Daenerys Mistakes in Slaver's Bay

[Darth Sidious]

On 5/10/2021 at 12:15 PM, Widowmaker 811 said:

Meereen and Slaver’s Bay is a work-in-progress. It is way too early to judge.  The liberation of millions of slave is a social change of such a scale that has never been attempted before. Daenerys is keenly intelligent and very able.  If anyone can do the job, it will be her.  I would not trust any other ruler to lead a social change of this magnitude.  

Agreed, it is a work in progress.  It’s the biggest project of humanity and it has just started. It’s a wave of freedom which will spread throughout Essos.  

[Jaenara Belarys]

14 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

I think she just didn't want to fight a war and was hoping they'd change their minds or something. But yeah.

"change their minds". If she hoped that would happen, she's dumber than I thought. 

[Loose Bolt]

13 hours ago, Prince Rhaego Targaryen said:

Agreed, it is a work in progress.  It’s the biggest project of humanity and it has just started. It’s a wave of freedom which will spread throughout Essos.  

I agree only if Dany and her dragons and her descendants stay in Essos and keep fighting against slavery at least next couple hundred years and never go to Westeros. After all Dothraki had been slavers hundreds of years and "Free Cities" thousands of years. So if Dany leaves that area slavery as a phenomenon will return and anything that Dany tried to do to stop that will become void. Actually only thing that will chance is that some ex-slaves will become masters and some ex-masters will be slaved by those new lords. But slavery as a business will survive and prosper.

[Jaenara Belarys]

8 minutes ago, Loose Bolt said:

I agree only if Dany and her dragons and her descendants stay in Essos and keep fighting against slavery at least next couple hundred years and never go to Westeros. After all Dothraki had been slavers hundreds of years and "Free Cities" thousands of years. So if Dany leaves that area slavery as a phenomenon will return and anything that Dany tried to do to stop that will become void. Actually only thing that will chance is that some ex-slaves will become masters and some ex-masters will be slaved by those new lords. But slavery as a business will survive and prosper.

It'll take decades to destroy the slavery. There's no point to staying. Take the troops, take the gold, take the food and run to Westeros. 

[Colonel Green]

3 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

I agree only if Dany and her dragons and her descendants stay in Essos and keep fighting against slavery at least next couple hundred years and never go to Westeros. After all Dothraki had been slavers hundreds of years and "Free Cities" thousands of years. So if Dany leaves that area slavery as a phenomenon will return and anything that Dany tried to do to stop that will become void. Actually only thing that will chance is that some ex-slaves will become masters and some ex-masters will be slaved by those new lords. But slavery as a business will survive and prosper.

That doesn't accord with history at all.  Destroy the institutions that support slavery and there is no reason to assume it will come back.

[Jaenara Belarys]

21 minutes ago, Colonel Green said:

That doesn't accord with history at all.  Destroy the institutions that support slavery and there is no reason to assume it will come back.

Maybe if you could indoctrinate the kids, but they can't do that unless they have them from birth. And it's too 1984ish. That book was a strange read. 

[Universal Sword Donor]

On 5/7/2021 at 3:07 PM, Jaenara Belarys said:

Oh. That's true too. But she does need experience.  What do you think about what I said?

What experience did Jahaerys or Aegon I have?

 

[Rose of Red Lake]

8 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

That doesn't accord with history at all.  Destroy the institutions that support slavery and there is no reason to assume it will come back.

Huh? If this were true, slavery would have stopped with feudalism after the ancient world, and never come back.

Maybe it just moves to a different location under different economic circumstances?

[Rose of Red Lake]

12 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

I agree only if Dany and her dragons and her descendants stay in Essos and keep fighting against slavery at least next couple hundred years and never go to Westeros. After all Dothraki had been slavers hundreds of years and "Free Cities" thousands of years. So if Dany leaves that area slavery as a phenomenon will return and anything that Dany tried to do to stop that will become void. Actually only thing that will chance is that some ex-slaves will become masters and some ex-masters will be slaved by those new lords. But slavery as a business will survive and prosper.

Wait so burning some people/cities then promptly leaving........... isn't actually gonna work? Color me surprised.

[SeanF]

16 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

I agree only if Dany and her dragons and her descendants stay in Essos and keep fighting against slavery at least next couple hundred years and never go to Westeros. After all Dothraki had been slavers hundreds of years and "Free Cities" thousands of years. So if Dany leaves that area slavery as a phenomenon will return and anything that Dany tried to do to stop that will become void. Actually only thing that will chance is that some ex-slaves will become masters and some ex-masters will be slaved by those new lords. But slavery as a business will survive and prosper.

IMHO, the cornerstone that supports slavery in the Western half of Essos is Volantis, the regional superpower.  Volantis is the big brother that the slaver elites can call upon to put down rebellion.  Revolution in that country is now in the air, and it would do a lot to undermine the institution. Which is not to say that sweetness and light will follow.  I've no doubt that rebel slaves would take very cruel revenge on their masters and their families. But, the masters will have lost their monopoly of violence.

[Colonel Green]

18 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

Maybe if you could indoctrinate the kids, but they can't do that unless they have them from birth. 

What in history would make you think that was necessary?

Look at the abolition of slavery in the western world, or in a place like Haiti, which is perhaps the better comparison since that involved the violent overthrow of the slave state rather than a process of gradual abolition while leaving the overall economic/political structure in tact.

 

[Nathan Stark]

On 5/12/2021 at 12:07 PM, Loose Bolt said:

I agree only if Dany and her dragons and her descendants stay in Essos and keep fighting against slavery at least next couple hundred years and never go to Westeros. After all Dothraki had been slavers hundreds of years and "Free Cities" thousands of years. So if Dany leaves that area slavery as a phenomenon will return and anything that Dany tried to do to stop that will become void. Actually only thing that will chance is that some ex-slaves will become masters and some ex-masters will be slaved by those new lords. But slavery as a business will survive and prosper.

Dany doesn't have to stay in Essos. At this point, the anti-slavery uprising she started has its own momentum. It really isn't dependent on her alone anymore.

[SeanF]

29 minutes ago, Nathan Stark said:

Dany doesn't have to stay in Essos. At this point, the anti-slavery uprising she started has its own momentum. It really isn't dependent on her alone anymore.

I think that it's very much outside the control of one person, now.  It's why I compare the situation in Essos with that in South America, the Caribbean, and Europe between 1790 - 1830, and I'm sure we'll see the same mixed results,  The overall outcome may well be positive in the long run, but we will see local strongmen and tyrants emerge, and people will die in revolutions who do not deserve to die.

[Jaenara Belarys]

15 hours ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

What experience did Jahaerys or Aegon I have?

 

True....

3 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

What in history would make you think that was necessary?

 

In order to get rid of it, The parents probably teach their kids that slavery is A OK () so.....

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Wait so burning some people/cities then promptly leaving........... isn't actually gonna work? Color me surprised.

Well if you burnt the cities, then people would just reclaim it after a bit. So no it's not going to work. 

[Loose Bolt]

1 hour ago, Nathan Stark said:

Dany doesn't have to stay in Essos. At this point, the anti-slavery uprising she started has its own momentum. It really isn't dependent on her alone anymore.

But revolutions seldom stay "pure" or those people who will gain power during or after those revolutions will be as bad and sometimes even worse than people who lost their power, property and sometimes even their lives. For instance revolutions in France 1789 and in Russia 1917 might have wiped out old ruling regimes but new rulers of those countries were sometimes more merciless and bloodthirsty than old regimes. After all best book about what usually happens during and after revolutions is Animal Farm written by George Orwell.

[Jaenara Belarys]

On 5/13/2021 at 11:04 AM, Loose Bolt said:

But revolutions seldom stay "pure" or those people who will gain power during or after those revolutions will be as bad and sometimes even worse than people who lost their power, property and sometimes even their lives. For instance revolutions in France 1789 and in Russia 1917 might have wiped out old ruling regimes but new rulers of those countries were sometimes more merciless and bloodthirsty than old regimes. After all best book about what usually happens during and after revolutions is Animal Farm written by George Orwell.

I realize all this is true, and Dany probably knows this but she should leave. Bring them to Westeros when the wars to come are finished. Gods know that Westeros needs more people, it'll be a depopulated wasteland at the rate it's going. 

[Colonel Green]

On 5/13/2021 at 2:44 PM, Jaenara Belarys said:

In order to get rid of it, The parents probably teach their kids that slavery is A OK () so.....

The population of Slaver's Bay is mostly slaves, so I doubt they think slavery is fine.

Again, look at Haiti, or other western countries that abolished slavery; it didn't come back.

[SeanF]

10 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

The population of Slaver's Bay is mostly slaves, so I doubt they think slavery is fine.

Again, look at Haiti, or other western countries that abolished slavery; it didn't come back.

The other important thing about the Haitian example is that it acted as a dire warning to slavers about what could happen to them if they failed to reform. A big spur to the final abolition of slavery in the British Empire was a Jamaican revolt in 1831/32 which was suppressed, but which convinced many in Parliament that slavery had to go.  Liberals and moderate conservatives can only persuade hardliners of the need to reform if they can point to examples of societies that failed to reform.  At this stage, the mindset of the Essosi slavers is still that they can hold down their slaves by force and reinstate the system where it has been overthrown.

[Rose of Red Lake]

When GRRM talks about this plot he's mentioning things like the U.S. nuclear arsenal. If he goes for a historical example he talks about Obama dropping bombs on ISIS. Not the Haitian revolution. 

It's always about the limited power of WMD to build a successful society, and how the lesson is that ruling is about more than the power to destroy. The focus is on the aftermath and what laws Dany comes up with. If it's just bombs away, then run away, she deserves to fail.

[Colonel Green]

10 hours ago, SeanF said:

The other important thing about the Haitian example is that it acted as a dire warning to slavers about what could happen to them if they failed to reform. A big spur to the final abolition of slavery in the British Empire was a Jamaican revolt in 1831/32 which was suppressed, but which convinced many in Parliament that slavery had to go.  Liberals and moderate conservatives can only persuade hardliners of the need to reform if they can point to examples of societies that failed to reform.  At this stage, the mindset of the Essosi slavers is still that they can hold down their slaves by force and reinstate the system where it has been overthrown.

That would be relevant if we were talking about a process of legislative reform, but that isn't what's happening in Slaver's Bay.

Indeed, the counter-reaction to Dany's abolition campaign is akin to the French attempt to reassert control over Haiti.  Which attempt failed, and slavery in Haiti was no more.

And I suspect the endgame in Slaver's Bay is going to be similar.  Dany is going to bring fire and blood to the whole master class, and there won't be any power structure left to try to reestablish slavery again.  Whatever happens after will be for the freedmen to sort out.  The argument some were making here was that the freedmen would automatically recreate slavery, and historically there's no reason to think that's the case.