"I have been called worst things." Was Davos a slave trader?

[Maharbbal]

I love the character of Davos. He is so relatable. No crazy powers, no mad ambition, no overly complicated plans. He thinks and behaves like a normal yet ever-decent man. He is the proverbial ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances.

But is Davos hiding something from us? 

At first sight, his background is not mysterious at all: he was a smuggler, plain and simple. Illegal trafficking was his job from a very early age and he kept at it. Everybody knows that and he famously paid the price for his crimes against the crown.

Davos actually often reminisces about the good ol' days. We quickly learn that he was a moderately successful medium-scale smuggler. Time and again, he recalls which techniques he used on land or at sea of evade the custom officers. He also seems to enjoy remembering everything related to seamanship: the type of boat, the rowing techniques, the best routes, etc.

And that's all fair and good, except that being a good seaman and not getting caught is only half of the smuggler's job . The other half is being a merchant. A special merchant, for sure, but a merchant nonetheless. To be even a half-decent smuggler, you need to bring the right stuff to the right place at the right time, you need to find and cultivate the proper contacts, you need to keep yourself informed about market conditions, fashions and fads.

And that is totally absent from Davos' recollection. He never remembers a deal, a Westerosi trade partner or the smallest bit of information about any market of any sort. 

So here is the question: what did Davos buy and sell?

A priori, the most plausible answer appears rather simple: eastern luxuries, spices, lace from Tyrosh, jewelries, gold cloth from Braavos, etc. Davos is known for his contacts in Essos, both in Tyrosh and Lys. We even learn that the early Targaryan kings created taxes on the import of expensive items and that in the years preceding the tenure of Little Finger as Master of Coins the performance of the custom administration was dismal -- implying large-scale contraband.

Except that several elements conspire against this interpretation. First, there is the fact that the performance of real-world medieval customs tended to be very very poor. Bulk commodities could be relatively easily taxed, but expensive luxuries were pretty much untouched. Back in the 18th century, when the French and the British governments tried to limit the entry of Indian cotton cloth in their respective countries, it generated contraband at such a level that entire border and coastal provinces slipped away from central control. It is said that smugglers ruled Kent, in South West England, for most of the period, while the Northern French coast became know as the Coast of Silk. The only way to limit illegal trade seems to have been a brutally radical option. The Egyptian Mamluks and the Chinese Qing adopted this policy but few other dared. Basically, to prevent any smuggling, they "cleared" the coast of its inhabitants. Villages, towns and even ancient cities were destroyed. Beyrouth, capital of modern Lebanon, was pretty much raised to the ground so as to make sure that all the spice trade would go through the heavily policed city of Alexandria.

Nothing that radical appears to have happened in Westeros so it is unlikely that the tariffs on the import of eastern luxuries were ever enforced in any meaningful way. As a consequence, it is unlikely that it was ever necessary to smuggle eastern luxuries.

The dialogue between Davos and Wyman Manderly gives us a clue about what type of trade the old smuggler may have been involved in. The lord of White Harbor reproaches Davos to have cost him a large amount of money over the years. This is unlikely to relate to taxes levied on luxuries as this type of excises are collected by the Iron Throne, not the local lords. So we are talking about something else, something at the other end of the spectrum: commodities.

Westeros is a place where lords seems to have a lot of control over the agrarian economy. For instance, we see twice a lord of Winterfell deciding what is the proportion of the harvest that should be kept for winter. Undoubtedly, it implies that the main lords have a say over and potentially straight ownership of a large portion of the agricultural surplus. This implies that lords store and sell essential foodstuff at will (we see Little Finger doing just this, but the granaries predate him so he did not invent the system). Of course, lords will act according to their best interest, trying to sell only when prices are high and, if need be, to manipulate the markets so as to maximise their profit.

That's when Davos comes in. Selling wheat in times of famine just before the local lord opens his reserves would be quite a coup and it would fit with the Manderly assertion that Davos has cost him a lot of money. Except, why doesn't Davos ever think about these epic moments? I mean, I, for one; would love to read about them.

One possibility is that these moments never happened and Manderly was just pretending to be upset as a token of good faith towards the Freys in the audience. Alternatively, Davos did trafic commodities but any such memory has been repressed along with everything trade-related so as to bury a deep trauma.

Let's not mince words, good old sweet Davos may have been a slave trader. Think about it:

1. his only known trade partners were from Tyrosh and Lys, two cities in which slavery is a touchstone of the local society.
2. in the books, he keeps smuggling people in and out of places (Edric Storm, Melissandre, Rickon Stark). Not things, people!
3. while in Sisterton, lord Borrell openly admits to be dealing with smugglers, but even though Davos has "worked" on the island before, he does not seem to have been  in contact with the lord. The reason for this distance remains unclear, but one may assume that Davos was not a regular smuggler. Actually, during their conversion, Davos remarks that he has been called worst things than "smuggler". The lord assumes this is to be interpreted in the light of the current political situation so he completes Davos' sentence by calling him a traitor, a rebel and a turn-cloak. But Davos may have be thinking about something else entirely. He may have remembered the time or times when he was outted as a slaver.

Let's be frank: it hurts to think of Davos as a slave trader. He is a good decent god-fearing man. He wants to save children, he opposes religious extremism, he is also a conciliator to the core. He is the last character one would expect to be involved in this vile line of business. Yet, isn't it also exactly the sort of things our author loves writing about, "the human heart in conflict with itself"?

So what? Davos may have been a slaver, but how does that affect the story downstream?

I must admit I'm not very good at that game. It's unlikely that any significant character was part of Davos' human cargo and will take revenge on him. It might put him on a collision course with some of the most anti-slavery characters in the story, specifically Danerys and the Braavosi. Stannis may be forced to get rid of his Hand to placate either of them. Davos may also accept a suicide-mission to wash away the taint and redeem himself. I can't say I find any of these compelling.

What do you think of this theory? Is our author just not interested in trade matters or is there more to his silence? And, if Davos was a slave trader, how does it affect your feelings towards him and how do you think it will impact the story in the upcoming books?

 

[saltedmalted]

Let me get my tinfoil hat.

[Lady Dacey]

@Maharbbal this really should be in the general forum, it would definitely draw much more attention there, and your spectulations deal with the story itself and not the overarching universe of Planetos. 

[Lady Dacey]

8 hours ago, Maharbbal said:

So here is the question: what did Davos buy and sell?

Onions!

I'm joking, but also not joking. Smuggling probably is widespread and Davos was one amongst many untill he took the onions to Storm's End.

8 hours ago, Maharbbal said:

The lord of White Harbor reproaches Davos to have cost him a large amount of money over the years. This is unlikely to relate to taxes levied on luxuries as this type of excises are collected by the Iron Throne, not the local lords.

We don't really know that, and the way Lord Marderly talks (not only to Davos, but since ACOK) really has me believing he taxes every bit of goods that come to the North through White Harbor. 

[Jay21]

15 hours ago, Maharbbal said:

What do you think of this theory?

I don't know if Davos the slaver would be as compassionate towards Edric Storm and Shireen if he were involved long in the flesh trade. I think that the slaving live would harden anyone.

At the same time, what other contraband than slaves do we know of? 

If it wasn't trading contraband he could have been contravening tariffs and port fees and the like... I wouldn't rule out slavery though. it would provide an interesting twist when eventually revealed. 

Would fingertips be all Stannis took for slaving though?

[Nathan Stark]

I doubt it. Davos likely smuggled gold, lace and other luxuries as mentioned in the op. If he was a slave trader, that would have been brought up pretty quickly, as Stannis would almost certainly have known. It would also be a pretty cheap reveal in my opinion, done only for shock value. It would be George saying to Davos's near universal fanbase, "oh, you all thought Davos was a good guy? He's actually a slaver! Hah hah!" It's not George's style, since his shock twists are built up long before they are fully revealed and generally contrubute something to the story beyond mere shock value. Davos secretly being a slaver would just register as a mean spirited and nihilistic detail that was sprung on us for no real payoff.

[Alyn Oakenfist]

12 hours ago, Jay21 said:

At the same time, what other contraband than slaves do we know of? 

We know that all luxury goods are heavily taxed ever since Jaehaerys the First, so my bet would be he was selling cheap spices and luxury items by circumventing fees.

[Jay21]

11 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

We know that all luxury goods are heavily taxed ever since Jaehaerys the First, so my bet would be he was selling cheap spices and luxury items by circumventing fees.

Yeah, that seems most likely.  I like the slavery angle, but I don't think it would bear out. 

[Maharbbal]

On 3/4/2021 at 12:39 PM, Alyn Oakenfist said:

We know that all luxury goods are heavily taxed ever since Jaehaerys the First, so my bet would be he was selling cheap spices and luxury items by circumventing fees.

I agree with you. And considering how much of a bleeding-heart liberal our author is, it would make sense that he would make the best king of his story tax the rich to fund the realm.

But...

Rego Draz -- Jaeharys' Master of Coins -- was uniquely competent and well-connected. He might have make the whole thing work through his contacts across the see and his knowledge of the merchant communtiy.

But Davos was roaming the seas long after Rego's death. As far as we know, there was no custom office with any teeth anywhere in the realm. We never hear of a single royal galley going about to check for contraband. We never hear of any enquiry, of any mainland lord mingling with smugglers or of any merchant being punished.

What's more is that smugglers, in real life, tend to develop amazing networks of support. Local fishermen help them carry their stuff to shore, merchants give them fake papers and carry their ware to clients, tavern keepers serve as go-betweens. Do we ever hear of such characters related to Davos or indeed anyone else?

And when the government attempts to crack down on smugglers, people have a tendency to rise up in revolt. Again, do we ever hear about any such anti-tax rebellion?

Finally, even rich people hate paying taxes, and when they re forced to do so, they loudly complain about it. Do they ever do that in the books? 

So it seems to me that, going by what the books tell us:

• the tax system in Westeros seems to be light indeed 
• smuggling seems to be relatively mild as an issue in Westeros
• Davos does not seem connected to any existing smuggling ring

I realise that I'm mostly arguing based on silences and we could just as easily say that George simply does not are about these details. Sure. But what if he does?

[The hairy bear]

Davos thinks to himself a few times that the deal that Stannis got him was fair (a knighthood for saving Storm's End from starvation, cutting his fingers for smuggling). Since we know that the punishment for poachers is death, we can be sure that Davos was not involved in slave traffic.

He also mentions at some point that the black brothers at Eastwach had been one of his usual trading partners in his days as smuggler. And of course, they would have never traded with slaves.