George's stance on slavery

[Alden Rothack]

1 hour ago, House Cambodia said:

I agree with your overall analysis, but on this point, no. The industrial revolution created huge numbers of jobs in coal mines as well as the 'dark satanic mills'. The 'automation' of the mills killed off the cottage industries, but they were still voracious consumers of labour. Miners and factory workers, many of them children, were not slaves, but the quality of their lives was barely better. I brought up that stat in this thread or another than, that Friedrich Engel's study of the working classes in early 20th C Manchester showed that the average life expectancy was barely 20.

it may in fact have been a good deal worse particularly in the cities

in fact some sources suggest that the quality of life for most working people dropped sharply as more and more of them came to live in the cities, in fact on average its been suggested that the urban rich died sooner than most rural poor

[House Cambodia]

2 hours ago, Alden Rothack said:

it may in fact have been a good deal worse particularly in the cities

in fact some sources suggest that the quality of life for most working people dropped sharply as more and more of them came to live in the cities, in fact on average its been suggested that the urban rich died sooner than most rural poor

Quite so. Given the absence of alternative jobs or lives for the working class poor, it was not really any better than slavery. Hence, "You have nothing to lose but your CHAINS"

[Alden Rothack]

16 hours ago, House Cambodia said:

Quite so. Given the absence of alternative jobs or lives for the working class poor, it was not really any better than slavery. Hence, "You have nothing to lose but your CHAINS"

Unfortunately revolutions tended to have the opposite effect

[SeanF]

On 5/3/2024 at 8:23 AM, Ring3r said:

I think it's pretty simple, honestly.  GRRM has read a LOT of history, and he's aware that, in real life, every culture, from every race, has practiced slavery....and more often than not, against their own people.  He's also aware that it was the norm, culturally, up until the industrial revolution....which hasn't happened yet on Planetos.  The industrial revolution resulted in enough automation that mass labor was no longer needed.  That's what stopped slavery....it's not like people somehow just got "better."  Never have.  Never will.

He's just writing a realistic story.  Slavery was a fact of life, for everyone.  Hell, the word "slavery" refers to the Slavs.  That's where the word came from.  On Planetos, the only place even close to automation is Braavos, with their shipyards....and they happen to be the most anti-slave place in the world...GRRM knows his history.

 

 

Industrialisation got going in regions that hadn’t had slavery for centuries.

While slavery has been common in many parts of the world, the kind of chatteldom that is practised in Western Essos is pretty unusual.  Only a few societies, like Sparta or Haiti, have had such disparity in numbers between slave and free.

[Alden Rothack]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Industrialisation got going in regions that hadn’t had slavery for centuries.

While slavery has been common in many parts of the world, the kind of chatteldom that is practised in Western Essos is pretty unusual.  Only a few societies, like Sparta or Haiti, have had such disparity in numbers between slave and free.

Sparta at least had so many slaves because most were owned by the state, those who benefitted from their labour were not allowed to free them even if they wanted to.

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, Alden Rothack said:

Unfortunately revolutions tended to have the opposite effect

I think that depends upon the Revolution.  Communism was a blind alley.  The Chinese, Cambodian, and Russian Communists were more enthusiastic killers than the people they replaced.

Revolutions such as those in France or 17th century England, were brutal, but beneficial in the long run.

The US Revolution set the USA on the path to world hegemon.  

[Alden Rothack]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I think that depends upon the Revolution.  Communism was a blind alley.  The Chinese, Cambodian, and Russian Communists were more enthusiastic killers than the people they replaced.

Revolutions such as those in France or 17th century England, were brutal, but beneficial in the long run.

The US Revolution set the USA on the path to world hegemon.  

the English Civil War and the French Revolution were the result not the cause of progress and did in fact in both cases set it back centuries, the US Revolution was good for the local elites but bad for everyone else especially the local people

while all three countries became or regained greatness afterwards they did not do so directly because of the revolutions.

[Ring3r]

12 hours ago, SeanF said:

Industrialisation got going in regions that hadn’t had slavery for centuries.

While slavery has been common in many parts of the world, the kind of chatteldom that is practised in Western Essos is pretty unusual.  Only a few societies, like Sparta or Haiti, have had such disparity in numbers between slave and free.

Which regions are you talking about that hadn't had it for centuries prior to industrialization?  Honest question, not trying to be controversial.

[Ring3r]

On 5/3/2024 at 4:03 AM, House Cambodia said:

The industrial revolution created huge numbers of jobs in coal mines as well as the 'dark satanic mills'. The 'automation' of the mills killed off the cottage industries, but they were still voracious consumers of labour. Miners and factory workers, many of them children, were not slaves, but the quality of their lives was barely better. I brought up that stat in this thread or another than, that Friedrich Engel's study of the working classes in early 20th C Manchester showed that the average life expectancy was barely 20.

I don't disagree with anything there, except life expectancy.  There certainly was a transitional period.....as things advanced....one industry after another stopped using slavery.  It wasn't like....poof, gone.  And yeah, child labor was a huge transitional thing.....almost all worldwide cultures were used to using kids for labor....on the family farm, etc.  So they could learn a trade, etc.  I wouldn't say that was abusive.....and that still happens on farms.  Teaching the kiddos how to do things.

It was a very transitional period.  The public mindset on kids was 'well they need to learn how to do stuff' and that didn't translate well to an industrial environment, where the kid wasn't going to inherit the family farm.  Even today....rural areas all over the world, even in the US....parents are teaching kids how to take care of animals, farm, etc.  That's certainly not slavery, or abusive at all.

On a family farm.....it would be wildly irresponsible to NOT start teaching your kid how to take care of things.  On a corporate-owned farm.....yeah no, totally unacceptable to use child labor.  It's a matter of scale and inheritance.

As for the average life expectancy statistic....I have to disagree.  That statistic is almost entirely useless, due to infant mortality rates prior to antibiotics.  If a kid made it past 5, they essentially had modern life expectancy.  A lot of kids died from childhood disease, or during birth...and all those statistics drag the overall life-rate down...which is why couples normally had 5-7 kids back then.  But....if people made it to adolescence....pretty much normal life expectancy.  Maybe a few years less on average, but not all that different than now.

Edited May 4 by Ring3r

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, Ring3r said:

Which regions are you talking about that hadn't had it for centuries prior to industrialization?  Honest question, not trying to be controversial.

North Western Europe.

[Alester Florent]

6 hours ago, Ring3r said:

As for the average life expectancy statistic....I have to disagree.  That statistic is almost entirely useless, due to infant mortality rates prior to antibiotics.  If a kid made it past 5, they essentially had modern life expectancy.  A lot of kids died from childhood disease, or during birth...and all those statistics drag the overall life-rate down...which is why couples normally had 5-7 kids back then.  But....if people made it to adolescence....pretty much normal life expectancy.  Maybe a few years less on average, but not all that different than now.

There can still be some merit in comparing average life expectancy across populations provided it's gathered in the same way, because it's telling us something even if the unadjusted output figure is in itself completely unrepresentative (which, you're right, it is, and this is a perennial bugbear of mine).

If (uncorrected) life expectancy in rural Cheshire was say 25 and the same in Manchester at the same time was 20, it's safe to assume that the quality of life in Manchester was lower, whether this be down to diet, water and air quality, unsafe working practices, violent crime, or all of the above (it's all of the above). Ordinarily I would assume that city-dwellers probably have slightly better access to medical care, but given that for the period we're talking about medicine - before antibiotics, and mostly before Pasteur and Lister -  was almost universally awful, the greater availability of doctors may actually have been another factor making things worse for the city-dwellers (especially women having children, who were generally much better off with a local midwife than a doctor).

[Alden Rothack]

9 hours ago, Ring3r said:

I don't disagree with anything there, except life expectancy.  There certainly was a transitional period.....as things advanced....one industry after another stopped using slavery.  It wasn't like....poof, gone.  And yeah, child labor was a huge transitional thing.....almost all worldwide cultures were used to using kids for labor....on the family farm, etc.  So they could learn a trade, etc.  I wouldn't say that was abusive.....and that still happens on farms.  Teaching the kiddos how to do things.

It was a very transitional period.  The public mindset on kids was 'well they need to learn how to do stuff' and that didn't translate well to an industrial environment, where the kid wasn't going to inherit the family farm.  Even today....rural areas all over the world, even in the US....parents are teaching kids how to take care of animals, farm, etc.  That's certainly not slavery, or abusive at all.

On a family farm.....it would be wildly irresponsible to NOT start teaching your kid how to take care of things.  On a corporate-owned farm.....yeah no, totally unacceptable to use child labor.  It's a matter of scale and inheritance.

As for the average life expectancy statistic....I have to disagree.  That statistic is almost entirely useless, due to infant mortality rates prior to antibiotics.  If a kid made it past 5, they essentially had modern life expectancy.  A lot of kids died from childhood disease, or during birth...and all those statistics drag the overall life-rate down...which is why couples normally had 5-7 kids back then.  But....if people made it to adolescence....pretty much normal life expectancy.  Maybe a few years less on average, but not all that different than now.

Nope, even if you discount everyone under 10 its still much lower, if you made it to adulthood (which nearly a third of people did not) you only had a 1 in 10 chance of making it to sixty, improving infant mortality didn't directly help, the odds of making it past your sixties were still very poor, the pension system was built on the fact until at least the 1990s.

3 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

There can still be some merit in comparing average life expectancy across populations provided it's gathered in the same way, because it's telling us something even if the unadjusted output figure is in itself completely unrepresentative (which, you're right, it is, and this is a perennial bugbear of mine).

If (uncorrected) life expectancy in rural Cheshire was say 25 and the same in Manchester at the same time was 20, it's safe to assume that the quality of life in Manchester was lower, whether this be down to diet, water and air quality, unsafe working practices, violent crime, or all of the above (it's all of the above). Ordinarily I would assume that city-dwellers probably have slightly better access to medical care, but given that for the period we're talking about medicine - before antibiotics, and mostly before Pasteur and Lister -  was almost universally awful, the greater availability of doctors may actually have been another factor making things worse for the city-dwellers (especially women having children, who were generally much better off with a local midwife than a doctor).

a significant reason for the decline was the banning of midwives in some countries including England. a law which was often ignored in rural areas but enforced in cities

[Ring3r]

17 hours ago, SeanF said:

North Western Europe.

Only on their home soil though, not in their territories.  Essentially, they outlawed enslaving their own people, but not others.  They still relied heavily on forced labor.

AFAIAA, France was the first country (that still exists) to ban it....in the early 1300s....except the ban only applied on French home soil - French territories continued slavery until the 1800s, shipping slave-produced goods and crops back to France.  So, that's not outlawing...that's outsourcing.

Western european nations only outlawed slavery piece-meal after that, with bans against the enslavement of specific groups, while it was still permitted against others.  Some of them outlawed it on their home soil but not on their colonies, moving forced labor to where the core citizenry wouldn't have to see it, following France's lead.

Later, most of Europe banned the slave trade in the late 1700s to early 1800s, but not slavery itself - so slavery was still legal, you just couldn't buy slaves at market anymore.  They didn't abolish it and it still existed for quite a while longer in their territories.  The United States did the same thing - the slave trade was banned in the US in 1808 but obviously US slavery continued through the end of the US civil war.

The Western world only started the overall systematic dismantling of slavery in the mid 1800s.

So....slavery showed a slow decline and eventual ban by the Western world, from the 1700s through the mid-late 1800s.....the exact same timeline as the slow rise of the industrial revolution.

 

Honestly, you can make a pretty compelling argument that the Western world is still heavily dependent on slavery and we never actually did anything but outsource it.

It is still going strong in parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa....they make our phones and mine the lithium and other metals for our "green" batteries under horrific conditions, all driven by demand from the industrialized world.

I suppose that's my happy thought for the day

[SeanF]

I had understood your argument to be that industrialisation meant that a large slave workforce was no longer required.

However, slavery had vanished from the domestic economies of Western Europe, long before industrialisation, and long before their involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  There’s a very long period, beginning in the mid-12th century, where Western Europe abandons slavery, followed by a period, beginning about 200 years later, where serfdom gradually disappears.  The Venetians continue to trade and use slaves in their Eastern colonies, but they’re atypical.

Slavery in the British and French and Dutch colonies only starts becoming important in the latter half of the 17th century.

Edited May 6 by SeanF

[Ring3r]

On 5/6/2024 at 2:06 AM, SeanF said:

I had understood your argument to be that industrialisation meant that a large slave workforce was no longer required.

However, slavery had vanished from the domestic economies of Western Europe, long before industrialisation, and long before their involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  There’s a very long period, beginning in the mid-12th century, where Western Europe abandons slavery, followed by a period, beginning about 200 years later, where serfdom gradually disappears.  The Venetians continue to trade and use slaves in their Eastern colonies, but they’re atypical.

Slavery in the British and French and Dutch colonies only starts becoming important in the latter half of the 17th century.

That is my argument

True, pockets of Europe banned it from their domestic economies, particularly when nations looked inward and the world became more isolationist, in the time period you're talking about.  But I would call serfdom a form of slavery, and that continued on in most (but not all) places for a significant portion of time, legal or not.  Very shortly after some places banned that...slavery re-emerged, with it being used in colonial environments, away from the homeland.  The North Atlantic slave trade was not the only source of slaves...just one of the more recent ones.

Slavery spiked again, during the 17th and 18th century, as the Industrial Revolution began putting pressure on non-industrialized industries (farming and mining)....industrialization eventually won out and now slavery is illegal in all of the western world.

It's spiking again now - because we've found ourselves in a situation where the most sought-after materials (rare earth metals, etc) happen to be located in the unindustrialized parts of the world.....so demand for those materials has resulted in a dramatic rise of slavery in those parts of the world.

In any case....the whole topic is extremely complex and ever shifting.  The general trend has been that slavery disappears from areas that industrialize - though it's often just moved somewhere else.

I think GRRM understands that - it's one of the reasons why Dany is having such a hard time eliminating it in areas that she takes over - there's no alternative yet.  Westeros is actually very much like the areas of Western Europe that you're talking about - they've outlawed slavery and they're quite isolationist.  They don't quite have serfdom....though the smallfolk do seem to be forced to give over a very large portion of their goods to the cities, and the concept of all the wildlife belonging to the local King or Lord still exists, which cuts the people off from a readily available source of meat.  And the Free Cities (apart from Braavos, which was founded by slaves) are free in name only.  Their own citizens might not be slaves, but they obviously have no problem with other people bringing slaves into their country - very similar to most places in Europe from ~1300-1700.  I think GRRM has done an excellent job of portraying slavery in a very realistic way.

I really wish we had a better picture of the culture (past and present) of the Children of the Forest.  They're sort of the indigenous-population analog in GRRM's story.  In the Americas, prior to white people, slavery was widely practiced - tribes would war, and the victor would keep the women and children as slaves.  It was incredibly common (though not universal, some tribes did not practice it at all.)  I wonder if the Children have a similarly checkered past?  Thus far in the story, we've kind of been presented with the idea of the Children of the Forest being....just completely unified.  It would be much more interesting if there were competing factions.

Edited May 8 by Ring3r