Slavery in Conan...

[The King]

Yep...when the alternative was a Legion slaughtering you and your known family, slavery was a decent option to aspire to...

How do you want to make a scenario with such a sudden surrender. Wouldn't you prefer to help those villagers and resist the ennemy, organize the resistance and then bring the conflict into the ennemy's own territory, destroy their capital and enslave their population and taking the throne for yourself.
Isn't it a better alternative to slavery ?

 

[Sutek]

Well, that wasn't the ancient mentallity it seems.

Conquerors destroyed and mamed and razed and the ones who surrendered were taken as slaves. There was no "form a resistance" or guerilla warfare, necessarily.

Most of this stemmed from the sense of divine providence. The gods deemed it so, and by virtue of that fact, there was no chance of avoiding one's lot in life.

That's not to suggest that people felt great about being taken as slaves or looked forward to it, and there was even the sense in many cultures that fighting to the death was a better way to go down (ie, Valhalla or Elysium) but in addition to that not being the norm, the average joe wasn't trained to fight. They'd just get mauled if they stood up as a peasant resistance. Just wouldn't have worked.

In many ways that's why Conan is uniquely American Medieval. Nothing like it really occured in history and it was more or less REHs alternative take on a western, when you get right down to it. Conan is a whole lot more like Clint Eastwood's "stranger with no name" than with King Arthur or Beowulf.

 

[S'mon]

I wouldn't say slavery is an appreciable condition if you are destined to serve as dinner for the beasts in the arena or if you have to row in a galley.

Several fallacies there - condremned criminals, not slaves*, served as dinner for the arena beasts as a form of fun-to-watch execution, slaves were trained as gladiators and their mortality rate was fairly low. Some slaves were used as galley rowers during the Roman civil war era due to a manpower shortage, but normally all rowers were free men - rowing a galley is a skilled task and free men do it much better. There were of course some miserable jobs for slaves in the ancient world, like the Athenian silver mines. Slavery was generally not a desirable condition, but it was often a transient condition, not like post-Christian antebellum US racial slavery. It wasn't uncommon for hard-up persons to sell themselves into slavery & buy their freedom later, and manumission was often extremely common.

*I guess a slave could be condemned to death in this way for a crime, but so could any non-citizen, and until the late empire citizens were always a minority of free persons within the empire.

 

[The King]

Well, that wasn't the ancient mentallity it seems.

Conquerors destroyed and mamed and razed and the ones who surrendered were taken as slaves. There was no "form a resistance" or guerilla warfare, necessarily.

Most of this stemmed from the sense of divine providence. The gods deemed it so, and by virtue of that fact, there was no chance of avoiding one's lot in life.

The thing is that there wasn't the same consideration in the antiquity with the civilian as now. There weren't no UNO or no TV to show the world what truly happened (hence the existence of legends and rumors) or to prevent the Romans to deport entire population who dared to oppose them. But there were heroic acts of resistance nonetheless: the Jew (Zelots) revolt in Jerusalem where the temple was razed (and before that there was the first revolt which lead Nabuchodonosor to deport many of them in Babylonia) and the Gallic opposition to Caesar which died with the siege of Alesia.
I can't remember any victorious opposition but I know that Libyan and Nubian tribes were never completely submitted under Egyptian rules and the army always had to let garrisons there to prevent unrest.
Moreover the Romans were never able to conquer Northern England (because of Pict resistance) and had to build a wall to protect themselves. The same is true with the German tribes. Roman Legions crossed the Rhine river but were never able to go far further.
Caesar only conquered Gaul because there were many tribes that never got well together (they were always at war with each others). Most of them only saw their immediate interests and many prefered to ally with the Romans in exchange of gold.
There is a good film entitled Vercingetorix (it's a small production compared to an Hollywoodian one) where one see the whole famillies starving to death in Alesia but they wouldn't eat their horses because they deemed them sacred, so they let them escape (because they couldn't feed them either). A rescuing army could have eradicated the Romans but their were as many chiefs as tribes and none would accept a superior leader, so their attacks were disorganized and without timing, and the Romans could push them back easily (Caesar could have died there).
That's what we now call politics.

 

[Orkin]

Conquerors destroyed and mamed and razed and the ones who surrendered were taken as slaves. There was no "form a resistance" or guerilla warfare, necessarily.

A historical exception would be the battle of Adrianople (378) and the rebellion that surrounded it...

 

[The King]

I wouldn't say slavery is an appreciable condition if you are destined to serve as dinner for the beasts in the arena or if you have to row in a galley.

Several fallacies there - condremned criminals, not slaves*, served as dinner for the arena beasts as a form of fun-to-watch execution, slaves were trained as gladiators and their mortality rate was fairly low. Some slaves were used as galley rowers during the Roman civil war era due to a manpower shortage, but normally all rowers were free men - rowing a galley is a skilled task and free men do it much better. There were of course some miserable jobs for slaves in the ancient world, like the Athenian silver mines. Slavery was generally not a desirable condition, but it was often a transient condition, not like post-Christian antebellum US racial slavery. It wasn't uncommon for hard-up persons to sell themselves into slavery & buy their freedom later, and manumission was often extremely common.

*I guess a slave could be condemned to death in this way for a crime, but so could any non-citizen, and until the late empire citizens were always a minority of free persons within the empire.

Christians suffered a lot under Nero and whole famillies were used as fodder for lions and other beasts of the arena. They weren't criminals but enslaved (as they were probably the first peaceful movement).
The post-Christian racial slavery was not an American "speciality" as the Europe created this racial slavery in the name of superior education and religion. I think the first to suffer were the native American in the hands of Spanish conquistadors (Christoph Collomb was such a slaver). France, Portugal and England also had their responsability (in Asia, Africa and the Middle-East). If I remember well the first African slaves in the US were sold to the settlers by the British (but I may be mistaken).
Anyway we shouldn't disgress too much on the subject. Howard never told of racial slavery. He detailled slavery the way it existed in the antiquity where might makes rights and the feebles are destined to serve the strong.
Moreover he never expressed the idea of a superior race. Conan was a stereotype and was strong because he never succomb to the urban civilization.

 

[Deathdealer]

Christians suffered a lot under Nero and whole famillies were used as fodder for lions and other beasts of the arena. They weren't criminals but enslaved (as they were probably the first peaceful movement).

In Rome they were considered criminals. The fact that Christianity was a popular religion amongst the slaves does not mean that all Christians were slaves. In addition, they weren't all that peaceful. Documents indicate that there was sectarian violence amongst them even then (it even appears in the Bible), as well as accounts of Christians accosting pagans and defiling their shrines and sanctuaries.

 

[Sutek]

...bloody do-gooders...

:lol:

 

[S'mon]

[The post-Christian racial slavery was not an American "speciality" as the Europe created this racial slavery in the name of superior education and religion. I think the first to suffer were the native American in the hands of Spanish conquistadors (Christoph Collomb was such a slaver). France, Portugal and England also had their responsability (in Asia, Africa and the Middle-East). If I remember well the first African slaves in the US were sold to the settlers by the British (but I may be mistaken).

I didn't mean that racially-justified slavery was unique to the USA (though the antebellum USA probably codified & formalised it more than anywhere else) but that it developed primarily in the Americas, north south & central, as a way to continue to justify slavery despite its being regarded as un-Christian and (perhaps more importantly) against the values of the 17th/18th-century Enlightenment - BTW enslavement of whites in the American colonies wasn't outlawed until the early 18th century AIR, though ownership of whites by blacks had been outlawed a couple of decades earlier. Religiously-justified slavery in the Muslim world is a similar phenomena; the need to separate out 'other' groups who it's ok to enslave.
Slavery had died out in England after the Norman conquest, as Saxon slaves became serfs (along w plenty of free Saxons) and it became economically unnecessary, but persisted in the Celtic fringe of Ireland & Scotland into the 16th century, especially in the Scots borders where raiding was often a way of life. The development of the English Caribbean colonies in the 16th century brought a new economic need for slavery for England - initially English whites, mostly 'criminals' (who could just be unfortunate debtors) were used, but they died too quickly in the Caribbean climate, so longer-lived African slaves were used increasingly. Then with the Enlightenment & development of 'universal rights of man' ideas, it became harder to justify slavery, hence the emergence of the racial model where it was ok to eg enslave Africans but not Europeans.

 

[The King]

[The post-Christian racial slavery was not an American "speciality" as the Europe created this racial slavery in the name of superior education and religion. I think the first to suffer were the native American in the hands of Spanish conquistadors (Christoph Collomb was such a slaver). France, Portugal and England also had their responsability (in Asia, Africa and the Middle-East). If I remember well the first African slaves in the US were sold to the settlers by the British (but I may be mistaken).

I didn't mean that racially-justified slavery was unique to the USA (though the antebellum USA probably codified & formalised it more than anywhere else) but that it developed primarily in the Americas, north south & central, as a way to continue to justify slavery despite its being regarded as un-Christian and (perhaps more importantly) against the values of the 17th/18th-century Enlightenment - BTW enslavement of whites in the American colonies wasn't outlawed until the early 18th century AIR, though ownership of whites by blacks had been outlawed a couple of decades earlier. Religiously-justified slavery in the Muslim world is a similar phenomena; the need to separate out 'other' groups who it's ok to enslave.
Slavery had died out in England after the Norman conquest, as Saxon slaves became serfs (along w plenty of free Saxons) and it became economically unnecessary, but persisted in the Celtic fringe of Ireland & Scotland into the 16th century, especially in the Scots borders where raiding was often a way of life. The development of the English Caribbean colonies in the 16th century brought a new economic need for slavery for England - initially English whites, mostly 'criminals' (who could just be unfortunate debtors) were used, but they died too quickly in the Caribbean climate, so longer-lived African slaves were used increasingly. Then with the Enlightenment & development of 'universal rights of man' ideas, it became harder to justify slavery, hence the emergence of the racial model where it was ok to eg enslave Africans but not Europeans.

Excellent summary and I have nothing to add.
Considering the original thread (slavery in the Hyborian Age) I find it funny the way it disgressed on our own history.
By the way (a completely different subject) S'mon: I just visited your site for the first time and find your map truly awesome. I guess you drawn it with Campaign Cartographer. I still have to learn to use it.

 

[S'mon]

By the way (a completely different subject) S'mon: I just visited your site for the first time and find your map truly awesome. I guess you drawn it with Campaign Cartographer. I still have to learn to use it.

Thanks! You mean the Campaign Cart map at the bottom of http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Dungeon/5955/Borderlands.htm

and the big map at http://www.geocities.com/s.t.newman/EAc100.jpg ?

I didn't drew those, a player in one of my earlier campaigns did! I do my 'functional' maps (like the one at the top of the Borderlands page) in good ol' MSPaint! Ugly but it works...

 

[The King]

By the way (a completely different subject) S'mon: I just visited your site for the first time and find your map truly awesome. I guess you drawn it with Campaign Cartographer. I still have to learn to use it.

Thanks! You mean the Campaign Cart map at the bottom of http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Dungeon/5955/Borderlands.htm

and the big map at http://www.geocities.com/s.t.newman/EAc100.jpg ?

I didn't drew those, a player in one of my earlier campaigns did! I do my 'functional' maps (like the one at the top of the Borderlands page) in good ol' MSPaint! Ugly but it works...

The colour map is stunning and your B/W is not bad too.
Perhaps you and your apply could apply for the cartographer job Mongoose Old Bear has just proposed. :wink:

 

[S'mon]

Perhaps you and your apply could apply for the cartographer job Mongoose Old Bear has just proposed. :wink:

Knowing Mongoose I expect they pay £12K or somesuch princely sum? :twisted: I used to make £25K until my contract ended last year and they didn't renew...

 

[The King]

Perhaps you and your apply could apply for the cartographer job Mongoose Old Bear has just proposed. :wink:

Knowing Mongoose I expect they pay £12K or somesuch princely sum? :twisted: I used to make £25K until my contract ended last year and they didn't renew...

No very much indeed but I never heard one could strike it rich in the rpg industry. It's exactly the same low salary for translation (4 to 5x lower than what is usually applied).
Don't you know the (British) saying : For honour, queen and country!