Critics of The West in general and the United States in particular often point to slavery as a unique stain in our history. Conservatives sometimes answer that the Arab slave trade across the Sahara was happening at about the same time, and was perhaps even more brutal. Both are wrong. The transatlantic slave trade transported millions of human beings across an ocean to ruthlessly exploit their labor, and the sanguinary Arab slave trade littered the Sahara with the bones of mutilated boys. But slavery is not the province of a particular time or place; slavery stains humanity.
Words in Tablets of Clay
Historian Yual Noah Harari wrote in his Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind about the first recorded named in history. It seems that Kushim, a Sumerian tax collector, recorded how many bushels of barley he had collected over 37 months and passed his name into history. But the three next recorded names are revealing; Gal-Sal, a slave owner, sold his two female slaves, Enpap-x and Sukkalgir. The earliest records of humanity record slave sales.
The oldest surviving legal code, the Code of Hammurabi (about 1,500 years later), treats slavery as a fact of existence. There were laws against stealing the minor children of subjects—the punishment was death—as well as laws against harboring fugitive slaves (death again), and a reward from bringing a runaway slave to town (two shekels, paid by the owner of the slave). Sexual exploitation of slave women was also a given; the code mandates that the owner of the slave could not sell the woman once she had born him children. This was seen as an advance in the condition of slave women.
Slavery the World Over
Slavery has existed for far longer than writing, philosophy, or mathematics. Slavery pre-dates agriculture, though the invention of agriculture made slavery more valuable to the slave masters. In the Americas powerful, warlike tribes enslaved members of less powerful polities. In the Caribbean, the Caribs preyed on the Taino population, raiding by sea and stealing women and children. The dominant Mexica sacrificed slaves to their gods; thousands of them at the most important festivals. The Inca Empire had slavery as well, though in some sense its organization meant almost everyone was under the power of the ruling class.
In sub-Saharan Africa slavery usually followed the familiar pattern; the most powerful tribes preyed on the weak, and the most powerful members of the community enslaved the vulnerable. From time to time a new powerful tribe may arise and conquer its neighbors, but slavery remained. As for Pharaonic Egypt, the World’s longest-living despotic regime, it had both servitude and slavery. The spectacular pyramids are monuments to the egos of its ruling class, built on the suffering of slaves.
But perhaps slavery flourished in the Eurasia plains like in no other place on Earth. The terrain generally favors horse raiders (and before them charioteers), making the farming populations very vulnerable to barbarians on horseback. So many slaves were taken in some regions that the very name ‘slave’ comes from the word ‘Slav’, as Slavic people were often captured by raiders and sold at the Black Sea port of Kaffa.
Slavery in the Hearts of Men
Slavery has existed for thousands of years, all over the globe, and in almost every culture recorded. It has varied with local conditions and cultures, but as an institution it has been resilient. Today slavery is less prevalent, as a percentage of world population, than at any other point in history. But we should remain alert, because slavery arises from the desire to exploit and dominate others from our pleasure. Slavery is born in the hearts of men.
