Is Dany's no slavery rule really the best for Planetos

[Stoned Dragon]

I'm working on my PhD in American History so I am about to nerd out SO HARD in this post (fair warning)

I admit that Dany is trying to do the right thing with ending slavery, but is Planetos^tm ready for her changing of ways?

In our world slavery was only stamped out after

• (In Britain) it became more seperated from the economy, the Industrial Revolution meant that slaves weren't as in high demand as they were before; machines could do things faster. Parlimentary reforms, slave revolts and religious groups also contributed.
  
• Civil War in America abolished slavery there, but it was the industrialized​ North that led the way to end slavery, because unlike the south they could do without slaves.
  

In both cases the use of machines are what helped make slavery obsolete, but the world of ASoIaF is at most advanced to the level of medieval technology. They wouldn't even know what to make of a machine if one appeared in their world. So is the world really ready for the ending of slavery, which might damage global economy? Unlike here they won't have machines to fulfill the void, and for the first generation they'll have a mass of people that don't know how to do anything aside from what they were taught.

I do apologize for the short post, I wanted to add more but I couldn't explain it clearly enough.

Slavery didn't end in Britain because of the Industrial Revolution, although that helped. England itself had always had a relatively small slave population, with most of its participation in the slave trade directed towards feeding slaves into its colonies in the Caribbean and the American South where labor was less plentiful and the profit margins weren't large enough to sustain a paid workforce and make sugar or rice cultivation and transport profitable. When England abandoned the Slave Trade in the early nineteenth century, it was mainly due to a series of court cases that allowed slaves freedom within England itself, and the natural movement was towards limiting the trade in the English colonies as well. Also, outlawing the slave trade allowed England a justification for boarding Spanish ships "suspected" of participating in the slave trade so that they could disrupt their maritime activities and weaken their already precarious economic situation. This last policy was only slightly successful.

On the subject of the Industrial Revolution specifically, slavery in the colonies provided the capital required (due to trade restrictions that meant all trade from the colonies were rerouted through England) for the Industrial Revolution to occur, but during the seventeenth century there were structural changes in the agrarian sector that saw more food being available and resulted in an escape from the Malthusian Trap that kept England's population low. This population spurt only grew after the 1660s, when England experienced its last devastating plague. These new individuals were local and easily exploited by manufacturers and made slavery unnecessary - thereby easing the transition towards abolition in the colonies, since England already had the "start-up capital" required to begin industrializing.

On the subject of the industrialized North beating the backwards, agrarian South during the Civil War, that is actually more of a myth now. Economic historians in the early 1990s (including Fogel and Engerman) found that slavery was actually as profitable as Northern agriculture, and that the North was more reliant on the cheap raw materials imported from the South than the South was on the industrialized manufactured goods imported from the North. While industrializion actually helped the North defeat the South during the war, the real success was convincing the English not to trade with the Confederacy - which was a large coup considering the British were the largest importers of Southern cotton, as well as the largest textile producers in Europe.

Queen Isabella I of Castile forbade any person born in America to ever be made a slave at the beginning of the XVI century, and we all know how well it worked.

The minute Dany leaves, somebody will start slaving somebody else; maybe the old slavers will re-enslave the old slaves, like in Yunkai, or maybe the old slaves will enslave the old slavers, like in Astapor.

Actually, you're right and wrong. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand did prohibit slavery in their colonies - but only indigenous slavery - and this was done at the insistence of the Papacy, which found that the Indigenous Americans in the New World had a soul and were redeemable into the kingdom of heaven. The Spanish did subvert this by establishing the hacienda system, which was a sort of feudal system that found native americans bound to the land and producing or supplying tributes to their Mestizo lords. The Spanish never actually outlawed African slavery, and (alongside Portugal) were actually the first Europeans to engage in widespread slavery on the continent. This began with the Portuguese in the 1440s and by 1500 there were an estimated 10,000 slaves living in the Iberian Peninsula.

All of which is to say that Dany can't end slavery by herself, but that doesn't mean it was foolish for her to try. However, if she wants to be successful she needs to supplant the slave trade with a different exportable commodity capable of keeping the elite merchants from turning towards people for their profits. She also needs to work with slave importers, such as Volantis, in order to get their accent to abolishing their slave economies. While in Europe and America this was done thanks in part to the industrial revolution and increasing protests by abolitionists and Anglican moralists, in Mereen it needs to be done by forging alliances and establishing a new economy. The question is what that economy would consist of and how Dany would avoid the sort of "share-cropping" exploitative system that emerged after slavery was abolished in America.

[E-Ro]

And you think the slaves will quietly go back?

Yes, they are hungry and need food after all. Not to mention the overwhelming force that would be bought to bear on them, pentos, volantis, etc. And the slave masters have the coin to buy sellswords. It would be the simplest thing to reenslave the freedmen.

[Jabronius Maximus]

Yes, they are hungry and need food after all. Not to mention the overwhelming force that would be bought to bear on them, pentos, volantis, etc. And the slave masters have the coin to buy sellswords. It would be the simplest thing to reenslave the freedmen.

That's easier said than done. I see 'massive Spartacus-style revolt' written all over that situation.

[Winter's Knight]

Is Westeros fine though? Was Medieval Western Europe? Certainly not. The distinction between smallfolk in Westeros and slaves in Essos is pretty small.

Smallfolk have some measure of social mobility and right of law that slaves in Essos don't.

[Brony Stark]

I'm working on my PhD in American History so I am about to nerd out SO HARD in this post (fair warning)

Slavery didn't end in Britain because of the Industrial Revolution, although that helped. England itself had always had a relatively small slave population, with most of its participation in the slave trade directed towards feeding slaves into its colonies in the Caribbean and the American South where labor was less plentiful and the profit margins weren't large enough to sustain a paid workforce and make sugar or rice cultivation and transport profitable. When England abandoned the Slave Trade in the early nineteenth century, it was mainly due to a series of court cases that allowed slaves freedom within England itself, and the natural movement was towards limiting the trade in the English colonies as well. Also, outlawing the slave trade allowed England a justification for boarding Spanish ships "suspected" of participating in the slave trade so that they could disrupt their maritime activities and weaken their already precarious economic situation. This last policy was only slightly successful.

On the subject of the Industrial Revolution specifically, slavery in the colonies provided the capital required (due to trade restrictions that meant all trade from the colonies were rerouted through England) for the Industrial Revolution to occur, but during the seventeenth century there were structural changes in the agrarian sector that saw more food being available and resulted in an escape from the Malthusian Trap that kept England's population low. This population spurt only grew after the 1660s, when England experienced its last devastating plague. These new individuals were local and easily exploited by manufacturers and made slavery unnecessary - thereby easing the transition towards abolition in the colonies, since England already had the "start-up capital" required to begin industrializing.

On the subject of the industrialized North beating the backwards, agrarian South during the Civil War, that is actually more of a myth now. Economic historians in the early 1990s (including Fogel and Engerman) found that slavery was actually as profitable as Northern agriculture, and that the North was more reliant on the cheap raw materials imported from the South than the South was on the industrialized manufactured goods imported from the North. While industrializion actually helped the North defeat the South during the war, the real success was convincing the English not to trade with the Confederacy - which was a large coup considering the British were the largest importers of Southern cotton, as well as the largest textile producers in Europe.

Actually, you're right and wrong. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand did prohibit slavery in their colonies - but only indigenous slavery - and this was done at the insistence of the Papacy, which found that the Indigenous Americans in the New World had a soul and were redeemable into the kingdom of heaven. The Spanish did subvert this by establishing the hacienda system, which was a sort of feudal system that found native americans bound to the land and producing or supplying tributes to their Mestizo lords. The Spanish never actually outlawed African slavery, and (alongside Portugal) were actually the first Europeans to engage in widespread slavery on the continent. This began with the Portuguese in the 1440s and by 1500 there were an estimated 10,000 slaves living in the Iberian Peninsula.

All of which is to say that Dany can't end slavery by herself, but that doesn't mean it was foolish for her to try. However, if she wants to be successful she needs to supplant the slave trade with a different exportable commodity capable of keeping the elite merchants from turning towards people for their profits. She also needs to work with slave importers, such as Volantis, in order to get their accent to abolishing their slave economies. While in Europe and America this was done thanks in part to the industrial revolution and increasing protests by abolitionists and Anglican moralists, in Mereen it needs to be done by forging alliances and establishing a new economy. The question is what that economy would consist of and how Dany would avoid the sort of "share-cropping" exploitative system that emerged after slavery was abolished in America.

Sorry... Canadians don't know much about this, I only was going on what I knew :frown5: . Thanks for the info.

[E-Ro]

That's easier said than done. I see 'massive Spartacus-style revolt' written all over that situation.

How does that story end again? :laugh:

[Winter's Knight]

<snip>

I feel so much smarter now, thank you for typing all that out! :bowdown:

[Eogh]

Smallfolk have some measure of social mobility and right of law that slaves in Essos don't.

I don't know. When a lord's smallfolk are slaughtered, isn't it the lord who is compensated? Seems very similar to a master-slave dynamic. The social mobility aspect is true in theory, those lowborn have the opportunity to gain influence through amassing wealth, but the reality is that peasants in Westeros are treated as chattel.

[Ser Lepus]

Braavos and Westeros seem to be doing fine. By the way, this lame attempt at justifying slavery in ASOIAF is hilarious, didn't know Daenerys invoked this much butt-hurt in some folks. :rofl:

There has never been slavery in either Westeros or Braavos, save the ironborn's thralls; they were founded by people whose religion and ideology already were against slavery before reaching their current locations: The Andal's faith rejected slavery, the Old Gods too, and the braavosi, as ex-slaves, were also abolitionists.

I'm all for the abolition of slavery in Essos, but that would require to redesign its economy from the scratch, to preach a coherent anti-slavery ideology and to put into power people who really are against slavery. Dany has kept meereenese society unaltered save for the abolition of slavery, she has allowed the slaving nobility to keep their power and wealth, she has not given positions of powers to true abolitionists, she has not a coherent ideology save "I'm blood of the dragon, do as I say".

Dany has to seek educated, competent people that are already against slavery (braavosi, westerosi and summer islander ex-slaves, maybe?) she can put in positions of power, strip the slaving nobility of all its power and wealth, remake the economy into something that can work without slaves and to create an ideology that completely rejects slavery (importing the Moonsingers or the Seven religion, maybe?), but all that is work for a genious.

[Tenshi]

She can't, unless she conquers most of Essos. Even if she takes Slaver's Bay, soon enough another power will fill the niche. Perhaps by strategic location she could wage war against slavery... but the odds are poor. Likely Volantis would take over the market and she'd be empty-handed.

Besides, freedmen, in a place of little mobility, few rights for freedmen and scarcity of jobs, aren't better off than well-treated slaves (as she's been starting to see herself). If you can choose between bondage and starvation, that's an easy choice for many.

[Foxhound]

I don't know. When a lord's smallfolk are slaughtered, isn't it the lord who is compensated? Seems very similar to a master-slave dynamic. The social mobility aspect is true in theory, those lowborn have the opportunity to gain influence through amassing wealth, but the reality is that peasants in Westeros are treated as chattel.

Based on Ned's actions, when smallfolk are slaughtered in peacetime, the response is to treat the one responsible as a murderer and execute him, not demand compensation from him. And small folk seem to have more mobility and choice to where they live than say medieval serfs.

On to Dany's problem, the key issue I think is she's not just trying to eliminate slavery in a city, she's trying to eliminate a slave trade. It's made clear the cities of Slaver's Bay are decayed and long past their prime. Without the slave trade they probably would have been abandoned or at least be a lot smaller and poorer. She's trying to replace that economic model of buying and selling slaves that keeps the cities prosperous. And the fact is there's no reason to believe she can find something to replace it with. Cities that lose their economic engine lose their reason to exist. She may not want to just burn the cities to the ground, but ending the slave trade in Slaver's Bay does mean ending the slave cities one way or another, either quickly and violently, or slowly through depression.

[E-Ro]

She has good intentions true, but she is going about it all wrong. Hopefully she learns.

[Ser Lepus]

Actually, you're right and wrong. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand did prohibit slavery in their colonies - but only indigenous slavery - and this was done at the insistence of the Papacy, which found that the Indigenous Americans in the New World had a soul and were redeemable into the kingdom of heaven. The Spanish did subvert this by establishing the hacienda system, which was a sort of feudal system that found native americans bound to the land and producing or supplying tributes to their Mestizo lords. The Spanish never actually outlawed African slavery, and (alongside Portugal) were actually the first Europeans to engage in widespread slavery on the continent. This began with the Portuguese in the 1440s and by 1500 there were an estimated 10,000 slaves living in the Iberian Peninsula.

Actually, the first asiento de negros or permission to import african slaves was given in 1518, fourteen years after Isabel I died, but you're right, she probably wasn't against slavery on itself, only against the creation of a class of chattel slaves.

During that time it was common for muslims and christians to raid each other for slaves, and it was considered OK, but most people were against the idea of making christians into slaves; when a chistian slave was bought (usually to muslim traders), it usually ended being freed soon or later; the greek slave Jordi Johan, for example, became a famed sculptor, the same as his sons, and worked for the king Pedro IV of Aragon.

The creation of a whole class of slaves that were born in the kingdom and raised as christians opened a whole new can of worms, since decent, educated people knew it would be immoral, but economic reasons imposed themselves over moral ones.

The encomienda system (I think that's what you mean when you say hacienda system) originally was created to protect the native americans from people who would steal their land, but it was subverted and used as a tool of slavery. The native americans were suposed to keep their lands and pay a share of their crops to feed the conquistador troops, but the peasants were often reduced to de facto slavery.

[Jabronius Maximus]

How does that story end again? :laugh:

Everyone lived happily ever after :D

[Light a wight tonight]

Westeros is doing fine without slavery. So was medieval Western Europe during the period the books are mostly based on. So yeah, it's possible.

Medieval Europe had serfs, not a lot different from slaves.

[Eogh]

Based on Ned's actions, when smallfolk are slaughtered in peacetime, the response is to treat the one responsible as a murderer and execute him, not demand compensation from him. And small folk seem to have more mobility and choice to where they live than say medieval serfs.

Right, if you take Ned's actions to be the norm. But I doubt they were, judging from the shock that greeted his call for Gregor's execution. I don't think Ned was the typical Westerosi lord where smallfolk were concerned.

[grindylow]

My question is: what industries are the slaves upholding? If you argue that industrialization - the ability to mass-produce a product - is what's required for slavery to truly become obsolete, what will they be mass-producing? From what I can see, we have the Unsullied, and the pleasure slaves - so mass-produced warriors, whose place can be filled by sellswords, and mass-produced sex workers, whose place can be filled by prostitutes. IIRC, Meereen specializes in slaves that do whatever the Meereenese don't want to do.

If they were field workers, or miners, I could see how it could be cataclysmic to Essos to wipe out slavery. But the only industry totally destroyed by the abolishment of the slave trade seems to be the slave trade.

[Stoned Dragon]

Sorry... Canadians don't know much about this, I only was going on what I knew :frown5: . Thanks for the info.

I feel so much smarter now, thank you for typing all that out! :bowdown:

Oh, its no problem. Most people in America don't know this stuff - - I just finished taking my exams for my doctorate and had a question on slavery in the New World - so the information is sorta fresh. Glad I could geek out on this boards this hard and no be labeled a freak! LOL

Westoros doesn't have slaves or machines. If one were to actually wait until a society were ready to be egalitarian, no marginalised group would see equality. People need to be dragged to it, kicking and screaming.

I don't think you can drag people into acting against their best interest without some sort of inducement. Dany attempted to "break chains" unilaterally, but because she didn't provide an alternative system that was as good OR completely dismantle the system (raze the pyramids, redistribute the wealth amongst the slaves, set up a land-holding agreement, etc....) she made it so that people only went along with her because she had dragons and because she had an army. Once the dragons were imprisoned and a bigger army was amassed, then people had no real reason to keep the system she set up.

But dany has no intention of dragging them into it. She wants to leave for westeros, and has already agreed to let slavery continue as well as the fighting pits. If she were ready for a long term commitment I would agree, but she isnt. Her changing things then leaving wont work.

Agreed.

And you think the slaves will quietly go back?

The [edit: FORMER] slaves were already going back - they were begging Dany to be allowed to sell themselves back into slavery because they were free, but without any opportunities. They had skills, but the economy was so decimated that people couldn't afford whatever they produced. The influx of freedslaves likely depressed the wages, making those with jobs even less likely to be able to support themselves by their work alone. Dany could have better organized the guild and apprentice system into something more akin to a labor union, that way wages would have stabilized at a somewhat sustainable level - but she didn't think that far ahead. Because of that, the slaves would have gone back quietly and with little resistance.

people don't need to be dragged into a more free society, they need to take it for themselves with....fire and blood I guess. Seriously though, free societies do not come around because pretty rich white girl shows up and makes it so. They become free because they took it for themselves.

People are never free - just less oppressed than previous systems. Replacing feudalism with capitalism, for interest, only emboldens a new class of people and replaces geographic restrictions with monetary ones. The same is true for slavery, which in America at least didn't end the systemic racism that allowed for such a system to emerge and endure for as long as it did. One white girl foreigner isn't going to be able to change the system, and the slaves were more than willing to go along with Dany and help their own cause, but without a viable alternative and with little knowledge or skills beyond whatever they did as slaves, there wasn't anything for the slaves to "take".

[Kanon]

Medieval Europe had serfs, not a lot different from slaves.

But if you think that, you should agree that what Dany is doing wont be much of a diference for Essos (at least not economicaly), therefore it IS better for Essos to abolish slavery

[Winter's Knight]

The slaves were already going back - they were begging Dany to be allowed to sell themselves back into slavery because they were free, but without any opportunities. They had skills, but the economy was so decimated that people couldn't afford whatever they produced. The influx of freedslaves likely depressed the wages, making those with jobs even less likely to be able to support themselves by their work alone. Dany could have better organized the guild and apprentice system into something more akin to a labor union, that way wages would have stabilized at a somewhat sustainable level - but she didn't think that far ahead. Because of that, the slaves would have gone back quietly and with little resistance.

The slaves weren't going back but some former slavers were.