves under them. And even these, tho' they are Slaves to Slaves, yet
have their Slaves also; neither can a stranger easily know who is a
Slave and who is not among them; for they are all, in a manner, Slaves
to one another; and all in general to the Queen and Oronkeyes [orang kaya,
noble], for their Government is very Arbitrary. Yet there is nothing
of rigour used by the Master to his Slave, except it be the very
meanest, such as do all sorts of servile work: but those who can turn
their hands to any thing besides drudgery, live well enough by their
industry. Nay, they are often encouraged by their Masters, who often
lend them Money to begin some trade or business
taking a cut of the profits. Even the money-changers in the streets,
who were women, were slaves. The head slaves, despite their comfortable
lifestyles, were the property of their masters, who upon their death
inherited their assets, including their children, unless they had had
the foresight to purchase their freedom.
Anthropologist Roxana Waterson found that among the Torajan people of Indonesia there were slaves who owned slaves; the latter were called kaunan tai manuk (chicken-shit slaves).
According to A Descriptive Dictionary of British Malaya (1894), "In Malay there are six different names for a slave, and there is even one for the 'slave of a slave'". This is supported by other sources. It has been said that slaves enjoyed a far greater degree of social equality with their masters than was the case in the West. The British colonial officer Sir William Maxwell, who was supposed to suppress slavery, reported to Parliament that slavery in Malaya
was an ancient local custom, established long before the introduction
of Islam, and frequently conducted in breach of its precepts. For
example, there was a form of debt-bondage,
almost impossible to escape thanks to extortionate compound interest,
"wholly opposed to Muhammadan law, which is most lenient to debtors". It was sometimes cruel. Maxwell transcribed from Arabic and Malay a Perak law which ordained that a slave who assaulted a free man should have his hands nailed down while his wife could be violated.
Belonging to politically powerful slaves
Slave officials of the Roman Empire
First-century
Rome was confronted with a novel problem: how to administer a large,
newly acquired empire. The solution was to fill government posts with
the emperor's own slaves and freedmen. Called the Familia Caesaris, we know many of them by name, since they were commemorated in inscriptions which are found all over the empire.
Slaves were appointed to these posts for two reasons. First, "no
[free] Roman of standing would have demeaned himself by becoming the
Emperor's personal servant". Secondly, slaves had the advantage that, if suspected of corruption, they could be examined under torture. Indeed, the emperor Augustus degraded some rascally senior officials and had them tortured to death.
The emperor Vespasian promoted extortionate slaves on purpose
Important imperial slaves had slaves of their own. A few were just
private property — "for the easing of their personal lot". The most
spectacular case was the imperial slave Musicus Scurranus, a provincial
administrator, who on his last journey to Rome was attended by a retinue
of sixteen personal sub-slaves including cooks, butlers, footmen,
secretaries, and 'Secunda' (function unspecified).
But we know from the surviving inscriptions that most slaves of imperial slaves were official appointments. A head slave (ordinarius) belonged to the Emperor himself, and was given a deputy — a slave of his own — called a vicarius; both of these handled public monies. These government servi vicarii
should not be confused with the low-status individuals of the same
name, already considered in this article, who were just part of a richer
slave's peculium. Government servi vicarii, despite being slaves of slaves, were quite prestigious. Free women were willing to "marry" them. Most handled public monies in the provinces. Vegetus, the purchaser of the slave girl Fortunata in Roman London (above) was an imperial vicarius.
Torture or not, some slave administrators were bold enough to extort money from the populace.
According to Suetonius, Vespasian, a strong emperor, deliberately appointed his most rapacious freedmen to proconsulships
in the provinces with the expectation that they would amass as great a
fortune as possible — fortunes that he would later appropriate by the
simple expedient of execution.
How Musicus Scurranus could afford sixteen sub-slaves on his official
salary was not explained; and there were other notorious cases. Most
administrators could look forward to manumission after serving a number
of years. A few retired with truly colossal fortunes.
Richard Francis Burton, who travelled to Mecca disguised as a pilgrim on the Hajj
(1853), wrote that the official in charge of his caravan had been the
slave of a slave, and "he is but a solitary instance of cases
perpetually occurring in all Moslem lands", where a slave might arrive
at the highest rank in the empire.
It was quite common in the Islamic world because of an institution, strange-seeming to Western eyes, called the Mamluk system. While it varied appreciably from country to country (and through time) it was outlined by Berkeley historian Ira M. Lapidus as follows:
The
Mamluk or slave military system is one of the most exotic phenomena in
Muslim political history. Slaves were first systematically employed in
ninth-century Baghdad to make up the armies of the Abbasid Caliphate,
and from there the system spread to all of the Abbasid succession
states in the Middle East and to North Africa, Spain, Iran, India, and
the Ottoman Empire. Slave soldiers constituted the military and
administrative aristocracy of most post-Abbasid Middle Eastern
societies; in some cases, such as in the Ghaznavid dynasty of Afghanistan and the Mamluk regime in Egypt, the head of state was himself a slave.
The military and bureaucracy were continually recruited from slaves
of foreign ethnicity, who depended utterly on the ruler; so they felt
loyal to him alone; and he trusted them accordingly. There was no
hereditary nobility to which caliphs and sultans owed favours, or which
might challenge their rule.
It was a "surrogate aristocracy", selected on merit; in principle
unable to perpetrate itself. Orlando Patterson called these men the
'ultimate slaves' for, despite the power they wielded, they were natally
alienated and dishonoured people; personal assets of the imperial
masters they served, and who had no legal personality of their own. In
one way or another the system lasted a thousand years.
"One Obedient slave is better
than three hundred sons
for the latter desire their father's death,
the former his master's glory".
owed their status and power
entirely to the ruler or dominant oligarchy responsible for their
purchase. Highly impressionable adolescents, selected for their quick
wit and physical prowess, would be trained not only to excel in the
martial arts but also to bestow their undivided loyalty upon their
benefactors. By such a strategy the rulers sought to secure their
control over populations whose allegiance was often doubtful.
The brightest were made government administrators. Talented women
slaves might also rise to positions of power and influence, albeit by a
seemingly very different route (see below).
The archetype of the youth who is enslaved in a distant land where by his intelligence he rises to wield immense power was the biblical Joseph, who also features in the Quran; and the parallel was understood in Mamluk Egypt by the elite slaves themselves, as well as by European visitors.
Since elite slaves would have subordinates, they might be
expected to have slaves of their own. In the followng instances the
sources mention that they had.
In the Ottoman Empire, slaves (called kul
in Turkish) were collected as boys. Unlike other Muslim lands, they
were recruited from the Sultan's own subjects, apparently in defiance of
religious law. The practice was known as devshirme.
Taken at age 10-15 from Christian villages by recruitment squads, they
were marched to the capital; the choicest were sent to Topkapi Palace.
"Along the way they became Muslims and were given new Muslim names.
They all shared the common patronymic Abdullah, literally servant of
God". Although some volunteered — they saw career opportunities — most were compelled, only a few managing to flee.
After a few years of education and training under the aegis of the highest ranking palace official, the Chief White Eunuch,
they were assigned to various tasks depending on their ability. Most
joined the elite cavalry regiments; others became craftsmen or scholars.
It is possible some volunteered for castration since it increased the
opportunity to rise to the highest possible rank, grand vezir. After
some years of provincial service, a very select few returned to the
palace and achieved high administrative positions. "[I]n the sixteenth
century almost all the pashas and the vezirs of the Imperial Council
were of kul origin and had been trained at the palace".
Metin Kunt found records showing that some high palace slaves owned slaves of their own: he called them Kulların Kulları
(Slaves of Slaves). Thus Cafer Agha, Chief White Eunuch, who died
mid-16th century, owned, amongst other property, slaves who lived in the
palace. Upon his death they were inherited by the Sultan himself.
the Ottoman state rested largely on
a military and civilian staff of renegade Christians. The standing army
of foot soldiers, the Janissaries; the regular mounted regiments of the household, the Sipahis of the Porte;
as well as the personnel of the sultan's court, his key advisors and
administrative aides, had all the status of Kul, slaves of the sultan...
Between 1453 and 1623 only five of the forty-seven grand viziers were
of Turkish origin. The Ottoman system took boys from the cattle-run and
the plow and made them courtiers, administrators and army officers...
Some scholars have doubted that persons of such high standing could really have been slaves, and have argued the youths were manumitted upon graduation. Though true in some places it was not so in others. Historian Victor Louis Ménage
found a number of records incompatible with that theory. In the
Ottoman Empire, after graduation, they remained slaves, though they were
allowed to marry and own slaves themselves. By a doctrine of Islamic law called idhn a master could authorise his slave to marry and possess property, slaves included. The celebrated jannissaries were prestigious slaves who were rarely manumitted; their chief had a palace of his own. There is an anecdote that the famous Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha
was not allowed to testify in an Islamic court because, being a slave,
his evidence was inadmissible; to soothe his wounded pride, the sultan
promptly manumitted him.
Roxelana, Ukrainian slave, first concubine to marry a Sultan
Harem slaves were a parallel case. Ehud R. Toledano has generalised the concept as kul/harem slavery. High status concubines, even if slaves, might own slaves. The Chief Black Eunuch was in charge of the harem or women's quarters, and since women (e.g. the Sultan's mother or favourite concubine)
could be extremely powerful in politics and this eunuch was the
go-between, he was a formidable personage, sometimes retiring with
spectacular wealth. Black eunuchs could own slaves themselves, including white slaves. It became customary for the Chief Black Eunuch to retire to Cairo with slaves, even mamluks, purchased for his service.
Not only were the Sultan's officials his slaves: the houses of the highest Ottoman officials mimicked that of the sultan.
Being slaves, "the sultan could confiscate their property or take their lives, without due process, whenever he wished".
High officials "were subject to a harsh palace-driven policy of
demotion, dismissal, banishment, execution and property confiscation".
These measures seem to have created a game of Snakes and Ladders
in which pashas were ... forfeiting their gains and properties, and
starting anew several times during their careers. This policy [was]
designed to keep as much power as possible in the hands of the sultan.
As the centuries passed, however, such confiscations and executions
became infrequent, being reserved for exemplary cases "to remind Ottoman
officials who was boss". Thus by the 19th century such officials were
only nominally slaves.
Delhi Sultanate
Iltutmish, slave of a slave, called himself 'Sultan of the Sultans' on his coins
The first Muslim sovereign to rule from Delhi, India was Shams al-Din Iltutmish, who started his career as the slave of slave. Iltutmish when young was the slave of Quțb al-Din Aybak, a military commander who was himself the slave of Sultan Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad ibn Sam of Ghiir.
An ethnic Turk, he acceded to the throne in 1211, and described
himself on his coinage as "the Sultan of the Sultans of the East".
It seems that Iltutmish was considered to have slave-status even after
becoming king, being reproved for the illegitimacy of his rule for that
reason; but his string of military victories "quelled such grumbling".
Here, a mamluk was known as a bandagān (pl. bandah). Military slaves were Iltutmsh's favoured subordinates "precisely because they were not 'nobles'". He urgently acquired, trained and deployed bandah to govern newly conquered territories. (A bandagān
did not normally acquire under-slaves until his eighth year of
training.). For example, Iltutmish established a tradition of
slave-governors of the province of Lakhnauti; one of them sent him a
present of elephants.
The Mughal successor state of Awadh (Oudh), North India (1722–1856), was remarkable for the number of its eunuch slaves and the power some of them wielded. Eunuchs (Persian: khwājasarā;
lit., “lord of the palace”) served not only as guardians of the women's
quarters but as military commanders, tax farmers, administrators and
advisers to the ruling nawabs.
It was forbidden in Islam to castrate Muslims and (theoretically) anyone else. Nawabs like Safdar Jang and Shuja-ud-daula
purchased boys, often Hindus, from local "eunuch-makers"; the castrated
boys were converted to Islam and trained in their duties. Some of
these eunuchs, acquiring wealth, evaded the usury laws by lending money through their Hindu relatives.
A powerful eunuch might have a large establishment of his own, called a sarkār,
employing hundreds of scribes, servants and slaves, where he raised
young eunuch slaves, who might hope to emulate him some day. Such
high-ranking men were slaves nevertheless, and were rarely manumitted by
the rulers.
The Sokoto Caliphate
(1804–1903) was the largest polity in pre-colonial Africa. It was a
1,000 x 400 mile (1,600 x 640 km) territory of 10 million people, at
least half of whom were slaves. Originally founded as a result of a jihad or holy war, it may have held more slaves than any country in the world except the United States. The elite were Fulbe people but in time they came to speak the prevailing Hausa language.
As explained in this
note, its economy depended on the continual acquisition of slaves,
which were obtained by raiding neighbouring territories. Local rulers,
called emirs, kept armies for the purpose.
Emirs kept numbers of elite slaves to serve as cavalrymen,
collect taxes and otherwise administer their territories, tasks that
required specialist knowledge. According to Sokoto historian Murray Last,
these royal slaves formed high-status groups. They could "boss even
the freeborn", since to disobey a royal slave was to disobey the emir.
They controlled access to his presence, for which they expected heavy
bribes.
Hence for some captives enslaved as children, "the career as a slave
led eventually to high political positions, even to owning many slaves
of their own".
Despite their power and wealth, these men were slaves, for
royal slaves were always at the
mercy of their owner, the emir: to remind them of their slave status
they had constantly to wear a goat-leather loincloth (warki)
beneath their fine gown and trousers. In Islamic law, as slaves they
were still not “full persons” like the freeborn. Nonetheless they acted
as the emir’s closest advisors and allies: they had no kinsmen or
lineages, other than the emir himself, to be loyal to.
Slave-raiding, except in a genuine holy war, was contrary to Islamic law, but the law was evaded or misinterpreted. The original founders of the Sokoto Caliphate were religious purists who intended to reform corrupt customs and do away with extravagance and so much reliance on royal slaves, which they considered un-Islamic. And indeed the Caliphate was famous for its
Islamic judicial system, scholarship, poetry, and writings, some in good classical Arabic. But the economic reality, said Last, was different:
The demand from North Africa for
young slaves underwrote the caliphate’s wealth, and fostered among the
caliphate’s own young a military ethos that ran counter to their
forefathers’ pursuit of Islamic scholarship. Slaves rather than scholars
ended up shaping and running the system... With child mortality at
around 50 percent, the population needed to import children as captives.
It
was found that the only way to keep the system going while maintaining
law and order was to revert to a slave cavalry with elite slave
officials and tax collectors. From the fact that the polity could not be reformed from within, even by strict Islamists, but had "to fall back on the expedient of slave soldiers as officials", American historian John Edward Philips
argued that in no land was the Mamluk system a historical accident.
"The political culture of the entire Islamic world has been warped by
this institution of elite slaves, a fact which cannot be ignored in the
struggle to modernize that world".
Emirate of Kano
The Emir of Kano and his cavalry c. 1910
The Kano Emirate
was a prominent part of the Sokoto caliphate, centred around Kano, a
medieval walled city, terminus of the caravan trade. Perhaps as many as
half the population were slaves. As in the Sokoto Calphate generally,
systematic enslavement was crucial to the economy. Even taxes were paid
in slaves. The royal slaves of Kano have been studied by Sean Stilwell, who has examined oral traditions as well as written records.
Power was wielded by office-holders appointed by the emir; they
held land and slaves. Some major offices were allocated to royal slaves.
First-generation slaves were captured and brought to the Kano palace,
where they were trained as warriors, and remained slaves through their
careers. Elite slaves had access to the emir, and to bodies of
knowledge crucial for running the government.
The royal slaves were the property of the emir, responsible to
him alone. Always they were perceived and treated as slaves in the Kano
society, and they held office at his pleasure. "The emir could transfer
palace slaves to farms outside the palace, depose them, seize their
possessions as well as execute them". Royal slaves were regularly
deposed when new emirs came to the throne.
"Should a royal slave lose his [office], he effectively lost his
ability to manage land, confiscate property and provide for his
household, who usually left him to join a more prosperous title-holder",
said Stilwell.
They were valuable to the emir if, and only, if they were slaves,
since they could not compete for the throne or inherit titles or
property.
Second-generation slaves were called cucanawa and were
more likely to have palace roles. The word meant something like
"shameless" or "impudent" — they joshed the emir's sons
— and they could deal rudely with free persons, from whom they had
nothing to fear, for none but the emir could discipline them. Some were
thought to be presumptuous, arrogant or brutal, but to retaliate was to
risk insulting the emir himself.
In practice royal slaves could often extort property from freemen, elite or commoner.
One slave, asked to itemise his property, listed 20 sub-slaves,
horses, cattle, and numerous concubines. Another was said to have fifty
concubines. The German ethnologist Paul Staudinger observed (1889):
[M]any a freeman has to bow before
them. They keep slaves themselves. The king's slaves often distinguish
themselves by impertinent and violent behavior . . . it is best not to
get involved in quarrels with them, as their owner, to whom they have
made themselves indispensable usually lets them
off scot free.
Emirate of Ilorin
Carved Yoruba stool c. 1900. The supporting human figures may denote elite slaves. (British Museum.)
On the southern frontier of the Sokoto Caliphate was the Ilorin Emirate, a Yoruba language polity that still exists as part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
In the 19th and early 20th-centuries it had elite slaves belonging to
the emir. They were often used in military roles. The Jimba family
were warrior slaves — at one time in charge of the state's gunpowder —
who were able to amass many slaves of their own; there was even a
slave-market named after them. The title ajia was bestowed on elite slaves who captured slaves in war and turned them into loyal battalions to fight for Ilorin.
The baba kekere were elite slaves who controlled access to the Emir and who, like the eunuchs of medieval Byzantium, required payment for providing it.
The royal slave Ogunkojole (alias Alihu) was described as "practically
prime minister, very wealthy and possessing many slaves of his own".
Scholar Ann O'Hear found that Ilorin was a transitional case.
Unlike the non-hereditary 'slave aristocracies' of the Middle East and
Kano, the elite slaves of Ilorin were permitted to own and inherit land.
and were given hereditary titles. It was weakness on the part of the
emirs since it gradually eroded their royal patronage power.
Underlings syphoned off captured slaves and other war booty to their
own use. On one elite slave the emir conferred the joke title Nasama
("I got him"), intended to remind the bearer that he was a still a
slave. Some elite slaves became rebellious and in 1895 the Emir was
defeated, blowing himself up in the state's powder magazine together
with faithful royal slave Ogunkojole/Alihu.
Ilorin became a British protectorate in 1900, being ruled
indirectly through the emirs. The new colonial authorities were supposed
to suppress slavery. The elite slave-owning slaves were strongly
opposed to this, however, and were too well entrenched to be easily
displaced. It was not until 1936 that their power was finally broken.
Ibadan, West Africa
High status Yoruba man, Ibadan (Carl Arriens, pencil sketch, 1910)
Ibadan (1850–1900) was a military state in Yorubaland,
West Africa. Starting as a war-camp it grew to become the capital of
an empire, a transformation which required a very large number of
slaves, which it obtained by warfare and raiding expeditions. Slaves
served as soldiers, agricultural labourers and menials.
The war chiefs promoted some slaves to privileged positions, such as ajele
(governor of a colony), farm village chief, toll collector, diplomat or
spy. They were preferred over free men because they were thought to be
more loyal or else they would be instantly degraded or sold. These
elite slaves acquired slaves of their own, buying them in the market or
capturing them in war, and had enormous power over them, which they
frequently abused. Nigerian historian Toyin Falola found that they had a reputation for extravagance and cruelty, and were hated and feared by the slaves they controlled.
[S]ince
they were not sure of when their privileges would be withdrawn, or when
they would die or fall out of favor with their masters, some believed
they should have the best out of life by engaging in excessive eating
and drinking and also in a reckless exercise of power.
Slaves fled en masse from Ibadan in the 1890s when British colonial power intervened.
Muscovy (Russia)
Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible"). Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia
In early Muscovy a substantial part of the population were designated kholoptsvo. Although the legal status of these people is a matter of debate, Richard Hellie
had no doubt they were slaves according to most definitions. Thus they
could be beaten by their owners — sometimes to death — and their
children could be sold separately. The vast majority were ethnic Russians and were owned by the
landed service classes.
A few of these slaves were skilled managers. Some were government
administrators, running palace offices or assisting provincial
governors.
Others managed country estates, and were in fact crucial, because
their owners were obliged to be absent on government service.
The
Muscovite records are full of the activities of these people, who
purchased other slaves for their owners, negotiated tax and postal
levies with governmental officials, defended their owners' peasants and
ordinary slaves from other landholders and official depredations,
collected the rent due from the peasants, represented their owners (and
others) in court, and fulfilled many other duties.
This class of slave could and did own slaves of their own. They were sometimes called dokladnoe,
or registered, slaves. By the 1630s, however, discrimination had set
in, and they were forbidden to own slaves or land, a privilege now
reserved for the middle and upper service classes and townsmen.
Comparatively little has been written about the history of slavery in China.
Contemporary Chinese historians were seldom interested in the
institution, only mentioning it in passing if relevant to some other
matter. Columbia historian C. Martin Wilbur,
by compiling a large number of these incidental passages and putting
the events in chronological sequence, was the first to write a monograph
on slavery during the early Han dynasty.
One fragment he studied, which is preserved in the Book of the Former Han (前漢書; Qián Hàn shū), happens to mention slaves of slaves twice. It is a report of a murder inquiry. In 7 BC the Emperor Cheng
died in suspicious circumstances; investigators interrogated the palace
staff, including eunuchs and other slaves. The chief suspect,
concubine Brilliant Companion, fearing three middle-ranking slave women
might talk, gave each of them ten sub-slaves for their entourage,
presumably to keep an eye on them. It also transpired that an educated
slave-woman, a poet, had borne the Emperor's son. The wildy jealous
Brilliant Companion had bullied the Emperor into having mother and baby
killed, followed by six of the mother's sub-slaves who knew too much.
Yuan dynasty
A Japanese historian mentioned that in the Yuan dynasty slaves could own slaves; such double slaves were called chongtai (重臺). How it arose is not explained.
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