The History of Slavery, Part 1: Shackled and Chained in the Ancient World

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2018

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When asked “what is slavery?” most Americans or Westerners would respond with a description of an African slave in the antebellum South, picking cotton and suffering under the whip of a cruel master. But if you asked an Irishman in 1650, he would have answered differently. He would recount the horrors of Barbary Muslim pirates invading the town of Baltimore, dragging his kinsmen off to the slave markets of Algeria. A medieval Arab would have still answered differently. He would talk about the African slave trade, albeit the one that went east to Arabia instead of the one that went west to the New World. A Roman would answer differently again, describing slavery as the rightful spoils of war and what brought a Greek to his household that tutors his children.

Slavery goes back to the beginning of the agricultural revolution. It is universal yet localized to the particular conditions in the society that enslaves others. Some researchers think slavery is common across history in that it leads to the social death of a slave. Others think that slaves were treated rather well in the ancient world, and it was only the weaponized racism of recent centuries that turned the chattel slavery of Africans brought to the New World into such a cruel institution.

This episode is the beginning of a five-part series on slavery. We are looking at the origins of the practice, why it began, the work that slaves did, what was the “best” sort of work, and how they revolted. By looking into the past we will have a better understanding of this practice, and how much it resembles slavery in the modern world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, the unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes,
0:08.8	Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscoveres the forgotten stories that changed our world.
0:15.4	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
0:24.8	What do you think of when you hear the word slavery?
0:27.4	To most people, especially Americans, you would imagine a slave taken from their homeland in Africa on a slave raid,
0:34.2	sold to a merchant, and then cross the Atlantic in a packed slave ship where many people died,
0:38.8	then they arrive in the United States, or sold to a plantation owner on a slave market,
0:43.3	and have to pick cotton in the antebellum south.
0:46.6	You might also think of the psychological dehumanization process where they're made to feel less than human,
0:53.2	and this is shown in recent films like 12 Years of Slave,
0:56.8	where a person's humanity is stripped away step by step.
1:00.3	But if you were to ask that same question to, let's say, an English person in 1700, what is a slave,
1:07.4	they would have a different answer.
1:09.3	They might think of a fellow countryman, a white countryman who'd been seized on ships by barberry pirates from North Africa,
1:16.8	and then transported to Algeria and committed to a life of heavy labor, or maybe they were ransom off.
1:22.5	This Englishman might think about the 1631 sack of Baltimore, in which there was a slave raid by pirates in Ireland.
1:29.9	On the morning of June 20th, some 230 men armed with muskets landed in Baltimore.
1:36.7	They quickly and silently spread out, and at a given signal, they broke open doors, torch buildings,
1:41.8	and launched a simultaneous attack on the sleeping inhabitants of the town.
1:45.9	All in all, the pirates took 20 men, 33 women, and 54 children and youths to their ships.
1:52.5	From there, the victims were taken to a poor in Algiers in North Africa and sold off a ransom.
1:58.7	And it wasn't just Ireland, of course, for about three centuries,
	...

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