Editing Slavery

[[image:Slaves sugar cane.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Slaves harvesting sugar cane, not a lot fun for them. It is really good in tea, though.]]
{{Topquote|I came here in peace, seeking gold and slaves.|Jack Handey, ''What I'd Say to the Martians''}}

'''Slavery''' is the institution of owning other humans (as well as other sapient beings by extrapolation) as property. As slaves are bound to their owners, they were prevented from leaving or refusing to work under threat of immediate violence for disobedience. When two groups would fight it was not uncommon for the victor to capture some of the defeated along with the goods or territory and put them to work. Later on, as long-distance trade improved, they also began selling said captives to other cultures. The children of slaves usually were slaves themselves, though this was not universal. In other cases people would be put into slavery as a punishment, failure to pay their debts or voluntarily in a few cases to gain the favor of their superiors.

In addition to the practice of owning human beings as chattel there are other contemporary and historical arrangements so similar to slavery that they are referred to as slavery informally. A few of these include serfdom ([[Peasant|serfs]] were not owned, but they were bound to the land owned by [[Noble|nobles]] and are required to work it), indentured servitude in colonial America (in exchange for passage to the new world being paid, or to discharge a debt, someone would be indentured to a contract holder and have to work off their debt over a number of years), impressment and shanghaiing (where people were kidnapped from ports or ships and forced to serve as sailors), the various forced labor programs used by the [[Nazi]]s, [[Communism|Communists]], and other despotic regimes and the victims of human trafficking which is still ongoing today.

== History stuff ==
The oldest surviving codex of laws yet discovered in the world, the Code of Ur-Nammu, has multiple references to slaves, so slavery has been with humanity for a ''very'' long time. Slavery was practiced in virtually every culture at some point throughout their history; as soon as a people progressed from a hunter-gathering and nomadic culture to an agrarian one it become more convenient to look for ways to increase productivity and lower expenses, and that way was often some flavor of slavery. In the ancient world, most civilizations made use of slavery to some degree or another. Prisoners of war were taken as slaves and made to ply their trade for their conquerors, or were sold abroad for goods. Since civilizations would wax and wain from time to time, the enslavers of one generation might end up enslaved in the next. The Egyptians and Greeks made heavier than usual use of slaves and the Romans even more so. Slaves worked in every field from miners who were quickly worked to death through farmers, factory workers, skilled craftsmen, entertainers, teachers and up to high ranking government officials in the Empire.

Slavery existed in [[Medieval Stasis|Medieval Europe]] but declined after the year 1,000 in a lot of places, especially the north. The basis for the modern English word slave gets its roots here, as the Slavic races were so often put upon that they pretty much named the ordeal after them. After the Europeans began to colonize the Americas the institution got a boon there as plantations were established using readily available African slaves. This bring up the matter of racial slavery. In the Classical World (and Rome in particular) slaves were basically from everywhere in the Empire and many places and the children of freed slaves in Rome became more Romans. Slavery is not a nice thing at the best of times, but racial slavery adds to it the conception that an enslaved race is inferior, doomed to servitude forever and that peoples from it are unfit for anything else with little hope of ever elevating themselves from it, like in other cultures caste systems.

In contrast to the above, slavery is virtually never mentioned in [[Oriental Adventures|east Asian inspired]] settings. This has some basis in history in certain areas. The [[Mongols]]' nomadic lifestyle was not conductive to widespread slavery, though they did take slaves, and during the Mongol Empire's runs on conquering China people were often little better than slaves anyway. The Chinese themselves went through several periods of loosening and then making stricter laws surrounding slavery, usually revolving around who was in charge following their frequent wars to unify only to break apart once more. The inhabitants of the Ryukyu islands "would die over" slavery rather than participate. Slavery in Asia was probably most prolific on the Korean peninsula, who had a caste system, but population growth, a few slave revolts and modernization eventually rendered it less than palatable. The earliest European reports of [[Japan]] mention that, though it existed there, slavery was rare and primarily inflicted on debtors and prisoners of war. The main recorded examples are the maids/concubines of the rich, and those brought by Europeans themselves. Impressed with the man's physical stature, Oda Nobunaga purchased, freed and elevated to samurai status one European held slave. This man would be known as Yasuke, [[Anime|the only black samurai]]. During the Sengoku a not-insignificant of Japanese prisoners of war were sold to the Europeans for foreign trade until 1587/1595, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi banned it.

==Slavery in Fantasy==
Because slavery is viewed as such a moral repugnance throughout the modern world it is an easy way for lazy [[GM]]s to get a reaction from players. Slavery being one of the common features of a setting's bad guys makes for an easy way to establish that civilization or organization is [[Alignment|evil]]. A bunch of armed guys attack a peaceful village with chains and whips to catch them, bind them, take them away treating them worse than how we treat livestock so they can be forced to toil, be beaten and raped, and may be made to fight to the death in arenas for the amusement and benefit of some sick bastards? That is more than enough reason to establish "these guys are bad, go [[murderhobo|kill their asses]]" regardless of alignment (even Evil characters can simply indulge their drive to kill by offing slavers, and exploit the freed villagers and their families for more favors-Particularly Lawful Evil ones-).

However, this is not always the case; both the perceived "good" and "bad" factions can also engage in slavery, although how they do it usually defines who's good and who's bad (regardless of how minute the difference is). Take [[Araby]] and the [[Dark Elves]] in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battles|Warhammer Fantasy's]]'' setting, for example. Both factions engage in wanton slavery and have no qualms about it being a common thing everywhere. However, what sort of defines each of them is how they see their slaves. In Araby, slaves have several rights, the children of slaves are guaranteed by law to not be slaves, and particularly cruel mistreatment of slaves will result in punishment to the masters and the mistreated becoming free. The Dark Elves consider all non-Dark Elves to be beneath them and will torture and maim their slaves just because they think it is fun.

Though it is found in both, slavery is more common in fantasy settings than in science fiction. In your typical Tolkien knockoff the way you go about digging rocks, harvesting lumber, tilling fields and raising buildings is normally with strong backs. In most sci-fi worlds, why have a bunch of slaves working in an irradiated asteroid space mine when you could have a bunch of robots who don't need slave drivers, food, air, don't plot escape/rebellion ([[Men of Iron|hopefully]]), and are stronger and easier to repair if damaged? ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' actually justifies having slaves fairly well in that in the [[Imperium]] such automation is considered techno-[[heresy]] (or simply decayed like spaceship artillery loaders) and the [[Dark Eldar]] are sick bastards who need to consume souls and get their rocks off at making others miserable.


Slavery of a [[/d/|certain kind]] is a common feature of many [[Magical Realm]]s.

==A digression about the Economics of Slavery==
For serious worldbuilders who have it, you need to consider what Economics already considers a long-standing question: Is slavery profitable in the long term, and if so where?

The consensus answer among Economic Historians to the first one is that yes, slavery can be profitable but only in those situations where technology does not offer a faster/cheaper/safer solution. Indeed, most ancient Empires (Egyptian, Greek, Roman) had some form of institutionalised slavery that allowed them to endure. This being said, the very concept of slavery has some serious downsides (that have nothing to do with morality) dooming it in the long run. The answer to the "where" question is "agriculture (especially of cash crops), unskilled labor, and a bit of mining", in roughly that order of profitability. (As a side note, despite mining being the stereotypical use of slaves in fiction, mining past a certain depth is sufficiently deadly and expensive that semi-skilled labor is '''absolutely required'''; while ''other'' exploitative practices may be used, the training required means actual slavery-based mining is very much a no-go.)

The practical downsides that doom slavery include, but are not limited to:

*First of all, anywhere sabotage is a serious concern slavery is usually a non-starter (For a recent example, look at the [[Nazi]]'s using forced labor to build their weapons later in the war and the quality of said weapons). That rules out most semi-modern mining (anything past 50 feet in the ground, and a slave has a nice way to commit suicide while hurting his master's profits at the same time), as well as just about any industry with any degree of mechanization and a surprising amount of agriculture.
*Second, slave populations have a tendency to drop over time, especially compared to relatively free populations (some thought on slave living conditions should lead to a few obvious conclusions as to why), so if you want to keep up, you need to constantly raid (or trade with raiders) for more slaves. Last time this was done beyond the 16th century, the United States wrecked the entire Barbary coast with artillery and freed slaves. So any "sustainable" raiding *will* attract military threats that will make sure any slave taken will eventually be more expensive than a free worker already available and willing within the empire.
*Third, slave-holding societies are usually economically out-competed by non-slave-holding societies once military considerations are either removed or temporarily equal. There are plenty of reasons for this, but the big ones are the twin spectres of Incentives (which align more closely in non-slave societies) and Efficiency (effort you expend on keeping slaves from escaping or rebelling could usually be more productively used elsewhere, and that's just to start with).
*Fourth, if slaves are owned in large numbers they start to displace the local non-slaves. This is not a simple case of [[Meme|DEY TOOK AHR JERBS]], as the Romans can attest: when large numbers of slaves started to displace local farmers who were forced to sell their land for some reason or the other said ex-farmers were driven to the cities, where there were not a lot of jobs either. This bred poverty, and from poverty rose a class dissatisfied with their lot in life as they starve while the rich grow fat. And from this rose political and civilian unrest, which is never good for any state.

[[Category:History]]